CBS network senior director of standards and practices, Mark Memmott, published a directive telling employees not to say that Jerusalem is in Israel.
Memmott wrote, “Yes, the US embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed. The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 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.”
National Unity Party Chairman MK Benny Gantz condemned the directive: “Jerusalem’s status is clear and undisputed – the eternal capital of the Jewish people. It has been so for millennia, and will always remain so. No attempt to distort or hide that reality will change it.”
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion commented: "It is unfortunate to learn that important bodies are trying to make the fact that Jerusalem is an Israeli city controversial. Jerusalem was never controversial and never will be. Jerusalem is and always will be Israel's eternal capital.
CBS has been embroiled in another controversy related to Israel in recent weeks after host Tony Dokoupil's interview of author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Coates' book "The Message."
Dokoupil was criticized by CBS management for pushing back at Coates' extreme views on Israel and the fact that Coates never mentioned Hamas or other terrorist organizations in the section of his book that dealt with Israel. However, Shari Redstone, the outgoing head of Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, defended Dokoupil. Defenders of Dokoupil say that he is being criticized merely for doing his job as a journalist by asking difficult questions of a guest pushing extreme views.