Loaded questions

MINE was one of the innumerable jaws that dropped watching that CBS interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates promoting his book, The Message a few weeks ago. It happened when anchor Tony Dokoupil, who edged his two co-hosts out of the conversation, told Coates: “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.” Coates listened and before he could answer, Dokoupil asked: “Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”
Coates — who has established himself as one of America’s leading intellectual thinkers on race and has turned that moral clarity to Israel’s treatment of Palestine in his new book — responded calmly: the US media was dominated by Israel’s viewpoint, whereas he wanted to speak for those who don’t have a voice, the Palestinians. Dokoupil, a Jew, later asked why Coates was offended by the existence of a Jewish state. Coates replied: “I’m offended by the idea of a state built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
This exchange generated a lot of buzz and I was surprised to hear the network’s bosses ordered an internal review, saying Dokoupil had “violated the network’s editorial standards” when he compared the book to “extremist” writings “and challenged Coates for excluding the Israeli perspective in his book” reported CNN. Interestingly, the head of the network’s parent company Shari Redstone, a vocal supporter of Israel, criticised CBS’ decision to …err… criticise Dokoupil, saying she supported the journalist asking tough questions. Then the parent company’s co-CEO spoke up, saying he stood by CBS’ news leadership decision and how the episode must lead to “substantive dialogue about perceptions of inconsistent treatment”. What a mess.
Since then, various thought pieces on the subject in the media and YouTube-verse have tackled whether Dokoupil was simply doing this job by asking tough questions, which, we were reminded, is the role of journalism. I don’t think asking if Israel has a right to exist is a tough question; it is the typical strategy of Western media which veers from tough questions when it comes to Israel. The slightest of criticism is met with ‘why are you against Israel’ or accusations of antisemitism or, in the case of this book, questioning Coates’ qualifications on ‘complex’ foreign policy matters. By saying Coates did not include this or that Israeli point of view distracts from what the writer was reporting on: Israel’s segregation of Palestinians and how it deprives Palestinians of their humanity (forget rights and lands).
Dokoupil did not challenge what Coates wrote. He did not ask Coates what he witnessed in the West Bank in 2023, ie, Israel’s gruesome, xenophobic, inhumane treatment of Palestinians. He did not ask why Coates called Israel an apartheid state, why it denies Palestinians water, or has ghettoised them, or why he’s calling for more Palestinian Americans in newsrooms including the Jerusalem bureau of the New York Times, but instead deflected to why Coates doesn’t want Israel to exist. Dokoupil didn’t want to ask these kind of questions because I assume he supports Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and it’s hard to come on TV and say that outright or ask ‘why are you humanising Palestinians’, which is essentially what Coates has done in his formidable book.
“The Palestine I saw bore so little likeness to the stories I read, and so much resemblance to the systems I’ve kno­wn,” writes Coates, as he unpacks the many ways Israeli narrative has dominated the media, especially in the US.
Coates has established his credentials: as a successful writer and journalist, a National Book Award recipient and a MacArthur Fellow. He can’t be “cancelled” for his indictment on Israel and his country’s policies towards the Zionist state, though attempts have been made to reduce him to an antisemitic terrorist sympathiser. This is not about tough questions, it is about erasure and an attempt is being made to discredit Coates as not the right man to take on this issue.
Unfortunately, and to prove Coates’ point, Palestinian voices don’t make it to the mainstream press. In fact, the Committee to Protect Journalists says that more journalists have been killed in the first year of Israel’s war on Gaza than in any recent conflict. There is nothing complicated about who is killing them and why.
Despite the attempts to silence Coates, he did not get derailed in this, or other, interviews. He has actually simplified the issue as he told CBS: “Either apartheid is right or it’s wrong. It really is that simple. Either what I saw was right or wrong.”
The writer is an instructor of journalism.
X: @LedeingLady
Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2024