The original plan was to watch an entire week of the brand-new CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil. It turns out that it’s next to impossible with this morning show chuckler-turned-hard news amateur trying to deliver information to a nation that needs to be more informed.
Sitting through a week of the broadcast that’s being encroached upon by people with obvious biases that lean away from creating an effective and efficient newsroom is like asking someone to sit through Cats a second time. If you’ve seen it once, you know you won’t endure it.
I’d call Dokoupil’s first week a train wreck, but at least train wrecks can be entertaining to watch on a visceral, Gomez Addams level. The anchor teased his first week by promising on social media to be “more accountable and more transparent” than legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite. This is Trump-grade bragging, and we get enough of that from him.
Dokoupil’s hire is part of the new rebrand of the CBS news franchise since it’s been taken over by right-leaning news editor Bari Weiss, who showed her political priorities over her duty to delivering news when she personally shelved a well-vetted 60 Minutes piece about Venezuelan men being deported to a brutal El Salvadorian prison by the Trump administration. She was hired to run CBS’s entire news division by Trump-supporting Skydance owner Larry Ellison. It’s perhaps the most ambitious attempt to course-correct a major and once-respected news outlet in our lifetime.
Before he had even delivered a single broadcast, Dokoupil characterized this new vision for delivering national news in promos as its own story, which was flub No. 1. He even went on Entertainment Tonight to gloat about how he and his team put off their grand opening “Monsters of Modern News” tour (my title, not theirs) to cover the Trump administration’s Venezuela takeover. The purpose of a news show tour to celebrate a new vision of national news coverage escapes me unless you’re going somewhere to cover a breaking story at the epicenter. Canceling a tour to cover one of the most concerning political moments of our lifetime also isn’t a grand accomplishment to be humblebragging about on another news show. It’s the job.
Dokoupil also interviews notable names, but “interviews” implies a two-way conversation. Dokoupil seems to think his job is to ask powerful people questions and let them say pretty much whatever they want without any meaningful follow-up. His weekend interview with Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the raid of Nicolas Maduro was so bland and unquestioning, he should have just given Pete a bullhorn and a full glass of Dewar’s because we would’ve gotten something more meaningful out of him then.
Then on Monday, Dokoupil tried to throw to a story about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s surprising announcement that he would not seek an additional term. Instead, the broadcast booth went to an image of Sen. Mark Kelly referring to Hegseth’s sadistic and unnecessary censure and military demotion. Dokoupil said on air, “Big problems here, big problems here.” Based on this and several other flubs during the week of shows, Dokoupil rolls with mistakes the way a guy who trips on a rock rolls down a steep hill until gravity and friction stop him.
Mistakes happen. I’m sure even Walter Cronkite once stood up behind his news desk before forgetting that he wasn’t wearing pants during a broadcast or two. However, the first official broadcast kicked off with a major-league on-air flub that conveniently didn’t make it to the show’s YouTube page and was not rebroadcast on Paramount+. So, everyone involved knows he screwed up but won’t face or own up to it. This pretty much set the tone for the rest of Dokoupil’s week.
Some of the biggest mistakes and flubs weren’t caused by a video miscue or a technical mishap. They were purposeful course corrections to make up for some perceived political bias that skews against those in power because we’re ruled by thin-skinned babies who can’t even endure the mildest forms of satire. For his Jan 6 broadcast, Dokoupil dedicated 11 minutes of airtime to the Maduro raid and the violent fallout in the region that included reactions from Miami citizens; three minutes for updates on ICE raids, including another sycophantic and uncurious interview with Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem; and a whole minute to a “lighter side” piece about Secretary of State Marco Rubio becoming the target of an AI photo meme that ended with Dokoupil offering the smirky, spine-collapsing compliment, “We salute you. You’re the ultimate Florida man.”
Dokoupil devoted 16 seconds of airtime (not even a minute) to the January 6 anniversary with coverage of a march staged in Washington by the people whom Trump blanket-pardoned and a pair of “he said/he said” quotes from both sides of the aisle about the true cause of the attack. A story about Marco Rubio memes received more coverage than a story about eight people whose deaths have yet to find justice and an event that continues to define the heated nature of our political rhetoric.
By the time Wednesday rolled around and with it the horrific story of Renee Good’s needless death at the hands of a murderous ICE agent with obvious ill will toward the people he’s allegedly supposed to protect, the tone of Dokoupil’s broadcast went from amateur cute to just plain ignorant and inept. He brought in White House Border Czar Tom Homan to watch the video the world has seen and let Homan off the hook when he whined about how he can’t be responsible for every incident involving his officers. Dokoupil went easy on Homan like he did with every high-ranking official he interviewed this week.
Does anyone in this scene know how to do their jobs to even the most basic requirements?
Correspondent Nancy Cordes did perhaps the most laudable job of the week on camera. She held to account Health and Human Services Secretary (in name only) Robert Kennedy Jr. and his new lopsided food pyramid that treats trans fats with the same love as healthy fruits and vegetables. Perhaps she should be leading the news since she seems to understand how the job works.
Thursday night was all I could take. That’s when Dokoupil tried to wrap up the horrible news of the day with an “aw shucks, we need to get along and everyone needs to take responsibility for Good’s death” editorial. Lead anchors are not supposed to do editorials. They’re supposed to deliver the news without bias, something that Weiss made a career of complaining about, whether it’s accurate or not. When President John F. Kennedy was killed and Cronkite famously delivered the horrible news to a shocked nation, he didn’t launch into an all-sides-are-guilty screed. He removed his glasses and held back tears that were obviously genuine while stoically trying to deliver the news to the nation.
If Dokoupil and Weiss want to deliver the news better than one of the greatest TV newspeople of any generation, they should start by just delivering the news. Somehow, though, I get the feeling that won’t happen. They both treat the industry with this unfounded disdain that makes them believe they need to be the story for fixing the wrong problem with today’s news consumption.
Well, if there’s anyone running CBS with any sense, they probably won’t like how this story ends. It makes you wonder just how far they are going to “shape” the news from their headquarters in Washington down to the many local affiliates they control, including the one in our backyard.
