CBS has ended its search for an anchor to fill the CBS Evening News chair one held by Walter Cronkite—but has failed to please all its staff with the choice.
The network’s MAGA-curious Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has chosen Tony Dokoupil, 44, as the new CBS Evening News anchor, Status News was first to report.
Dokoupil will replace John Dickerson, 57, and Maurice DuBois, 60, who began co-hosting CBS Evening News in January and both decided to leave the network after 16 and 21 years, respectively. The newscast consistently ranks behind ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News.
CBS appears to have found a new Evening News anchor, but staffers are reportedly unhappy with the choice, a man known for his good hair.
“It’s an insult to the storied news giants who came before him,” a CBS News reporter told The Independent, referring to Cronkite and Dan Rather, with whom the news show consolidated its position as the most popular evening newscast.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Dokoupil, CBS News, and Weiss’s representatives for comment but has not received an immediate response.
Speaking to The Independent, one staffer called the new host a “mediocre straight white man,” while another was amazed that Weiss had “the full power of CBS News, including its deep pockets, entirely in her hands,” but was only “able to come up” with Dokoupil as a replacement.
Weiss allegedly had her eyes set on Fox News star Bret Baier for the position but reportedly had trouble securing him, as his contract with Fox was extended “through 2028.” She also reportedly approached Fox News anchor Dana Perino and CNN’s Anderson Cooper for the role; both of whom have signed contract extensions with their respective networks.
Dokoupil joined CBS as a New York correspondent in 2016 after working at the Daily Beast, NBC News and MSNBC, and became a co-anchor of CBS This Morning in 2019, alongside Gayle King, 70, and Nate Burleson, 44. He is married to his second wife, fellow journalist Katy Tur, 42, who hosts the weekday program Katy Tur Reports for MS NOW. The couple have two children and Dokoupul has two older children from his first marriage.
The anchor reportedly caught Weiss’ attention in September 2024, after he garnered backlash for what some deemed “hostile” questioning of author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his book The Message, a controversial exploration of Palestine’s history and status which was highly critical of Israel.
At the time, Weiss, 41, published an article for her media company, The Free Press, in which her outlet leaked remarks from a CBS editorial meeting where top executives said that Dokoupil’s behavior did not meet the network’s “editorial standards,” setting off a firestorm of controversy.
Weiss went on to defend the anchor, writing, “It is journalists like Tony Dokoupil who are an endangered species in legacy news organizations, which are wilting under the pressures of this new elite consensus.”
CBS’ parent company Paramount acquired Weiss’ anti-woke Substack for as much as $150 million after P
after David Ellison, a MAGA-friendly executive, taking leadership. Ellison’s company, Skydance, completed an $8 billion merger in August to take over CBS’s parent company and has since entered a bidding battle with Netflix for Warner Bros., which owns CNN.
After the acquisition, Weiss took over as editor-in-chief of CBS News, which has since undergone significant layoffs, shuttered its race and culture unit, and canceled several programs, including CBS Saturday Morning.
“He’s clearly been rewarded with the Evening News throne,” a CBS reporter told The Independent about Dokoupil’s new position, which he is allegedly set to begin in January. “Although, some might argue it’s more of a toilet seat now,” the staffer added.
The post TV Staffers Mock New Evening Anchor’s Job as ‘Toilet Seat’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
