CBS has found the next anchor of the CBS Evening News.
The news division, which is set to be overhauled under newly-minted editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski, has named Tony Dokoupil anchor of the venerable evening newscast, which has counted Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Katie Couric among its alumni.
Dokoupil announced the move on CBS Mornings Wednesday.
“It’s a massively important show, it has a massively important history,” Dokoupil said Wednesday. “It’s the oldest, boldest, most storied, battle-scarred and proud show, I think, in television news.”
Dokoupil, currently co-anchor of CBS Mornings, succeeds Maurice Dubois and John Dickerson, who are set to exit CBS News this month after taking over the evening news program earlier this year. Dickerson, who had been with CBS for 16 years, announced his exit in October, with DuBois, a 21-year veteran (including a long run at WCBS) following in December.
He will be the second major on-air move under newly-minted CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, following the announcement of the addition of ABC’s Matt Gutman Tuesday.
The CBS Evening News, despite its long and storied legacy, has long been mired behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News in the ratings. Weiss, in her first meeting with CBS News staff, emphasized her desire to “win,” and Dokoupil’s elevation is clearly meant to shake things up, as much as shaking up the anchor desk at a TV news program can do these days.
“We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in the media. Tony Dokoupil is the person to win it back,” said Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor-in-chief. “That’s because he believes in old school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead and holding power to account. Americans hungry for fairness will see that on display night after night.”
“Tony is what everyone wants in an evening-news anchor – authentic, compassionate, unafraid,” added Tom Cibrowski, president of CBS News. “He connects instantly, whether he’s talking with world leaders or with families navigating difficult news in their own backyards.”
Dokoupil joined CBS News as a correspondent in 2016, joining the morning show as an anchor in 2019. Weiss is expected to leave her mark across CBS News programming, with the morning show likely to be among the next shows to be overhauled, following Dokoupil’s elevation in the evenings, and pending changes at the Saturday edition of the morning program. CBS Mornings is currently anchored by Dokoupil, Gayle King, and Nate Burleson, who joined Dokoupil on the show to announce the move, alongside Vladimir Duthiers.
“You will make us competitive again,” Duthiers told Dokoupil. “You will bring us on the trajectory of winning. I think there’s nobody better in this business, in this storied building that we work in.”
Dokoupil, of course, found himself at the center of an internal political firestorm at CBS last year, when he aggressively questioned Ta-Nehisi Coates on the program over his writings about the Israel-Palestine issue. CBS News executives told staff that the interview did not meet its editorial standards, though Shari Redstone would ultimately back Dokoupil over her own executives.
“I frankly think Tony did a great job with that interview,” Redstone said. “I was very proud of the work that he did. Yes, as hard as it was for me to go against this company, I think they made a mistake here.”
Weiss was among the journalists who aggressively covered the fallout from the matter at her Free press. Now CBS News and The Free Press are sister companies, and Weiss holds sway over CBS, with Dokoupil now rising to one of the most prestigious jobs in TV journalism.
Of course, his exit also means big changes will come to the CBS morning show, which king alluded to.
“Nobody was saying, I hope Tony gets a job, because we don’t want you to leave,” King said. “But I also think, now that the decision has been made, I think it’s a great decision for all of us. Now, what we gonna do guys? What’s gonna happen to us?”
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