The Tony Dokoupil era begins at ‘CBS Evening News’
Tony Dokoupil took his place at the anchor desk of the “CBS Evening News” on Monday as the troubled news division undergoes reinvention under its new editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
Dokoupil was supposed to start his run with a trip to 10 cities across the U.S., to connect with viewers outside of the media centers of New York and Washington. CBS News leased a private 14-seat jet for the tour, but the plan was delayed once the U.S. military action in Venezuela became a major story early Saturday morning.
Instead, Dokoupil took the chair Saturday night and broadcast live from San Francisco before returning to New York for his official premiere on Monday. The tour is still on and will commence Tuesday from Miami.
Dokoupil’s new role will be the first major test for Weiss, who came to the division with no previous experience in television or with running a massive journalism operation. Choosing on-air talent who help drive ratings for the network is considered the most critical task for a TV news executive.
Dokoupil, 45, follows the duo of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who co-anchored “CBS Evening News” for a year. The program tried to bring more in-depth pieces to the typically fast-paced network evening news format. But it lost viewers and put CBS further behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Tom Llamas.”
Dokoupil’s first official broadcast returned to a style that resembled previous iterations of “CBS Evening News,” with a tight shot of the anchor sitting at a desk in a newsroom.
Over the past year, Dickerson and DuBois were seated at a long desk and often interacted with correspondents shown on a large screen. The program no longer includes an in-studio meteorologist to present national weather.
Dokoupil’s arrival marks the fifth anchor change at the “CBS Evening News” since 2017. NBC has made one change since then, while Muir has been in his role at ABC since 2014.
CBS News promoted Dokoupil’s launch with a whimsical social media video that showed the journalist presenting a piece of paper with his name written on it to commuters at Grand Central Terminal in New York. Asked to pronounce “Dokoupil,” few of the commuters came close even though he had been co-host of “CBS Mornings” for several years.
The promo seemed like an odd choice given how the network evening news anchor has traditionally been a position requiring gravitas and comforting familiarity for its habit-driven audience.
Dokoupil also issued a video message last Thursday suggesting organizations such as CBS News are no longer reliable sources of information for much of the public.
“A lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair,” he said. “But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us like they used to. And it’s not just us. It’s all of legacy media.”
“The point is, on too many stories the press has missed the story,” he added. “Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you.”
The anchor went further on his Instagram account, where he cited Walter Cronkite, who sat at the desk during the division’s glory years of the 1960s and ‘70s. “I can promise we’ll be more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or anyone else of his era,” he said.
Dokoupil’s claim prompted a response from Michael Socolow, a journalism professor at the University of Maine and the son of Sandy Socolow, who produced Cronkite’s broadcast.
Socolow noted how Cronkite believed the public should be skeptical of what it saw on TV news and take in other sources and points of view.
In an interview with The Times, Socolow said Cronkite was never comfortable with his designation as “the most trusted man in America.” CBS News touted that point, which was based on a single public opinion poll.
“Cronkite thought it wouldn’t be in the public interest to be too trustful of any specific media source,” Socolow said. “And he made that clear in public speeches and TV interviews for decades.”
Socolow posted a clip of a 1972 interview with Cronkite as an example.
“I don’t think they ought to believe me, or they ought to believe Brinkley, or they ought to believe anybody who’s on the air, or they ought to get all their news from one television station,” Cronkite said.
The latest change at “CBS Evening News” also follows one of the most tumultuous periods in the long history of CBS News. The organization was shaken by the Dec. 20 decision by Weiss to pull a “60 Minutes” piece on the harsh El Salvador mega-prison the U.S. government is using to hold undocumented migrants.
Weiss believed the story needed more reporting, including an on-camera response from Trump White House officials. The White House, Department of Homeland Security and the State Department had all declined comment to “60 Minutes.”
But the decision to yank the announced segment the day before it was scheduled to air led “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi to claim in an email to colleagues that the decision was political. Alfonsi had worked on the story for months and had it vetted by the division’s standards and practices department.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote in the email. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
Alfonsi’s reporting did show up on Canada’s Global TV service, which had been given a feed of the program before the change was made, an embarrassing operational error by CBS News. The segment was shared widely on social media.
Every move by Weiss has received heightened scrutiny since she was given editorial control over CBS News in October. She joined the network after parent company Paramount acquired the Free Press, a digital news and opinion platform she co-founded. The site made its name by calling out perceived liberal bias by legacy media organizations and so-called woke policies.
Media industry critics have used the “60 Minutes” controversy to suggest Weiss was installed to placate President Trump as Paramount pursues the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would require government regulatory approval. A person close to Weiss who was not authorized to comment publicly said Paramount had no say on the Alfonsi piece.
Paramount already paid $16 million to Trump to settle a defamation suit against “60 Minutes.” Trump claimed the program deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris, calling it election interference. CBS News did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement.
