Executives said the interview, conducted by the morning show anchor Tony Dokoupil, had fallen short of network editorial standards.

CBS News on Monday rebuked one of its star morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over an interview that he conducted last week with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Mr. Dokoupil challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The episode began last Monday when Mr. Coates visited “CBS Mornings” on a publicity tour for his book “The Message,” which in one section compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow laws of the American South. In describing what he witnessed on a 10-day trip to the region last year, Mr. Coates criticized other journalists for “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”

From the start of the interview, Mr. Dokoupil directly challenged this framing, telling Mr. Coates that “the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” The anchor added, “What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?”

“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state; I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are,” Mr. Coates replied. The men parried for several minutes in a tense but civil manner, with Mr. Coates at one point saying: “Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”

  • @DarthJon
    1•3 hours ago

    It’s not the job of a journalist to kiss the interviewee’s ass and finish their sentences for them. That’s not journalism, that’s marketing and promotion.

    The Jon Stewart interview is two people who don’t understand Israel at all talking as though they’re experts on Israel. Stewart didn’t ask Coates a single difficult question or challenge his narrative in any way at all.

    Dokoupil did his job and the fact that he’s received so much backlash shows just how far journalism has deteriorated.

    • partial_accumen
      1•1 hour ago

      The Jon Stewart interview is two people who don’t understand Israel at all

      I think most of the world now falls into the camp of “don’t understand Israel at all” with the IDF killing everyone around them (including other IDF). I guessing Stewart is very knowledgeable about Israel. Coates was admitting he wasn’t an expert on Israel, but is an expert on ethnic oppression, of which Israel has been undertaking for years.

      Stewart didn’t ask Coates a single difficult question or challenge his narrative in any way at all.

      Its been a week or two since I watched the Jon Stewart interview, but one of the final questions Stewart asked Coates was something to the effect of “So what is the answer? Where do we go from here with the two side so far apart?” Thank isn’t a difficult question?

      Dokoupil did his job and the fact that he’s received so much backlash shows just how far journalism has deteriorated.

      The fact that strawmanning and attacks are the only thing you’re recognizing as journalism shows how much journalism has deteriorated.