Journalists with CBS News were told to “be careful” when discussing Israel, according to a report from The Free Press.
Although Congress recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 1995, and former President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy to the city in 2018, CBS News refused to recognize the city as “being in Israel.”
Senior director of standards and practices at CBS News Mark Memmott sent an email to CBS News employees, telling them to “be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news,” including the word “Jerusalem.”
“Do not refer to it as being in Israel,” Memmott wrote.
He said that the city’s status is “disputed.”
“The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he told employees. “Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal and undivided’ capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem—occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war—as the capital of a future state.”
The Free Press also reported that CBS held a meeting about whether it is “fair to talk about whether Israel should exist at all.”
A CBS source told the outlet that there are some at the network who think “Israel’s existence as a state should be part of fair conversation.”
The meeting followed CBS journalist Tony Dokoupil interviewing writer Ta-Nehisi Coates about his one-sided book on Israel.
“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” Dokoupil asked. “Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?”
According to CBS, the interview did meet the company’s “editorial standards.”
