The New York Post and The Free Press offered new reporting Tuesday night and Friday morning on the continued fallout and outrage and subsequent modern-day Struggle Sessions directed at CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil for the alleged crime of asking leftist icon Ta-Nehisi Coates probing questions about his virulently anti-Israel book.
Among the new findings are that a tear-eyed Dokoupil said he “regretted” making his colleagues feel uncomfortable, a private meeting with his co-hosts (former NFL player Nate Burleson and Oprah best friend/Kamala Harris and Obama donor Gayle King), a meeting with DEI consultant was scrapped given his racist and far-left politics, the CEO of CBS’s parent company backs Dokoupil, and there was an actual debate at CBS News whether Israel should exist.
Given all that, things have bled onto the screen as, upon watching the Tuesday and Wednesday installments of CBS Mornings, the normally jovial and collegial feeling amongst the three co-hosts has disintegrated with Dokoupil given seemingly few reads and only a cursory participant in interviews (aside from Wednesday’s sit-down with After Midnight host Taylor Tomlinson). In other words, he has come off like he would prefer to be anywhere else than in the middle of a maddening storm of intolerance.
First, the great Alexandra Steigrad at the Post wrote that Dokoupil “told staffers during an emotional meeting that he ‘regretted’ putting them in a difficult position”, but this meeting did not include Burleson and King. Such a meeting — which lasted a half hour — came later “in his office at 1515 Broadway.”
A source told her that “[t]here were tears” and colleagues “very upset”.
She added that, despite the emotions, Dokoupil didn’t seem to back down:
“There were tears. [People were] very upset,” the source continued, adding that staffers are “divided” on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and were “troubled” by how Dokoupil challenged Coates last week.
Dokoupil, however, didn’t back down from his incisive questioning of Coates about his new book during the 11:30 a.m. meeting, which was led by “CBS Mornings” executive producer Shawna Thomas, sources said.
A second source said that some black staffers who attended the meeting were critical that Burleson and King have remained tight-lipped about the matter.
Good. For the record, Dokoupil had nothing to apologize for. To paraphrase what longtime Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford allegedly said in a previous meetings, Dokoupil’s grilling represented what journalism should look like.
To be rhetorically flogged for defending a Jewish state’s right to exist at a major news network spells trouble for how viewers should consider the motives of CBS.
On the subject of Coates, he allegedly told Trevor Noah that King had originally told him backstage what she was going to ask him, but never got the chance to given Coates’s combative responses to Dokoupil.
Earth to CBS’s standards and practices team: This is your real scandal.
Over at The Free Press, founder Bari Weiss and editor Oliver Wiseman revealed the decision to scrap the DEI expert following a post referring to Republican Senator Tim Scott (SC) as “Uncle Tim” had CBS “humiliated.”
Then came the jaw dropper about a “debate” whether Israel should exist. Obviously, none of this has made controlling Paramount Global shareholder Shari Redstone happy. In fact, she’s come to his defense (click “expand”):
The meeting went ahead without Grant—staffers were not able to join from outside of CBS offices in order to prevent leaks. One source familiar with the proceedings suggested it was a “shit show,” with various employees “yelling.” Shawna Thomas, the show’s executive producer, was in tears. So was Dokoupil.
There was an open debate in the meeting about whether it is “fair to talk about whether Israel should exist at all.” There are some people at CBS who think that “Israel’s existence as a state should be part of fair conversation,” said one CBS source. Can you imagine journalists having that conversation about any other country?
No wonder Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS’s parent company Paramount Global—at least until its merger with Skydance goes through some time next year—is not happy. A source close to Redstone told The Free Press that Redstone thought that “Tony gave a great interview and modeled what civil discourse should look like. And she disagreed with the action the company took. She’s working with the CEOs to address this issue.”
On Wednesday morning, Redstone went public in an interview with Axios’s Sara Fischer: “I frankly think Tony did a great job with that interview.”
Weiss and Wiseman also touched on Coates’s allegations to Noah as a violation of basic journalism:
So let’s get this straight: One journalist is raked over the coals for asking tough questions, while another journalist—if Coates’s recollection is correct—previews her questions and faces no repercussions...Which poses a few questions. Chief among them: Are there different rules for different journalists at CBS?
They also were able to get “a former CBS journalist” to speak to them and said Coates’s allegations “would violate journalistic standards”, but warned the network’s “Race and Culture Unit” has become “a very powerful voice and many employees believe this has allowed greater bias to creep into editorial decisions.”
