‘CBS Mornings,’ Ta-Nehisi Coates controversy explained

A contentious interview between “CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil and Ta-Nehisi Coates is raising questions about the state of journalism in America.
The Sept. 30 interview between Dokoupil, a rising star at CBS, and Coates stemmed from the Oct. 1 release of Coates’ new pro-Palestine book “The Message,” which his website describes as a dissection of how “we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.”
On “CBS Mornings,” Coates said “The Message,” which is split into three parts including a controversial section about the author’s travels to Palestine, is for “writers and particularly young writers” because our history and “who we believe is human” or “who we don’t believe is human” is “largely shaped by the stories we tell.” But during their on-air talk, Dokoupil, who is Jewish, had a different interpretation. The pair’s conversation – and CBS News’ handling of the interview – sparked controversy.
The controversy started last Monday when Dokoupil told the National Book Award winner that if you took his “name out of it, took away the awards and acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away,” that the content of the book’s third section discussing the author’s trip to Palestine “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”
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He continued, “I found myself wondering, why does Ta-Nehisi Coates … leave out so much? Why leave out that Israel surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” and went through a list of events in regard to the Israel-Hamas war.
He asked Coates, “is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?” Coates responded: “There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” before telling Dokoupil that he is “most concerned with those that don’t have a voice, with those that don’t have the ability to talk.”
Coates continued: “I wrote a 260-page book. It is not a treatise on the entirety of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” Coates and Dokoupil continued to disagree with the author comparing the treatment of Palestinians he met during his research for “The Message” to his ancestor’s experiences in America’s Jim Crow era.
Coates told the “CBS Mornings” co-anchor that his book is not “based on the hyper-morality of the Palestinian people.” Dokoupil’s “Mornings” co-anchors Nate Burleson and Gayle King briefly spoke during the discussion.
In an Oct. 10 episode of former “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah’s podcast “What Now?”, Coates addressed his feelings about the “Mornings” interview.
Noah kicked off the discussion surrounding Dokoupil’s interview by telling Coates that he doesn’t “get flabbergasted by much” but added that “if you remove the context, everything has no context” in response to Dokoupil’s comments about taking Coates’ “awards and acclaim” away from “The Message.”
“I’ve been trying to process why I wasn’t so insulted,” Coates said, adding that he loves “all of those awards and accolades, but they’re not really me so OK, you take them away, it’s fine.”
Coates later told Noah that “the thing that went wrong in that interview more than anything, as far as I’m concerned, is Gayle King is a great journalist, and a great interviewer and Gayle came behind the stage before we went (on) and she had gone through the book.” Coates said that he was “not saying she agreed with the book, but she was like ‘I want to ask you about this, I want to ask you about that.’
“While on the one hand, he probably did me a service, you know what I mean? By just kind of commandeering that interview,” Coates told Noah. “I don’t think he did Nate and Gayle a service and I’m really, really sorry for them.”
He said not to “feel sorry” for him because “that interview will sell a lot of books because the fact of the matter is, that reaction is actually endemic of what I’m writing about.”
According to a report published Monday by pro-Israel publication The Free Press, which was founded by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, CBS News addressed the incident during an incident that morning. The Free Press account included leaked audio recordings that included CBS executives suggesting the incident did not meet “editorial standards” after a “review of our coverage.”
Oct. 7, the date of the editorial meeting, is widely recognized as the one-year anniversary of the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The recordings show that after an introduction by CBS News president and CEO Wendy McMahon, the network’s newsgathering leader Adrienne Roark said the Coates story “requires empathy, respect, and a commitment to truth.”
“We will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. That’s apart of our job, too. But we will do so objectively and that means, very plainly, we have to check our biases and opinions at the door,” Roark said after reading from the CBS employee handbook. “And that applies to every single one of us. We are not here to represent any viewpoint; we are here to tell stories.
“We are here to report news without fear or favor,” Roark continued, before telling employees that there “are times we fail our audiences and each other. We’re in one of those times right now, and it’s been growing. And now, we are at a tipping point.”
She added that “many of you have reached out to express concerns about recent reporting, specifically about the ‘CBS Mornings’ Coates interview from last week as well as comments made coming out of some of our correspondents’ reporting.” Roark thanked employees for their “honesty” and told CBS staffers the incident had been “addressed.”
Ta’Nehisi Coates:’The Message’
“This is a highly charged and complex issue … this goes way beyond one interview, one comment, one story,” Roark continued, telling staff “this is about preserving the legacy of neutrality and objectivity that is CBS News.”
“We are a news organization. We are larger than one show, one person and one story,” she said, according to the recording.
After reports surfaced calling the meeting a “rebuke” of Dokoupil, a source who is familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to USA TODAY on Wednesday that CBS employees approached executives with concerns about reporting bias and how the interview could jeopardize international correspondent work.
The source added that concerned employees were “grateful” the Dokoupil-Coates incident was addressed in an editorial meeting and there was “no rebuke” or disciplinary action against Dokoupil at CBS News, but this conflicts with the leaked audio recordings.