The CBS Coates saga is no laughing matter, it’s our future

But don’t laugh. This is our future, a future in which panicked news executives submit to the loudest, most emotionally unstable voices in the room, entirely intimidated by mob rules designed to protect certain viewpoints while suppressing dissenting voices. .

On September 30th, during CBS Mornings host of Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Coates, the anchor specifically pressed the author to defend his new book, The Message, which alleges, among other things, that Israel is an illegitimate state “built on ethnocracy” and “apartheid.” The book also questions the legitimacy of Israel’s founding after the Holocaust.

Coates writes that his impression of Israel was cemented in 2023, during a 10-day trip to the West Bank.

“I don’t think I have ever felt the glow of racism burn more strangely and intensely in my life than in Israel,” writes Coates, who compares Israel to the Jim Crow-era American South.

By the author’s own admission, the closest he came to experiencing Israel’s supposed Jim Crow-style policies was when he and his group were forced to wait 45 minutes at a security checkpoint. This experience, Coates writes, brought to mind the experiences of black Americans persecuted by racist Jim Crow-era Georgia sheriffs who wore sunglasses. This is the best example Coates offers his readers.

The words “Hamas,” “Fatah,” “Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” “Hezbollah,” and “Iran” are not mentioned anywhere in Coates’ essay.

On CBS, Dokoupil criticized Coates for his simplistic presentation of Israel’s long-running conflict with the Palestinians.

“I imagine if I took your name off of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took off the book cover, the publisher went away — the contents of that section wouldn’t look out of place in an extremist’s backpack,” the anchor said.

He added: “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terrorist groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything about the first and second intifada, the bombings in cafes, the attacks on buses, the children blown to pieces?”

Coates, who seems too used to intra-industry acclaim and admiration, responded regretfully, saying: “I wrote a 260-page book. It is not a treaty on the entire conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.”

At the CBS offices, an all-out riot quickly broke out, with frantic employees demanding that management punish Dokoupil for his impertinence.

Mandatory management.

CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon called in the network’s Standards and Practices and Race and Culture units to investigate the matter, according to CNN. The first concluded that Dokoupil did not follow the “pre-production process in which issues are addressed through Race and Culture and Standards and Practices.” However, this last unit concluded that its questions were acceptable, although its tone was not acceptable. As these reviews were conducted and CBS employees found themselves positively distraught over the matter, management invited a self-described “mental health expert, DEI strategist and trauma coach” to counsel those whose feelings were hurt by Coates’ interview. The invitation was later rescinded, however, after social media users highlighted racist online comments from the “trauma coaches.”

At last week’s general editorial meetings, the first of which was held on Monday, CBS management reprimanded Dokoupil, claiming he fell below CBS News’ “editorial standards.” They also accused the anchor of having an “axe to grind,” adding that he was unable to “set aside his personal feelings and beliefs,” according to a leaked recording obtained by Free press. In an editorial meeting, an employee allegedly accused Dokoupil directly of being “racist,” “xenophobic” and “Islamophobic,” according to media reporter Justin Baragona.

Amid all these meetings and investigations, it is worth highlighting that Dokoupil did nothing wrong.

He conducted a difficult but civil interview – that was it. In other words, he did his job as a journalist. And while it’s tempting to dismiss this episode as a somewhat humorous farce, that’s not exactly a laughing matter. It’s another troubling development in a broader trend of newsrooms giving in to the demands of tantrum-prone, highly vindictive and hyperpartisan employees. The Coates interview breakdown is not a unique incident.

THE New York Times also faced internal uprisings over its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, including leaking an employee’s internal discussion to pro-Gaza media outlets. Node washington post, officials organized a successful rebellion to expel aspiring editor Robert Winnett from Telegraph. The uprising involved angry staff meetings, employees complaining that he was too white and male for the job, and the Washington Post even publishing articles of more than 1,000 words characterizing Winnett as a snake of a journalist. He retired from the role shortly thereafter. At CNN, there was a year-long uprising during the brief tenure of Chris Licht, whom the network’s personalities detested due to his overemphasis on maintaining a profitable, business-oriented business model and his general disinterest in compliance. ideological. Licht was sent off shortly after the Atlantic published an unflattering exposé filled with critical quotes and anecdotes from CNN employees.

Speaking of Atlantic, let’s not forget the time he hired and then fired ex- National Review author Kevin Williamson after Atlantic staffers and readers criticized his pro-life views. Speaking of on-the-fly hirings and firings, MSNBC did the same thing this year when it hired and immediately fired former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel following a company-wide outburst.

There is more, like the riot in New York Times about Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) infamous op-ed, but you get the point.

This is a future in which promoting left-wing ideology is increasingly the main function of organizations like CBS and the New York Times. Everything else, including the dissemination of news, is incidental to this cause. It doesn’t matter, for example, that CBS made the news when Dokoupil exposed Coates for the intellectual powerhouse that he is. The important thing is that leftist devotions have been hurt, and we cannot allow that!

Employees who are angry about Coates’ interview see ideological imposition as the only worthwhile goal. They will achieve this goal by any means necessary. For now, it’s emotional blackmail and tantrums. But it could look very different in five to ten years, something much worse.

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Older generations of Chinese mocked Chairman Mao Zedong’s collegial Red Guard.

How did this work for older generations?