CBS News’ newly appointed primetime anchor Tony Dokoupil, hand-selected by Trump-friendly network chief Bari Weiss, has gotten off to an awkward start — and behind the scenes, it’s even worse, reported Vanity Fair on Thursday.
“To critics … partisan politics is exactly what motivates the new regime,” said the report. “David Ellison and his father, Larry, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle who provided most of the money behind the Skydance merger with Paramount, is a supporter of Trump and reportedly friends with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Weiss, meanwhile, is a legacy media apostate who launched The Free Press after quitting The New York Times in protest. Like the Ellisons, she’s a staunch supporter of Israel and had been — before her appointment to run the network — a relentless critic of institutions like CBS.”
The shakeup is already causing a staff revolt, said the report.
“In a video manifesto introducing himself to viewers before the launch of the Evening News, Dokoupil took on a populist tone, criticizing ‘legacy media’ for relying too heavily on ‘academics or elites.’ As Dokoupil recorded that message in the middle of the CBS newsroom, the producer recalls, Weiss was just out of frame, coaching him on his lines,” said the report. Staff was enraged, particularly after Dokoupil followed up with a social media post that he would be “more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or anyone else of his era.”
“I just don’t even understand how you could say something like that,” said a former executive at CBS who worked alongside Dokoupil, adding, “He completely lost the room.”
This comes as Weiss herself has faced a deluge of controversy, most notably when the network tried to bury a story about the horrific, inhumane conditions inside a foreign megaprison that Trump was sending immigrants to.
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