Shari Redstone, the media mogul whose Paramount empire controls CBS News, criticized the network’s leadership on Wednesday for its decision to reprimand a star morning show anchor over his handling of an on-air interview with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.
“They made a mistake here,” Ms. Redstone said during an appearance in Midtown Manhattan, adding, “I think we all agree that this was not handled correctly.”
Her remarks have added to the turmoil that has swirled inside CBS News in recent days, especially after top executives rebuked the anchor, Tony Dokoupil, on a newsroom-wide call on Monday, saying his interview had fallen short of editorial standards.
Mr. Dokoupil had challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a tense but civil appearance last week on “CBS Mornings,” at one point saying that parts of Mr. Coates’s new book — which compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Jim Crow laws — “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”
Asked directly on Wednesday if she believed Mr. Dokoupil’s line of questioning had violated CBS’s standards, Ms. Redstone replied, “No.”
“Tony did a great job with that interview,” she said while participating in a panel at Advertising Week, a media industry conference. “I think he handled himself and showed the world a role model of what civil discourse is, that he showed that there was accountability, that there is a system of checks and balances, and frankly I was very proud of the work that he did.”
Ms. Redstone’s oversight of CBS News is most likely coming to an end soon; she is in the process of selling Paramount and its media assets to the production company Skydance, a deal that is expected to close next year.
But her remarks still amounted to an extraordinary internecine rebuke of the CBS News leaders Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roark, who were installed during her tenure. CBS News declined to comment on Wednesday on Ms. Redstone’s remarks.
Mr. Dokoupil’s interview with Mr. Coates had quickly proved divisive on social media. Some accused the anchor, who is Jewish, of asking biased and hostile questions. Others called it a fair scrutinizing of Mr. Coates’s views.
Late last week, a group of CBS News employees approached management with concerns about the interview, according to two people with knowledge of the events, who requested anonymity to share internal discussions. Members of the network’s standards team and its race and culture unit, which advises on “context, tone and intention” of programming, then met with Mr. Dokoupil on Friday to discuss his tenor and body language during his exchange with Mr. Coates.
On Monday, the CBS newsroom gathered for its traditional top-of-week conference call led by Ms. McMahon, the CBS News chief executive. The news division was coming off a pair of big moments: last week’s vice-presidential debate and that evening’s “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ms. McMahon did not mention those moments at the top of the call. Instead, she acknowledged the date — Oct. 7, the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack in Israel — and then introduced Ms. Roark, the head of editorial and news gathering, who said the network had reviewed Mr. Dokoupil’s interview and found that it had fallen short of network standards. CBS journalists, Ms. Roark said, need to leave “our biases and opinions at the door.”
One veteran CBS correspondent, Jan Crawford, spoke up to question that conclusion. “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,” she said. “To me, that is what Tony did.”
The “CBS Mornings” staff held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the matter. The conversation became emotionally charged; several employees were tearful, and Mr. Dokoupil expressed regret that the interview had led to so much uproar, though he did not apologize for the content of the interview, according a person present who requested anonymity to describe sensitive internal conversations.
CBS executives eventually cut the meeting short, after becoming concerned that some participants were leaking details about the gathering and compromising the ability to have a frank discussion, the person said.
Mr. Coates did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. In a trailer for an interview with the former “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah, Mr. Coates said that Gayle King, who co-hosts “CBS Mornings” with Nate Burleson and Mr. Dokoupil, had approached him on set before the interview with a marked-up copy of his book and signaled that she planned to ask him several questions on-air. Ms. King ultimately did not ask a question because Mr. Dokoupil took up the bulk of the allotted time.
“I don’t think he did Nate and Gayle a service,” Mr. Coates said of Mr. Dokoupil. “I’m really, really sorry for them. More than anything, I can take care of myself.”
Ms. Redstone, at her appearance on Wednesday, drew a connection between a decline in civility and a recent rise in antisemitic episodes.
“We need to have better education about how to challenge people in a civil way,” Ms. Redstone said, “which frankly I think Tony did.”
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