MS NOW anchor Katy Tur has publicly shown support for her husband, newly appointed CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, after widespread criticism of his reporting since his error-strewn debut on the program.
Tur, who married Dokoupil in 2017 and who shares two children with him, shared a clip of Dokoupil’s interview with White House Border Czar Tom Homan to her Instagram stories on Wednesday night, writing, “Homan breaks w DHS and Noem on ICE shooting.”
“It would be unprofessional to comment on what I think happened in that situation,” Homan told Dokoupil in the interview about the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. “Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation.”
Tur, 42, also expressed support for her husband in comments made on a number of CBS Instagram posts. On one post—an interview in which Dokoupil reflected on his childhood in Miami—Tur wrote, “I love this man.” On another, in which Dokoupil announced his trip around the country that will take him to nine cities in two weeks, Tur wrote, “So excited!”
Dokoupil, 45, began his tenure as Evening News anchor with a disastrous, error-ridden broadcast on Monday and is already facing scrutiny for sucking up to Trump administration officials.
Media watchers were particularly baffled when Dokoupil gushed over Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday night, telling viewers of the former Florida senator, “Whatever you think of his politics, you’ve got to admit: it’s an impressive résumé!”
He then concluded the broadcast with a message for Rubio: “Marco Rubio, we salute you. You are the ultimate Florida man.”
Dokoupil also made waves with an introductory video posted before his first broadcast in which he hit out at legacy media for failing to take the perspectives of average Americans into account, opting instead to listen to “advocates” and “elites.” He said he would be “more transparent” than Walter Cronkite. Dokoupil is heir to both Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow as CBS Evening News anchor.
Tur, who was condescendingly dubbed ‘Little Katy’ during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has worked at NBC and MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, since 2009, making her someone who has spent her entire professional career embedded in legacy media.
Dokoupil has been burnishing his anti-elitist credentials while sharing a four-floor townhouse with Tur in one Brooklyn’s most affluent enclaves. He boasted to People magazine of starting the day cooking her eggs with za’atar and making her oat milk coffee. Both attended elite private high schools, he in Miami and she in Brentwood, California, while he has a degree from George Washington University in Washington D.C., and a master’s degree from Ivy League college Columbia in Manhattan. He also started a PhD there in American studies; late last week he railed against “the academy.”
His show this week has included interviews with anti-elite figures including the billionaire Trump-aligned Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and three-star general H.R. McMaster, Trump’s former national security adviser in his first term.
Dokoupil, a one-time Daily Beast reporter, joined CBS in 2016, and was promoted into the evening news slot from the morning news, where he was co-anchor, by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. CBS does not reveal how much its anchors earn, but Dokoupil will have gotten a significant rise from the estimated $2 million a year he earned in his morning role.
Weiss, herself appointed to the role by new Paramount owner and billionaire nepo-baby David Ellison, has faced similar scrutiny regarding her leadership of the once-respected newsroom, particularly from those concerned that she is too sympathetic to the Trump administration.
The issue of Weiss’ leadership became a flashpoint late last month after she reportedly axed a 60 Minutes segment on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador shortly before it was set to air.
Weiss’ rationale was that the episode was not ready. She told The New York Times, “Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom.”
Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran broadcaster who reported the segment, disagreed, writing in a message to her CBS colleagues that the cancellation was political.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision; it is a political one.”
