When is an interview too tough? CBS News grappling with question after Dokoupil interview

NEW YORK (AP) — Television morning show interviews often don’t stray beyond dinner recipes or celebrity hijinks. Yet a week after it took place, CBS News host Tony Dokoupil’s pointed interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel remains the subject of heated conversations at the network and beyond.

CBS management took the unusual step of scolding Dokoupil before his colleagues for not living up to network standards, in a private meeting Monday that quickly became public, and “CBS Mornings” staff continued to discuss it on Tuesday.

The seven-minute interview on Sept. 30 was about Coates’ new book of essays, and Dokoupil zeroed in right away on a section about Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank in an exchange the Washington Post last week called “unusually tense and substantive.”

For all of Coates’ honors as a writer, Dokoupil said that the essay “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” He wondered why Coates’ writing did not include references to Israel being surrounded by enemies that want to eliminate the country.

“Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?” he asked.

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