CBS was once called the Tiffany network, and its news division, spearheaded by what was regularly the most-watched program on television, 60 MINUTES, was a huge reason in the minds of its viewers and sponsors why that was the case. No, you may not be old enough to remember such halycon days, but I’ve seen their current demographic profile, and I can assure you a majority of even today’s audience does.
Which is why the events that have unfolded over the past few days involving CBS NEWS employees and those that are charged with running it have been so newsworthy and, yes, disturbing to so many. I was once a coveted 18-34 year old who regularly refused to switch from a strong NFL football lead-in to watch that ticking clock and the intense questioning that the likes of Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner inflicted on their subjects and I was a dedicated viewer of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather every weeknight to see similarly in-depth and informative reporting.
Obviously, today’s iteration of that generation can barely find CBS, and one needs to look no further than the media strategies of both Presidential candidates as Exhibits A and B. Even in a week where 60 MINUTES tried to keep its decades-old tradition of interviewing both Presidential candidates in a special prime time episode and only one took them up on their offer, the one that did was also womansplaining her policies with the yin and yang of audio media, Alex Cooper and Howard Stern. And even the other one, certainly old enough to remember those Tiffany days (heck, he was even inspired to allow one of his offspring to have that name), has people smart enough working with him to devote a few of his many “interviews” with bro code champions like Adin Ross, Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh. Trust me, they’re not watching CBS NEWS.
And I have to wonder, were they not being employed by them, if any of the folks who have been contributing to this week’s news cycle would be, either.
Take the sich involving Tony Dokoupil, who perhaps most closely resembles the kind of reporter I would regularly watch on CBS NEWS when I was a demographic outlier. His resume is strong: he has been a correspondent for CBS NEWS and MSNBC before his current role as the more journalistically-grounded member of CBS MORNINGS’ crew–certainly, in comparison to Oprah Lite, Gayle King and Michael Strahan 2.0, Nate Burleson. So the task of conducting an interview with a challenging subject peddling a book fell almost by default to him, as USA TODAY’s Jay Stahl recounted yesterday:
A contentious interview between “CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil and Ta-Nehisi Coates is raising questions about the state of journalism in America.
The Sept. 30 interview between Dokoupil, a rising star at CBS, and Coates stemmed from the Oct. 1 release of Coates’ new pro-Palestine book “The Message,” which his website describes as a dissection of how “we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground. On “CBS Mornings,” Coates said “The Message,” which is split into three parts including a controversial section about the author’s travels to Palestine, is for “writers and particularly young writers” because our history and “who we believe is human” or “who we don’t believe is human” is “largely shaped by the stories we tell.” But during their on-air talk, Dokoupil, who is Jewish, had a different interpretation. The pair’s conversation – and CBS News’ handling of the interview – sparked controversy.
The controversy started last Monday when Dokoupil told the National Book Award winner that if you took his “name out of it, took away the awards and acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away,” that the content of the book’s third section discussing the author’s trip to Palestine “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”
He continued, “I found myself wondering, why does Ta-Nehisi Coates … leave out so much? Why leave out that Israel surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” and went through a list of events in regard to the Israel-Hamas war.
He asked Coates, “is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?” Coates responded: “There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” before telling Dokoupil that he is “most concerned with those that don’t have a voice, with those that don’t have the ability to talk.”
There is nothing in Dokoupil’s line of questioning that someone like Wallace or Reasoner, or even Cronkite or Rather wouldn’t have pursued at a time when Don Hewitt and Richard Salant were running the show. But these days those duties fall to Wendy McMahon, a veteran of local station promotions and management, and Adrienne Roark, who rose through the ranks via local news. Local news is far more personality and fluff-driven than national news by definition. And those that produce it are far more likely to champion someone like Dokoupil for his most recently added role as the male half of a third weekday hour of MORNINGS that recently debuted on a handful of McMahon’s owned-and-operated stations and the sparsely viewed CBS NEWS 24/7 than for his ability to objectively interrogate someone like Coates.
And apparently enough of them had the ears of empathetic bosses like McMahon and Roark for them to devote an awful lot of time this past week to mollifying their “concerns”, as Stahl continued:
According to a report published Monday by pro-Israel publication The Free Press, which was founded by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, CBS News addressed the incident during an incident that morning. The Free Press account included leaked audio recordings that included CBS executives suggesting the incident did not meet “editorial standards” after a “review of our coverage.”
