‘CBS Mornings’ Star Gayle King Hit With Bold Allegations After Tense Interview

Gayle King‘s journalistic integrity is being called into question.

Following Tony Dokoupil‘s tense interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates during a CBS Morningsbroadcast last week, King faces accusations of journalistic malfeasance for potentially violating the network’s journalistic standards.

Coates, who appeared on the morning news program last week to discuss his book The Message, claimed in a new interview for Trevor Noah‘s What Now? podcast that King, 69, told him backstage before the interview what she planned to ask him.

“Gayle came behind the stage before we went [on] and she had gone through the book, and I’m not saying she agreed with the book,” he explained.

However, Coates recalled, “[King] was like, ‘I’m gonna ask you about this. I’m gonna ask you about that.'”

“If she was showing him specific lines of questioning in advance, that would violate journalistic standards,” a former CBS journalist told The Free Press. 

But Coates did, however, make a point to call King a “great journalist and a great interview,” while accusing Dokoupil of “commandeering” the interview.

During the interview, which King and Nate Burleson also sat in on, Dokoupil, who is Jewish, drew criticism for grilling Coates on the section of his book that criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

As The Associated Press reported, CBS News later publicly addressed the situation, telling employees that Dokoupil’s questioning was not in line with the network’s “editorial standards.”

But Paramount Chair Shari Redstone later described it as a “mistake” for CBS News to reprimand Dokoupil for the interview, calling the contentious conversation an example of “civil discourse,” per CNN.