Detroit journalist accuses CBS of firing him over his Arab heritage

Award-winning journalist Ibrahim Samra said he was fired Feb. 28 by CBS News TV following his coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict and owing to his Muslim and Palestinian Arab heritage.

Samra, 27, filed the lawsuit Wednesday, March 20, accusing CBS TV editors in Detroit of treating him “differently” following the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war and subjecting him to “offensive and inflammatory accusations,” including calling his coverage “one-sided.”

Samra charged he was also interrogated “about his views of US-designated terrorist organizations,” prevented from carrying out his reporting job and removed from his beat as punishment, before being fired on Feb. 28, 2024.

“When Mr. Samra complained that he felt singled out and unable to do his job, Defendants (CBS News TV Detroit) fired him,” the lawsuit alleges.

“All Mr. Samra ever wanted to do was his job: to cover the stories that mattered to his community. Defendants suppressed Mr. Samra’s voice, and the voices uplifted by his reporting, because of his race, national origin, religion, and because he dared to raise concerns about differential treatment of Palestinian-Americans in media.”

Samra worked for Detroit TV station WKBD Inc., based in Southfield, Michigan. WKBD is owned by CBS Broadcasting Inc. and its parent company Paramount Pictures Corp.

Originally from Chicago, Samra began working in 2018 as a multimedia journalist at WNDU-TV in South Bend, Indiana, where he was nominated for his first Emmy in 2021. In the fall of 2022, CBS/Paramount News recruited him for the CBS TV bureau where he was assigned to cover news in the Metro Detroit area including Dearborn, which is home to one of the nation’s largest Arab-American populations.

His troubles began while he was on leave visiting his family in Chicago to care for his mother who was ill around Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas attack provoked an Israeli military siege of Gaza.

According to the lawsuit, Paul Pytlowany, a CBS supervisor, called him, asking if he “could provide insight into how Palestinian-American families were being affected by the war.”

As he was in the Chicago suburbs, which has one of the largest concentrations of Palestinian-Americans, Samra offered to end his leave early and help. In the lawsuit, however, Samra says his editors “switched gears and encouraged other reporters to cover stories about Israeli families and perspectives.”

Remaining in Chicago, Samra felt he needed to provide balance to his station’s coverage. He attended a protest in the city on Oct. 21, where over 25,000 activists had gathered to protest the war.

Samra posted a video of the event to his Instagram account. He returned to work on Oct. 23 and expressed his concerns that coverage of the conflict was imbalanced, following which he was subjected to intense interrogation by Pytlowany and an employee of CBS’ human resources department. Over the next week, his supervisors grilled him about his views on the conflict, his lawsuit states.

Instead of addressing his concerns, “they bombarded him with a series of accusatory and offensive questions about the ‘intention’ behind the video Mr. Samra had posted to his personal Instagram account several days prior,” according to the lawsuit obtained by Arab News.

Bewildered at “the sudden hostility,” Samra said he was “simply documenting what was happening in the community where he had been located at the time, and that he had not reported, analyzed, or offered any opinion about the demonstration or the underlying political conflict.”

Samra charges that Pytlowany asked him “a series of inflammatory and offensive questions, including ‘How do you view Hamas?’,” suggesting Samra “had a positive view of a group designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, for no other reason than because of Mr. Samra’s racial, ethnic, and religious background.”

Pytlowany, according to the lawsuit, “questioned Mr. Samra regarding every post he had shared on his personal social media accounts regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all of which were simply re-posts of reliable news and media reporting on events occurring in the region.”

In an email he sent to his supervisors on Dec. 5, 2023, Samra wrote: “As a Palestinian-American employee, I believe it is crucial to address the issues I’ve faced during this period. I have felt singled out by CBS Detroit’s management and limited in my ability to express my perspective on this topic. While I understand the sensitive nature of the topic, I believe that a diverse range of viewpoints should be encouraged to ensure fair and balanced reporting … I believe I received unfair treatment and have been mistreated during this time. It is essential that all employees, regardless of their background or ethnicity, are treated with respect and given equal opportunities to voice their opinions and concerns … I would like to be able to do my job without interference or bias and to be treated fairly in the same manner as other employees.”

In response, Jennifer Gordon, then vice president of employee relations for Paramount Pictures Corp., opened an investigation into Samra’s complaints, according to the lawsuit. But less than two weeks later, Gordon was “no longer at Paramount Global.”

In his lawsuit, filed by attorney Amanda Ghannam, a principal at Michigan Worker Law LLC in Detroit, Samra alleges Gordon was dismissed because she had expressed sympathies with his concerns.

Gordon had sent Samra an email, in which she diplomatically wrote: “Based on the information available, we were able to confirm that some of the concerns (Samra) raised constituted missed opportunities as to news coverage by the station … We have confirmed that management intends to be more transparent and flexible in scheduling and assigning stories, as well as providing clarity as to why pitches are or are not approved.”

On Feb. 27, Samra covered, with the approval of an editor, the protest led by the #AbandonBiden campaign, which was organized first in Minnesota and then expanded into Michigan and other states to encourage Arabs to reject President Joe Biden’s re-election bid.

Samra was then replaced by three other reporters and told that he had “violated CBS News policies” with his social media posts.

Several hours after expressing his disappointment in a second email to his supervisors, Samra’s employment was terminated.

Attempts by Arab News on Saturday to reach CBS officials, Samra, and his attorney Ghannam went unanswered.