The recordings show that after an introduction by CBS News president and CEO Wendy McMahon, the network’s newsgathering leader Adrienne Roark said the Coates story “requires empathy, respect, and a commitment to truth.”
“We will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. That’s apart of our job, too. But we will do so objectively and that means, very plainly, we have to check our biases and opinions at the door,” Roark said after reading from the CBS employee handbook. “And that applies to every single one of us. We are not here to represent any viewpoint; we are here to tell stories.
“We are here to report news without fear or favor,” Roark continued, before telling employees that there “are times we fail our audiences and each other. We’re in one of those times right now, and it’s been growing. And now, we are at a tipping point.”
She added that “many of you have reached out to express concerns about recent reporting, specifically about the ‘CBS Mornings’ Coates interview from last week as well as comments made coming out of some of our correspondents’ reporting.” Roark thanked employees for their “honesty” and told CBS staffers the incident had been “addressed.”
The NEW YORK TIMES’ Benjamin Mullin and Michael M. Grynbaum added further context:
As far back as May, a group of CBS staff members raised concerns about Mr. Dokoupil’s coverage on a call with the network’s president at the time, Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews, according to two people familiar with the call. On Friday, Mr. Dokoupil met with members of the network’s standards team and its race and culture unit, which advises on “context, tone and intention” of programming. The discussion focused on the anchor’s tenor and body language during his exchange with Mr. Coates.
In a teaser clip released online, which also aired on “Face the Nation” on Oct. 6, Harris provided a lengthy response to “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker’s question about whether the U.S. lacks influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the final interview that aired Oct. 7, Harris’ answer was edited differently.
The two clips have circulated on social media side-by-side as the network faces calls to release the full interview transcript. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday that CBS “must be investigated,” accusing the network of making Harris appear “more Presidential” in the edit.
The Trump campaign is seizing upon this in a similar manner to how they are apparently reacting–read that, overreacting–to everything in the waning days of their increasingly desperate campaign. The NEW YORK POST’s Alexandra Steigrad dropped a lengthy and detailed story yesterday that appears to hit all the notes that that group would hope a Rupert Murdoch publication to hit, even including some recommended “remedies”
The Harris campaign’s response? Per Shanfeld:
In a statement addressing the controversy surrounding the edited response, an aide for the Harris campaign told Variety, “We do not control CBS’s production decisions and refer questions to CBS.” CBS did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
Of course not. They’re too busy responding to each other’s claims, as DEADLINE’s Ted Johnson and Dade Hayes reported yesterday:
In a stark departure from its own corporate precedent and the usual circle-the-wagons approach of news divisions in crisis, top execs at CBS News parent Paramount Global have publicly disagreed this week
Paramount Chair Shari Redstone, appearing Wednesday at Advertising Week in New York, called it a “mistake” for CBS News to publicly rebuke Dokoupil. She described the interview as a “model” of “civil discourse.”
George Cheeks, who oversees CBS as one of Paramount’s three Co-CEOs, issued a statement later Wednesday defending McMahon and CBS News leadership. He vowed to encourage “further substantive dialogue about perceptions of inconsistent treatment, implicit bias and the important standards our News division has in place to establish guardrails for fairness and objectivity.”
Cheeks may have wanted to run his statement past some of those who work at 60 MINUTES. The word salad attached to him is arguably in far worse shape than anything that came out of Harris’ mouth.
Anyone looking for accountability may ultimately be disappointed, at least until Skydance’s management team officially takes over early next year. Maybe sooner, if Harris isn’t elected–though even Trump has a deep list of other grievances that might take priority.
No one in the executive suite going anywhere. Dokoupil’s too important to McMahon’s signature project to expand profitability and theoretical appeal of the morning cash cow. McMahon, Roark and ,for that matter , Cheeks are way too visible examples of how CBS has addressed their toxic history of misoygnist executives–despite the reality check that most of them were extremely good at their jobs and produced results their successors can only dream of. These days, The Eye takes a back seat to DEI.
But after a week like this, where those that actually are still watching and indeed remember far better times are reading stuff like this, I honestly wonder how many of them may, like me, be fed up enough with what has become of the Tiffany network’s standards to look elsewhere? Heck, I even checked out Call Her Daddy, and these days I’m as much of an outlier to that audience as I once was to 60 MINUTES’.
And Lord knows I can’t afford to even window shop at Tiffany’s.
Until next time…
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