EXCLUSIVE: CBS Staffers Escalate Criticism of Tony Dokoupil's Hostility on Palestine
The anchor admitted to violating the network’s standards and practices but defended his aggressive questioning of Ta-Nehisi Coates, insiders say.
CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil defiantly admitted in a Tuesday staff meeting that he openly violated the network’s standards and practices during his explosive interview on Palestine with award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates, sources familiar with the matter told Zeteo.
The morning-show meeting, however, was dramatically cut short when a CBS spokesperson passed ‘CBS Mornings’ executive producer Shawna Thomas a note urging her to quickly wrap it up. Sources said that it was believed that it was due to the possibility that someone was leaking details at that moment.
Network employees said that prior to Tuesday’s meeting being torpedoed, Dokoupil was confronted by one staffer who said his comments during the Sept. 30 segment with Coates were “racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic.” While the anchor remained respectful and calm during the charged meeting and apologized for making others “feel uncomfortable,” he fully defended the way he conducted the interview.
At the same time, Dokoupil was pressed by staffers in the Tuesday meeting on how he would handle an interview with a Palestinian guest. Asserting that he would treat it the same way as his conversation with Coates, the anchor said he’d ask the guest about their politics and whether they agreed that Israel has a right to exist.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, five CBS News employees told Zeteo that the leaked audio of Monday’s call to Bari Weiss’ fervent pro-Israel outlet, The Free Press, may have been a message to “intimidate” them into silence. Claiming that the majority of the newsroom supports network chief Wendy McMahon and head of newsgathering Adrienne Roark for initially rebuking Dokoupil, they noted the “chilling effect” a very loud pro-Israeli minority – many of whom hold senior positions – can have on them speaking out about biased coverage of Israel and Palestine.
Sources said that while Tuesday’s meeting featured the network’s head of standards and practices admonishing Dokoupil for ignoring CBS protocols during the Coates interview, it appears that the ‘CBS Mornings’ anchor will go unpunished. Shari Redstone, head of CBS parent Paramount Global, has told network executives that she doesn’t believe that the host violated any standards and disagrees with the way the situation has been handled.
Despite Redstone’s expressing her frustration with the way CBS News management handled the matter, CBS CEO and Paramount co-chief George Cheeks sent out a statement of support for McMahon on Wednesday.
“I’m incredibly proud of the CBS News and the way they meet the moment, even in the most challenging times,” Cheeks wrote. “Wendy is an outstanding and accomplished leader. She and her leadership team are passionate advocates and stewards for CBS News standards; that won’t change. Reasonable minds in the newsroom will appropriately pressure test and debate internally to ensure balanced and objective coverage externally.”
He also acknowledged the “strong and growing discord within CBS News that needed to be addressed in an editorial meeting,” adding that it “must lead to further substantive dialogue about perceptions of inconsistent treatment, implicit bias and the important standards” the news division has established.
“If Tony would just shut the fuck up, none of this would be happening.”
-One CBS insider told Zeteo.
Furthermore, the Anti-Defamation League met with McMahon this week and made it clear that Dokoupil merely challenged Coates’ “one-sided” views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and did nothing wrong. ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt also let CBS know that it was “insensitive” to reprimand Dokoupil – who is Jewish – on Oct. 7, the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Lost in all of this kerfuffle, though, is the fact that Dokoupil, by his own admission, believes that he is above the law. While the network has strictly defined rules that the rest of his news colleagues follow, Dokoupil essentially let them know on Tuesday that those rules don’t apply to him.
Meanwhile, morale continues to sink at CBS News over how this has all played out, especially with Tuesday’s meeting falling apart quickly, which left Thomas – who oversaw the meeting – in tears.
Still, a network insider pointed out that “there’s an enormous amount of support for Wendy and Adrienne and the team who reviewed this and worked on this.”
CBS News declined to comment.
The Final Straw
Even before Coates was all but accused of being an antisemitic terrorist by Dokoupil last week, the CBS anchor had raised eyebrows at the network over the past year with his overt editorializing, especially regarding topics involving Israel and Gaza.
“If Tony would just shut the fuck up, none of this would be happening,” one CBS insider told Zeteo.
For instance, following a report in April on the University of Southern California canceling its Muslim valedictorian’s speech over “safety concerns” due to her pro-Palestinian views, Dokoupil said it spoke to a “bigger debate about what’s acceptable public speech” and suggested the student had called “for the complete abolishment of Israel,” prompting internal complaints.
Additionally, sources who spoke to Zeteo noted that the Coates interview wasn’t the only moment from the Sept. 30 broadcast that left staffers and management displeased with Dokoupil. Reporting from the ground in Beirut following the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and amid Israel’s ongoing airstrikes, CBS foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab noted that Israel was preparing a ground invasion that “has the potential of being far deadlier than anything we’ve seen so far.”
Wrapping up the segment, Dokoupil added: “If Hezbollah thought that Israel was going to graciously take a year full of rockets, Hezbollah miscalculated.” While reporting from a literal war zone, Tyab appeared somewhat irked with his colleague’s flippant remark. Dokoupil, meanwhile, quickly segued into an interview with former Trump national security adviser HR McMaster to talk about the violence in the Middle East, who wasn’t subjected to any real level of scrutiny from Dokoupil.
It was the sitdown with Coates, who was promoting his new book The Message, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Due to the fraught nature of the book, which features an essay on the “apartheid” Coates witnessed in the occupied West Bank, the network went through its standard protocol of vetting questions through its legal, standards, and race and culture departments. The properly vetted questions were then included on what’s known as a “one-sheet,” from which everyone within the show works.
