Inside the Turmoil at CBS News After a Tense Ta-Nehisi Coates Interview
The New York Times smartly analyzes the media firestorm over Tony Dokoupil’s largely civil, but barbed, interview last week with author Ta-Nehisi Coates and what some perceived as the “CBS Mornings” anchor’s biased criticism of Coates’ treatment of the Israel-Palestine conflict in his latest book.
Executives reproached Dokoupil after an all-hands videoconference that brought several participants to tears. Then, in a highly unusual move, Shari Redstone, the mogul whose Paramount empire controls CBS, rebuked those top executives, saying “They made a mistake here…I think we all agree that this was not handled correctly.”
The incident underscored that the War in Gaza continues to provoke emotionally charged contratempts in US newsrooms. It raised the evergreen question of how strong the firewall between a media platform’s editorial and business divisions should be. And it should prompt some soul-searching within morning shows, where millions of Americans get their news, over if and when they should drop the smiley facade and ask tough questions of their guests.
Yashika Olden quietly left her role as Condé Nast’s head of diversity in June. Her departure went largely unnoticed outside Condé HQ, which is surprising since she was the highest ranking minority employee at the storied magazine publisher and that the creation of the role in September 2020 made headlines following months of strife around race at the company. The move followed another instance of Israel-Gaza-sown discord, which in Condé’s case began on October 8, 2023.
Semafor’s Max Tani reviews and contextualizes the complicated story. “To some readers, it may seem somewhat silly for media consumers to care about the prose with which fashion publications write about a messy and horrifying geopolitical conflict,” he writes. “But with young people driving much of the opposition to the war, it matters how media aimed at younger audiences covers the war. And a year on, the war’s impact on public life has permeated the American news cycle so much that even attempts to avoid controversy have pointlessly backfired.”
Barry Diller: Hollywood’s hold over entertainment ‘is no more’
The FT profiles Barry Diller, who “during more than 50 years in the media and entertainment industry…[rose] from the mailroom of the William Morris talent agency to Hollywood’s top table.” The former Paramount chief and man who launched Fox as America’s fourth broadcast network doesn’t hold back in his assessment of the death of Hollywood as we knew it for decades.
Hollywood’s hold over worldwide entertainment has “gone,” he says. “It is no more. Netflix, Amazon and Apple are really the controllers of the worldwide film and television business.”
He’s not sanguine about the foundational shift:
“I will believe forever that creatively the best organization for making content—movies, television, whatever—is a linear and narrow one. Meaning that it is not part of a giant conglomerate. It does not have any other activity [going on] other than deciding: what is the idea, what is going to be made.”
