“60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker surprised many with his hard-hitting interview with Harris, where he demonstrated the art of the follow-up question that pushed back on her memorized script.
"Pardon me, Madam Vice President, the question was how are you going to pay for it," he told the unprepared presidential nominee.
OH pastors stand with IsraelChad Groening, AFN.net Church pastors in Ohio are publicly vowing to stand with the Jewish homeland and its people. In a joint letter, 115 pastors signed their names to the document that will reach Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. It will be delivered by Eeki Elner, who leads the Israeli Leadership Institute and was a recent guest speaker in Ontario, Ohio. 
J.C. Church, lead pastor of Victory in Truth Ministries, is one of the Ohio pastors who signed the letter. “I believe very clearly that if we actually read the Bible, we're going to land on a pro-Israel position,” he tells AFN. “This replacement theology, sadly, is a threat that's moving through the body of Christ.” Church says he is concerned about the Nov. 5 election, and the “wrong people” winning the White House and turning their backs on Israel. |
Then, on September 30, CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil pressed liberal activist-author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his antisemitic book, The Message.
“What is it that so particularly offends you,” Dokoupil pressed, “about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?”
Dokoupil, who is Jewish, also challenged the author on the history and geography of the Middle East. “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” he asked.
Whitaker seems to have escaped punishment for his challenging interview, at least as far as the public knows, but Dokoupil’s challenging questions to Coates created a meltdown in the liberal newsroom.
Reacting to that uproar, top CBS News officials held a meeting Oct. 7 in which they threw Dokoupil under the bus over “editorial standards” and biased opinions.
An audio recording of that meeting was leaked to The Free Press. That online news website was started by Jewish writer Bari Weiss, the former New York Times editor who left the Times over that newsroom’s rabid anti-Zionism.
During the newsroom struggle session, only one colleague – reporter Jan Crawford – defended Dokoupil and challenged her colleagues. She said his questions prevented a “one-sided account” from being aired that is “devoid” of history and facts.
“It sounds like we are calling out one of our anchors in a somewhat public setting on this call for failing to meet editorial standards for, I’m not even sure what,” she said. “I thought our commitment was to truth.”
Reacting to Dokoupil-Coats interview, Nicholas Fondacaro of the Media Research Center says the media watchdog was impressed with Coates being challenged about his controversial views.
“It's one of those very few instances,” Fondacaro observes, “where somebody in the media will call out somebody so directly and in such clear and unwavering terms.”
Even though “60 Minutes” aired Whitaker’s tough interview, CBS also helped the Democrat appear much more articulate by airing two very different answers from her on the same question about Israel. A clip that aired Sunday on “Face the Nation” was mocked as a rambling “word salad” answer from Harris but a second clip, which viewers saw Monday in a primetime special, was much shorter and more focused.
That very same day, when CBS News was helping Harris with edited answers about Israel, Dokoupil was being criticized by his bosses for defending Israel's right to exist.