As newsroom staffers pointed out to Zeteo, the “one-sheet is done for a reason,” which is to work within editorial standards. Hosts or reporters can push back and discuss what is on the sheet and whether it has been properly fact-checked, but one has to be working within that process to begin with.
While co-host Nate Burleson stuck to the plan with his first question, Dokoupil immediately deviated from the script. The anchor said that Coates’ book “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” wondered if the author was “offended by the Jewish state,” and questioned why he didn’t include “appropriate” context about the Palestinians’ role in their own oppression. Dokoupil’s ex-wife and two children live in Israel, by the way, something he did not disclose in the interview.
“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?” Dokoupil pointedly asked. “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 calmly responded.
“What is it that particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state, that is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?” Dokoupil wondered.
“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state,” Coates replied. “I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
Journalism ethics experts have criticized Dokoupil’s “gotcha” and “performative” questions that were designed to put Coates on the defensive.
Dokoupil’s hijacking of the interview left both Burleson and co-host Gayle King largely sidelined throughout the discussion. In fact, King had planned to ask Coates about Hamas’ role in the war with Israel, something that the author revealed in a podcast interview with Trevor Noah. According to Coates, King had approached him backstage with his book full of her handwritten notes, explaining that she was going to ask him some specific questions.
“While on the one hand, [Dokoupil] probably did me a service… by just kind of commandeering that interview, I don’t think he did Nate and Gayle a service, and I’m really, really sorry for them,” he told Noah.
In his conversation with Mehdi, Coates said that while he was a “little surprised” by Dokoupil, he soon realized he “was in a fight” but was prepared.
Internal Uproar
Though the interview immediately drew intense criticism (and praise) while going viral online, the situation wasn’t addressed right away in last Tuesday’s CBS editorial call. Sources noted that the irony is that these meetings usually include the digital team boasting about the online videos that received the most attention. Yet, despite the Coates-Dokoupil clash racking up 30 million views, nothing was mentioned on the morning editorial call for days.
However, McMahon and Roark were quickly inundated with complaints and questions about Dokoupil’s behavior from several dozen staffers. With tensions boiling over, it appeared the pair had determined on Thursday to address the matter in the next editorial call. Meanwhile, Dokoupil sat down with the network’s standards and practices team and members of the Race and Culture Unit. He also separately met with Burleson and King, as well as members of the show’s staff.
However, as the show doesn’t hold meetings on Friday mornings, that meant the next call would fall on Oct. 7. While staffers acknowledged that was a bit of unfortunate timing, it also had been a full week since the Coates interview, and it had yet to be addressed despite the turmoil it sparked.
Staffers were informed over the weekend that this would be the main topic of the Monday morning meeting. During the call, which did not feature Dokoupil as he was on air, management had urged attendees to keep the meeting confidential – only for details to be reported by Puck and The Free Press hours after it ended.
Without naming Dokoupil, McMahon and Roark quoted from the network’s handbook while noting that the interview and Dokoupil’s editorializing at the end of other reporters’ segments didn’t meet editorial standards.
“We will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door,” Roark said.
CBS legal correspondent Jan Crawford took issue with the bosses’ reprimand of Dokoupil, rushing to her colleague’s defense. Besides defending Dokoupil, she also called Coates a fraud, according to three sources who were on the call.
“Tony prevented a one-sided account from being broadcast on our network that was completely devoid of history or facts. As someone who does a lot of interviews, I’m not sure now how to proceed in challenging viewpoints that are obviously one-sided and devoid of fact and history,” Crawford said in audio that was leaked to The Free Press.
Weiss, who published selected recordings of the Monday meeting, quickly framed the call as a journalist being wrongly punished for grilling a hero to the liberal elite. CBS soon found itself facing backlash for supposedly throwing its anchor under the bus for daring to challenge Coates.
“The majority of CBS News was entirely disturbed and perturbed by Jan [Crawford's] outburst and, moreover, her slandering of Coates as a fraudster.”
-CBS source
Critics, and not just conservatives, railed against CBS staffers who complained about Dokoupil, calling them “woke” and saying they were apparently traumatized by the anchor for merely conducting a tough but fair interview of a “favored guest.”
The mockery only grew worse when it was reported by Byers that CBS had commissioned “DEI expert” Dr. Donald Grant to moderate Tuesday’s mandatory staff meeting, only for it to soon be revealed that Grant had once posted an “Uncle Tim” caricature of GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. Grant was eventually removed from the schedule.
The narrative that had quickly coalesced around the Monday meeting, meanwhile, left many at CBS wondering if the leaks themselves had been “orchestrated” by some of the network’s pro-Israel staffers to intimidate those complaining about Dokoupil into silence. Some even felt that Crawford’s “performance” during that meeting seemed “rehearsed.”
“The first leak, and then you know, the fact that somebody was live-texting to Puck has had a chilling effect on those who are just trying to get our journalism to be fair and balanced,” a network insider told Zeteo.
Another CBS employee said that they wanted “to present a counter-narrative to the one that's been out there that Tony has a bedrock of support at CBS News, which is not true.” The staffer noted that “with the exception of their failure to acknowledge this in a timely fashion,” Roark and McMahon “have the support of CBS News when it comes to their very impassioned defense of just leaving your bias at the door.”
The same staffer added: “The majority of CBS News was entirely disturbed and perturbed by Jan's outburst and, moreover, her slandering of Coates as a fraudster.”
Dokoupil Doubles Down
Ahead of Tuesday’s mandatory staff meeting, Thomas noted that video calls from home would not be permitted in an effort to prevent leaks. Only bureau chiefs could patch in via video, and staffers would have to arrive in person at their respective offices to attend.
 | A guest post by
|