CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil has been eviscerated by his colleagues in a scathing new profile, which laid bare the tensions and controversies that have marked his first few months on the job.
Vanity Fair spoke with more than 20 current or former CBS employees and media insiders, many of them anonymously, who branded Dokoupil “hospital-drama-handsome” and a “useful idiot” who is “deeply lacking in self-awareness.”
Dokoupil was elevated to primetime in December by Bari Weiss, shortly after she was named editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss, founder of The Free Press and a self-proclaimed “Zionist fanatic,” has carefully micromanaged Dokoupil’s broadcasts — even rewriting his first script minutes before airtime, according to the report.
While she has borne the lion’s share of the criticism, Dokoupil has faced some too: detractors accuse him of blindly executing her directives and displaying clear on-air bias, especially when covering the Trump administration and Israel.
CBS News declined to make Dokoupil available for comment. A network spokesperson told Vanity Fair that he remains “an exceptional talent and experienced journalist,” while dismissing the outlet’s reporting as filled with “old and false rumors.”
The Independent has reached out to CBS News for comment.
In the multi-thousand-word profile, industry insiders zeroed in on several of Dokoupil’s nightly broadcasts, accusing him of displaying poor editorial judgement.
On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riots, the Miami-raised anchor read a short bulletin: “President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol, while House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of, quote, ‘whitewashing’ it.”
The script was initially supposed to be different, but Dokoupil rewrote it himself, a producer said, telling Vanity Fair, “I saw it and I was just like, What the ****?”
After a commercial break, Dokoupil delved into a light-hearted segment about Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a series of memes about him. At the end, he went off script and said: “Marco Rubio, we salute you. You’re the ultimate Florida Man.”
An unnamed network journalist described the segment as “outrageous,” adding, “I don’t think even a MAGA Republican wants to see that in their news.”
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“This is what happens when you get somebody who’s only ever worked on a morning show, where he just thinks, Oh yeah, why don’t we dedicate two minutes of this 19-minute broadcast to glazing Marco f****** Rubio?” they added.
Controversial broadcasts of this nature kept rolling out.
After the U.S. launched its war against Iran, Dokoupil interviewed Douglas Murray, a prominent conservative media personality and vocal advocate of Israel — a move that sparked internal backlash for favoring opinion segments over straight news reporting.
“He was very clearly reporting this through the lens of Israel,” a correspondent said. “We are just parroting Israeli talking points and being deeply incurious about anything else outside the echo chamber Bari and Tony Dokoupil happen to live in.”
Despite vocal detractors, Dokoupil has expressed no regrets over his tenure, dismissing the outrage as overblown, according to a source close to him who spoke to Vanity Fair. Some also view the uproar over his boss as hysterical, with one reporter labeling it “Bari derangement syndrome.”
As the internal strife drags on, Dokoupil’s viewership is cratering. Last month, ratings for CBS Evening News dropped below four million for the first time since host Dokoupil took the helm.
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