Megyn Kelly unloaded on “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, blasting the newly installed host for what she called unprofessional “sobbing” on air and accusing the network of pandering to viewers amid a chaotic relaunch of the storied broadcast.
Kelly was unsparing in her assessment, telling listers to SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Wednesday that “there’s no crying at ‘Evening News.’”
She added that emotional displays on the broadcast should be reserved for only the most extraordinary moments, such as the assassination of a president.
Kelly mocked Dokoupil’s tearful Miami episode this week as evidence of what she called “bulls–t pandering” by CBS News.
“There might be some crying when a president is shot and assassinated right before your very eyes, like we saw with Walter Cronkite, though he didn’t — there was like a wiping of the eyes when he took off the glasses to report that JFK had been shot and killed,” she said.
“But that’s as far as he went. That’s as far as most ‘Evening News’ anchors would ever have gone traditionally.”
Kelly went on to savage the Dokoupil breakdown, saying she was stunned CBS chose to air it at all.
“I thought for sure that story was going to end in, ‘and they were all killed in a house fire, I was the sole survivor,’ in which case I would have excused the multiple tears — but it turns out the dad had some problems,” she said.
“The sobbing, the voice quivering, the inability to recover — what is that?!”
Dokoupil was in Miami as part of his “Live From America Tour” touting his ascent to the high-profile anchor role.
He became visibly emotional while explaining he grew up in Miami and he believed he would have spent his entire childhood there, but his family was forced to leave when his father was jailed for dealing drugs — a disruption that left him feeling “robbed” of his full Miami upbringing.
“It makes me emotional … Let me get a second here,” Dokoupil said on the Tuesday edition of the “CBS Evening News,” which was broadcast on location from South Florida.
“To help people understand why I have such a reaction, Florida is where I grew up … and it’s where I would’ve spent all of my childhood but we left because of my father,” the anchor said, making long pauses as he apparently tried to regain his composure. “He got in some trouble with business — we laugh about it now — but he was a drug dealer and he went to jail.”
CBS News promoted that very exchange on social media.
The highly publicized multi-city rollout for the revamped “CBS Evening News” was billed internally as a way to reintroduce the broadcast to viewers across the country.
The plan originally called for stops in up to 10 cities over 10 days, with Dokoupil anchoring from different locations outside New York — beginning in Miami and extending to other major markets.
But the tour has been dogged by turbulence almost from the start, with sources describing chaotic planning, abrupt changes and strained morale inside CBS News.
The ambitious travel schedule was partially scaled back after the dramatic US raid on Venezuela forced last-minute adjustments over the weekend.
Staffers privately complained that the “Evening News” rollout came amid recent layoffs and budget tightening.
The reported dismissal of a senior “Evening News” producer on Wednesday during the tour only added to the sense of instability surrounding Dokoupil’s first week in the anchor chair.
The Post has sought comment from CBS News.
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