Briefly Oct. 8/2024

A few short stories of interest

Management admonishes CBS news anchor for asking anti-Israel author tough questions

CBS News has forced an apology from one of its morning show hosts following an interview last week with Ta-nehisi Coates, author of The Message, an anti-Israel diatribe he wrote following a 10-day visit to the West Bank.

CBS Morning host Tony Dokoupil sharply questioned Coates’ stated effort to “debunk the complexities” journalists supposedly invoke to “obscure Israel’s occupation.” In a previous interview with New York magazine, Coates had slammed other journalists for elevating “factual complexity” above  “self-evident morality.”

Apparently this morality wasn’t self-evident to Dokoupil, who asked him why he omitted to mention that Israel is surrounded by countries and terrorist groups that want to eliminate it.

Although asking tough questions and challenging controversial opinions is what good journalists are supposed to do, Dokoupil was called into a newsroom-wide phone meeting and raked over the coals by top CBS executives, who said the interview didn’t live up to the network’s “editorial standards.” But the executives also admitted the meeting was called due to “internal staff concerns,” which sounds like code for “the Gen Z’s weren’t happy that a pro-Palestinian black man was questioned too closely.”

CBS News’ in-house Race and Culture Unit also attended the meeting. This unit, which was created following the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, advises CBS on the “context, tone and intention” of news programming.

At the meeting the president of editorial and news gathering at CBS, Adrienne Roark, stated that CBS  journalists had to be “objective” when asking tough questions, and leave their “biases and opinions behind.”

Dokoupil converted to Judaism and has a Jewish wife and children.

During the call, Jan Crawford, CBS News’ chief legal correspondent, said she didn’t understand what Dokoupil had done wrong. “When someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, 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. To me, that is what Tony did.”

Ground control to Major Tom: Forget the protein pills and get your white ass back to planet earth

Sending people into space is imperialist, according to a Virginia Tech academic. “Outer space anthropologist” Savannah Mandel, a doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech University,  says that sending humans into space “mirrors an imperialist mindset” that harms  Earth’s humanity and environment.”

The space industry, she says, is “highly bureaucratic, highly politicized, and highly technical” (I am shocked to learn that the Space industry is highly technical).

Mandel is calling for the “inclusion of more social scientists” at NASA, which no doubt will fix things.

Mandel isn’t the first academic to criticize space exploration on social justice grounds. In January 2023, an astrophysicist at Colorado College claimed her field was too focused on “individualism,” “exceptionalism” and “perfectionism.”

“As an astrophysicist, I’m a product of institutions that are steeped in systemic racism and white supremacy,” Professor Natalie Gosnell said, also noting that the descriptions of phenomena scientists use are “very violent and hypermasculine,” such as using “cannibal star” to describe when one star transfers its mass to another star. 

A year earlier, a Canadian physics professor called for an acknowledgment that ‘we live under indigenous skies,” and that indigenous people knew the stars were “flickering” long before Europeans.

AI UK marks Oct. 7 by marching against Israel.

Amnesty International’s branch in the United Kingdom marked the Oct. 7 anniversary by attending a protest march against Israel that included calls for an immediate “ceasefire” (i.e. code for allowing Hamas and Hezbollah to regroup and rearm), an end to “discrimination, displacement and devastation,” and an end to supposed Israeli “apartheid” (which another anti-Israel “human rights group,” Human Rights Watch, redefined so that Israel could be accused of it).

But the march didn’t include any calls for peace, or for recognition of Jewish sovereignty over any part of the land, and made no mention at all of the atrocities committed against Israelis on Oct. 7 that precipitated the Gaza war or Hezbollah’s unprovoked attack the next day.

According to noted historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, “the transformation of Amnesty and a handful of other soi-disant “human rights” charities into antisemitic, anti-Western activist campaigning fronts captured by illiberal ideologues is complete. If this is their stand now, they are completely discredited.”

No if about it, Mr. Montefiore, it’s been their position for decades.

Spiked-online marks Oct. 7 with several excellent articles

Spiked-online is a British online magazine whose writers include views on Israel and wokeness that differ from the British and North American mainstream media. To mark a year since the events of that day, Spiked featured articles about what has happened since from many of its writers, all of which are well worth reading.

Foremost among these writers is Brendan O’Neill, whose many articles supporting Israel put him right up there with Douglas Murray as one of Israel’s most powerful non-Jewish supporters. To access all of his articles, many of which are about Oct. 7 and the dismal treatment of Israel and Jews in the West since that horrible day, just click on his name. Strongly recommended.

I encourage anyone reading this to visit the Spiked web site, at Spiked-online.com. All the articles are free, although becoming a member (60 British pounds) provides extras and perks.

Do visit. You won’t be sorry.

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