It’s our job to ask the tough questions.

That’s the journalist’s creed that was widely invoked in the wake of the controversial interview this month between writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and “CBS Mornings” co-anchor Tony Dokoupil about Coates’s new book of essays, “The Message.”

If so, Coates did a much better job of asking hard questions than Dokoupil.

Coates has long been celebrated for his clear-eyed work on race and anti-Black racism in the United States. The intellectual rigor and moral clarity of his writing made Coates a household name and a favorite of the news media — at least, it seems, until he directed his attention to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

What else is there to conclude after Dokoupil’s first question to Coates went like this: “I imagine, if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, the publishing house goes away, the content of that [Israel/Palestine section in Coates’s book] would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”

And then he asked Coates: Do you not believe that Israel has the right to........

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