Shari Redstone, the chair of CBS parent Paramount Global, ripped the Tiffany Network over its clampdown on “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil following his heated interview about Israel with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Dokoupil had been reprimanded at a staff meeting Monday by CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and her lieutenant Adrienne Roark for bringing his own “bias” to the interview with Coates, who condemned Israel as an “apartheid” state in his new book “The Message.”
In the Sept. 30 interview, Dokoupil remarked that the book “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” and asked Coates whether he believed Israel had a right to exist.
“I frankly think Tony did a great job with that interview,” Redstone said Wednesday at AdWeek’s annual conference in Midtown New York. “I was very proud of the work that he did. Yes, as hard as it was for me to go against this company, I think they made a mistake here.”
Roark, president of content development for the news division, said Dokoupil’s interview did not meet CBS News’ “editorial standards” for impartiality, according to leaked audio reported by the Free Press.
“I just want to be clear that I’ve been working with the CEOs,” Redstone added. “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.”
CBS News did not return requests for comment.
“I’m glad there’s a wall between ownership and editorial,” one source close to the network said, claiming that Dokoupil’s bias has been revealed in other segments related to Israel-Hamas War.
That included a Sept. 30 broadcast on Israel’s airstrikes and its assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which Dokoupil commented: “If Hezbollah thought that Israel was going to graciously take a year full of rockets, Hezbollah miscalculated.”
Dokoupil hasn’t been the only anchor to editorialize. In a May 2020 segment about a woman in New York City’s Central Park who falsely called the police claiming she was being threatened by a black male, King said, “Sometimes it’s not a safe place to be in this country for black men.”
Redstone’s comments come a day after Dokoupil met with angry “CBS Mornings” staffers in an emotional private meeting led by executive producer Shawna Thomas.
As reported by The Post, Dokoupil “offered his regrets” about the situation but he did not “apologize” for his line of questioning.
A source who attended the meeting told The Post that while Dokoupil had a discussion with his colleagues, he did not back down and at the end of the tear-filled powwow, it was more of a situation of “agreeing to disagree.”
Dokoupil, a convert to Judaism whose ex-wife lives in Israel along with their two children, asked Coates during the interview why he didn’t include more pro-Israel voices or note in his work that “little kids [were] blown to bits” in Palestinian terrorist attacks.
Coates replied that the Israeli narrative was well-represented in the American mainstream press and that few Palestinian voices had a chance to be heard.
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s meeting, “CBS Mornings” staffers had complained to network top brass about the journalist’s treatment of Coates, which led to McMahon and Roark’s condemnation of Dokoupil’s interview, sources told The Post.
The Free Press posted leaked audio of Monday’s meeting, which also included CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford blasting the execs’ statement in front of staffers.
“It sounds like we are calling out one of our anchors in a somewhat public setting on this call for failing to meet editorial standards for, I’m not even sure what,” Crawford said.
“I thought our commitment was to truth. And when someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists we are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account, a more balanced account. And, to me, that is what Tony did.”
On Monday, Redstone had fumed behind the scenes about how the execs handled the situation, saying it was insensitive to address the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Redstone, who is Jewish, was ironically on hand at Adweek’s New York conference to speak about the power of content to fight antisemitism and racism.
The heiress, who struck a deal to sell her media empire to Skydance earlier this year, joined Anti-Defamation League national director Jonathan Greenblatt, who voiced his concerns to McMahon over the treatment of Dokoupil, The Post reported Tuesday.
CBS News was planning on tapping DEI consultant Dr. Donald Grant to lead Tuesday’s discussion with staffers.
But Grant’s own controversial views were revealed by The Post, including a social media post by the self-proclaimed “mental health expert” of an altered cover of the classic Harriet Beecher Stowe novel about slavery, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” — featuring the face of Donald Trump-supporting South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott digitally inserted over the images of several other characters.
The post to Grant’s Instagram account, which he put up earlier this year, changed the title to “Uncle Tim’s Cabin” and also included an image of conservative commentator Candace Owens.
At the time, CBS News declined to comment on The Post’s report on Grant’s Instagram. On Tuesday, Puck reported that the decision to bring in Grant had been spiked amid the kerfuffle, which sparked outrage from critics, as well as a fundraising effort by Scott using Grant’s Photoshopped book cover.
“The disgusting rhetoric above is EXACTLY what’s in store for us if we allow the Radical and Intolerant left to win,” Scott wrote on the fundraising platform Win Red.