CBS reportedly told staff be careful when writing Jerusalem is Israel's capital city, 'disputed'

CBS News reportedly ordered its staff this past summer not to say Israel is the capital city of Jerusalem, according to a news report Thursday.

The Free Press report that Mark Memmott, the TV network's senior director of standards and practices, emailed all employees in late August telling them to "be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news" regarding the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. 

Included on his list of controversial terms was "Jerusalem, Memmott wrote, according to The Free Press. 

"The U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed," wrote Memmott, according to Fox News, which reviewed the story that is behind a paywall. "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."

The guidance was panned by critics on social media, Fox also reports.