CBS journalists told not to refer to Jerusalem as part of Israel

CBS memo: ‘Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

CBS is instructing its journalist not to refer to Jerusalem as a part of Israel, the Free Press reports.

In an internal memo circulated in August,  Mark Memmott, CBS News’s senior director of standards and practices, emailed colleagues urging them to “be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news” regarding Israel and Gaza.

One of the many hot-button terms was “Jerusalem.”

“Do not refer to it as being in Israel,” Memmott wrote.

“Yes, the U.S. embassy is there, and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed,” Memmott continued.

“The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal and undivided’ capital. At the same time, the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem—occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war—as the capital of a future state,” he added.

The memo disregards the fact that US Congress recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 1995, long before Donald Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In addition, the Palestinians claim only the eastern section of Jerusalem, not the entire city.

Nevertheless, Memmott insisted that journalists not only refrain from referring to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but deny that any area of the city is part of Israel.

Memmott’s memo was ridiculed and criticized by other journalists.

Free Press contributing editor Adam Rubenstein posted, “Standards desks are now *instructing* journalists to deny reality.”

Fox News contributor Guy Benson wrote, “Jerusalem is not only in Israel, it is the capital of Israel. What on earth is happening at CBS?”

Washington Examiner senior writer David Harsanyi wrote, “Then we can stop referring to CBS employees as journalists.”

The controversy over Jerusalem at CBS comes as Jewish journalist Tony Dokoupil was scrutinized for his handling of an interview with an anti-Israel writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Dokoupil asked Coates if his book, which contains a multitude of anti-Israel tropes, “Would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” to which Coates responded by saying the plight of the Palestinians is similar to that of African Americans in the segregated south or blacks under South Africa’s apartheid policy.

Following the interview, CBS News made Dokoupil meet with the network’s Race and Culture Unit after complaints about his tone and body language.

Although several journalists at CBS defended Dokoupil, he apologized at a staff meeting.

One CBS employee commented, “There is a huge difference between how all ethnic or minority groups are treated and how Jews and Jewish issues are treated.”