The media mogul who chairs Paramount Global, owner of CBS News, is standing by a “CBS Mornings” anchor who questioned woke activist Ta-Nehisi Coates about his new book on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Shari Redstone, who brokered a deal earlier this year to sell Paramount along with CBS to Skydance, called the decision to reprimand anchor Tony Dokoupil “a mistake,” The Hollywood Reporter reported.
Redstone, speaking at a panel during Advertising Week, said she believed Dokoupil “did a great job with that interview.”
“I was very proud of the work that he did,” she added. “Yes, as hard as it was for me to go against this company, I think they made a mistake here.”
“I just want to be clear that I’ve been working with the CEOs,” she continued, according to THR. “I’ve been working with the woman who does a lot of our diversity training, and I think we all agree that this was not handled correctly, and we all agree that something needs to be done. I don’t have, you know, editorial control. I am not an executive, but I have a voice in our platform, like all of us.”
Redstone also said during the panel: “I think the most important thing that can come out of this is that we all recognize that we need to provide a platform where people can have a voice, where they can have civil discourse, where they can challenge each other, and we need to make sure that we give equal opportunity for this regardless of what side of the issue you’re on.”
“I’m very glad that we had this person on our show,” she added, referring to Coates. “I’m very glad that we gave him an opportunity to speak, but we have to also provide the opportunity to challenge him on what he says, just like we challenge everybody else.”
Dokoupil came under fire at the network after he pressed Coates on his new book, “The Message,” which portrays Palestinians as perpetual victims.
“For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere,” Coates wrote in his book, according to CNN.
Dokoupil, who is Jewish, pressed Coates on this particular framing.
“I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards, the acclaim, took the cover off the book, publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” Dokoupil said in the interview, according to CNN.
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Dokoupil also pushed Coates to answer why he left out so many facts in the book that are beneficial to Israel.
“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 asked.
After the interview, CBS employees complained that Dokoupil was too mean to Coates, and the anchor was forced to meet with the network’s “Race and Culture Unit,” The Daily Wire reported.
Following this meeting, Dokoupil met with staffers and told them he “regretted putting his colleagues in that position especially the ones overseas and in danger,” an insider at the network told the New York Post.
“There were tears. [People were] very upset,” the source told the Post, saying that staffers were “divided” on the situation in Israel and “troubled” by Dokoupil’s questioning of Coates.
Sources told the Post that Dokoupil didn’t apologize for his questioning.
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