With the presidential campaign down to its final weeks and hurricanes battering Florida and beyond, you may have missed the news about another storm brewing — this one at CBS News.
Apparently, some folks over there have found CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil guilty...of committing journalism.
Dokoupil was interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates about his new book, “The Message,” which is highly critical of Israel, when he asked a few tough questions about why Coates had omitted key historical facts from his anti-Israel narrative.
“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?" said Dokoupil. "Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you just don`t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?”
“There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” Coates replied.
I’ve been around journalism a long time — 28 years at CBS News alone — and Dokoupil’s questions struck me as perfectly legitimate. But not everyone at CBS News agrees. A staff conference call followed, led by two executives who had received........