Journalist Punished For Asking Serious Questions ofTa-Nehisi Coates

Last week, CBS journalist Tony Dokoupil conducted an interview with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates whose new book, The Message, includes a one-sided polemic against Israel. Coates himself describes his book as an effort to debunk the complexities journalists invoke to obscure Israel’s occupation. He complained in an interview with New York magazine that the argument that the conflict was “complicated” was “horseshit,” that was how defenders of slavery and segregation described these plagues a century ago. “It’s complicated,” he said, “when you want to take something from somebody.”

So Dokoupil asked him about it.

“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? 

“Why not detail anything of the first and second intifada. . . the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?”

In other words, Tony Dokoupil did his job. 

That’s when his troubles began.