Insiders have revealed exactly how CBS News boss Bari Weiss torpedoed her own hand-picked evening news anchor’s much-hyped debut earlier this year.
The anti-woke editor-in-chief—who was installed last year after billionaire nepo baby and Donald Trump ally David Ellison bought CBS’s parent company—personally chose Tony Dokoupil as the new, MAGA-friendly face of the CBS Evening News.
Dokoupil, however, got off to a rocky start, at one point repeating himself and then getting confused about which segment he was supposed to be introducing.
“First day, big problems here,” he said, shaking his head and grinning.
Now, Vanity Fair has revealed exactly how his boss’s unprecedented meddling led to the mix-up.
Before Dokoupil’s first Monday night broadcast, Weiss walked into the newsroom and asked to see the script despite the show’s producers objecting, sources told the magazine.
She added lines to the January 5 segment claiming that Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was part of a strategy to outmaneuver Russia, China, and Iran in the Western Hemisphere.
It is unusual for a network chief to personally edit a script, but Weiss made things even worse by writing the text in the wrong place, according to a former producer on the show. The lines were added to the teleprompter twice, leaving Dokoupil flailing,
“What a disaster,” a former CBS News anchor told Vanity Fair. “Honestly, I would’ve f---ing killed her. Are you serious? On the first night?”
The Daily Beast has reached out to CBS for comment.
The New York Times had previously reported that Weiss and her aides were rewriting the script up until minutes before the 6:30 p.m. airtime.
Things haven’t improved much since then for Dokoupil, who has come under fire for conducting softball interviews with key MAGA figures, including the president, praising Trump and his Cabinet members, and playing to Trump’s anti-elite base despite his own privileged background.
Despite his apparent MAGA cosplay, Dukoupil lives in one of Brooklyn’s most affluent enclaves, where he shares a three-story townhouse with MS NOW anchor, Katy Tur, and their two children.
He has also ripped into the legacy media for being out of touch with average Americans, despite being the ultimate media insider with a career spanning nearly two decades, including stints at the Daily Beast, Newsweek, NBC, and now CBS.
Since Dokoupil took over the anchor’s chair, CBS Evening News has seen a ratings crisis and is projected to suffer its lowest-rated quarter this century, suggesting that Weiss’s strategy has alienated existing viewers without attracting new ones.
The show consistently trails its competitors by large margins, according to Nielsen data.
