More media bias like the CBS Sugar-Coates interview

In her 2021 book “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy,” journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon argued that arrogance and addiction to political fads have destroyed Americans’ faith in the media. communication There’s reason to think he’s right. Former National Public Radio editor Uri Berliner described NPR’s “tacit consensus about the stories we should follow and how they should be framed” in an essay revealing that NPR’s newsroom was made up only of Democrats . Berliner was quickly disciplined by his First Amendment-devout bosses for writing the essay. Former New York Times reporters Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowles and Adam Rubinstein have each described Times editors who demanded a Hafez Assad-like reverence for certain political truths on the left and did not tolerate much deviation.

A 2022 Knight Ridder/Gallup poll found that only 26% of Americans view the media favorably; 53% see it unfavorably. A Gallup poll conducted last year found that 29 percent of Americans trusted the media “not much.” Another 39% do not trust it at all.

Recently, CBS, the network of journalistic icons Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, has made fun of itself, dragging its profession down with it, reprimanding one of its reporters for having the courage to calmly, civilly, ask for a couple of gentle questions about the new book he was promoting as part of his national publicity tour. The culprit was “CBS This Morning” co-host Tony Dokoupil, and the poor victim was award-winning author and literary rock star Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates has won praise for writing about racism in the United States and has been unrepentant about his rage against that country, a rage that, passionate and vivid, has sometimes been expressed in controversial ways. The September 11, 2001, al-Qaida attack, which killed some 3,000 innocent people of all races, origins and socioeconomic classes, left him torn between agnosticism and satisfaction. “Everyone knew someone who was missing,” he wrote of the demolished Twin Towers. “But looking at the ruins of America, my heart was cold. In the days that followed I saw the ridiculous display of flags, the masculinity of the firemen, the exaggerated slogans. Damn it all. They were not human to me.”

It seems that the innocents killed on 9/11 were not the only non-humans for Coates, because the 1,200 innocents slaughtered by Hamas on 7 October are among those Coates failed to put the proverbial figure on. This is undoubtedly the message of Coates’ new book, “The Message”, in which he devotes a special section to the well-known refrain “Israel-as-white-supremacist-colonialist-imperialist-expansionist-genocide-Satans”. recited by the far left with robotic insensitivity.

But it’s Coates’ shit, and he’s entitled to it. Apparently, though, he shouldn’t be required to answer questions about it from interviewers. Or so Coates and his supporters believe, and they prevailed upon CBS to discipline Dokoupil, forcing him to express his “regret” for politely and respectfully asking Coates about his views. “When I read the book, I imagine that if I took your name off it and took away the awards and acclaim,” Dokoupil began cautiously, “the contents of this section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. I found myself asking, why does Ta-Nehisi leave so much aside that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? It is because you simply do not believe that Israel has the right to exist?

Fair, even obvious questions. But Coates found it outrageous that they could be asked, an insult to his stature. CBS News President Wendy McMahon then announced that Dokoupil had violated CBS “standards.”

What standards? Asking authors who sell books to explain why they wrote what they wrote? Just asking news people what they’d rather be asked?

Obviously, if a guest is popular enough with The Right Set, they can’t ask real questions. This kind of “journalism” really undermines democracy. Murrow and Cronkite must be turning in their graves.

Jeff Robbins’ latest book, “Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad,” is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Google Play. Robbins is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.