The Zionist Organization of America condemned CBS News for instructing its reporters not to refer to Jerusalem in a truthful manner.
"The Zionist Organization of America is appalled and condemns CBS News Senior Director of Standards and Practices Mark Memmott who instructed CBS News journalists not to refer to Jerusalem as being in Israel or as Israel's capital," ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said in a statement released Monday. "This means that CBS News will no longer report reality or what's true.
"CBS News is ignoring that the U.S. Congress recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 1995, when Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, by an overwhelmingly vote of 93-5 in the U.S. Senate and 347-37 in the U.S. House."
The ZOA urged Jewish, Christian, and other groups "and people of goodwill" to join it in "demanding that CBS News and Memmott publicly recognize that Jerusalem is not holy to Muslims and was never important to Muslims except to deny Jerusalem to the Jewish people and that Jerusalem is Israel's holy, eternal undivided capital, and to report this as a fact."
CBS News last week came under fire for editing an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in a favorable way for the Democrat nominee. Former employees have called for an independent investigation into the "60 Minutes" interview.
A week earlier, morning anchor Tony Dokoupil was rebuked by the network for falling short of the network's editorial standards during an interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Dokoupil had challenged Coates' anti-Israel views concerning the war against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, The New York Times reported.
The Free Press reported Wednesday that Memmott sent a late-August email to all CBS News employees reminding them to "be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news" from Israel and Gaza.
Regarding Jerusalem, Memmott wrote: "Do not refer to it as being in Israel," according to the outlet.
"Yes, the U.S. Embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel's capital," Memmott continued, The Free Press reported. "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."
Klein, after citing specifics of the Jerusalem Embassy Act that supported the city's status and meaning, continued to blast Memmott for his directive.
"Memmott's excuse for denying reality is absurd: Memmott told CBS News' journalists that Jerusalem's status is 'disputed' because Palestinian Arabs want eastern Jerusalem for the capital of a non-existent future Palestinian Arab state," Klein said in the ZOA statement.
"The Palestinian Arabs and Iran and its other proxies also 'dispute' Israel's entire existence and want to destroy Israel. Is CBS News going to stop calling Israel a nation because Palestinian Arabs and Iran have evil designs on all of Israel? And what about Iran's calls for ‘Death to America'? Is CBS News going to stop calling the United States a country?"