Tony Dokoupil’s long-awaited first weekday primetime newscast as the newly-crowned anchor of CBS Evening News was — there’s no polite way to say it — a bit of a (expletive) show.
The broadcast quickly went sideways when, in a rare moment of live-TV self-awareness, Dokoupil openly acknowledged just how badly things were unraveling in real time.
“To other news now. To Governor Walz, no we’re going to do Mark Kelly. First day, big problems here. Are we going to go to Kelly…We’re doing Mark Kelly, possibly demoted from his retired rank as captain in the Navy.”
Whew, that was painful to watch. And, it wasn’t the only time he stumbled.
His first few minutes in the anchor chair, once held by the fabled Walter Cronkite, seemed like a pretty regular newscast. Anchor tossing to reporters in the field, anchor interviewing guests on screen. And then, most likely through no fault of his own, he had no idea where he was going.
Most likely, and to be fair, this wasn’t entirely his fault. As a former anchor, I can tell you what this looked like: the control room rolling the wrong video, producers barking conflicting instructions into his ear, last-second changes blowing up the rundown. Live television is unforgiving, and when it goes wrong, it goes wrong fast.
Still, the mistakes always land on the face the audience sees. That’s the brutal reality of the anchor chair. It’s the anchor’s job to check, recheck, and triple-check the script order – especially on night one.
NBC’s recent rollout of Tom Llamas as evening news anchor went off without a hitch. CBS’s… not so much. Let’s hope, for them, it’s not a harbinger of things to come. The last-rated broadcast newscast – trailing leader ABC by more than three million viewers – is trying to claw its way out of the basement. This was not a promising start.
On a positive note, he seemed relaxed and in control at other times. In a not-so-anchor-like move, he added his opinion about how the Venezuelan invasion helps the U.S., “if at all.”
“When you zoom out a bit, you can actually see the outlines of an answer,” Doukopil declared. “Russia, China, and Iran have been building a presence in Venezuela, a base of power and influence in the hemisphere. With Maduro now out, that base of power and influence could be out too.”
Plus, his demeanor was affable, and he struck a provocative tone at the end of the broadcast, talking about a group of middle-aged and elderly who made a nude calendar trying to raise money to reduce taxes. It was a far cry from his immediate predecessors, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who couldn’t find chemistry and tanked the ratings.
Dokoupil’s roll-out video, posted days before he took over the helm of CBS Evening News, set off a media wildfire after making a controversial comment comparing himself favorably to Cronkite. Critics called the remark “foolish,” viewing it as dismissive of the network’s storied standards.
Dokoupil, who had been the co-host of CBS Mornings, kicked off his tenure abruptly on CBS Evening News on Saturday’s broadcast with a three-segment showdown with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. It was a bold and decisive move to grab a high-profile administration official intimately involved in the Trump administration’s decision to bomb Caracas and capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro on January 3rd – to his credit, blowing out the plan to unveil Dokoupil days later.
But, the criticism of the questions was swift and damning, even as some praised the importance and timelines of the interview. Some media critics argued that Dokoupil gave Hegseth a free pass, letting him spin the administration’s talking points while failing to ask hard-hitting questions expected of CBS anchors.
One media commenter described the segments as “mostly turned over to Secretary Hegseth” by not asking key questions about the legality of the raid and President Trump’s controversial promise to bring in American military troops to occupy Venezuela. Softball journalism, critics cried.
But here’s where I blow the whistle. While I understand the concerns expressed, Dokoupil pushed Hegseth on several fronts. He did ask him if the administration planned to put troops on the ground, whether Congress would be involved going forward (unlike during the airstrikes and stunning capture of Maduro), and whether the mission was about freedom or oil.
But most importantly, he stressed the point of the raid against history: He asked if this maneuver – with Trump and Marco Rubio saying they’ll run the country – regime change!– echoes the period twenty years when the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein, based on faulty assurances about weapons of mass destruction, turning into an endless quagmire that cost 4,500 American military people their lives, and another 32,000 wounded: “Many of the president’s own supporters tonight are wondering, how is this, this time around, going to be different, and how is it in the U.S. interest?”
It’s also a reminder of Teddy Roosevelt-style, big-stick attacks, when gunboat diplomacy meant seizing anyone you wanted.
Media personalities like former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, now something of a crank, mocked Dokoupil’s interview on his podcast, suggesting he acted more like a “chief propagandist” than a hard-hitting anchor, framing his approach as too cooperative with Hegseth and the administration’s narrative.
TV Insider’s social media critic also complained that Dokoupil didn’t challenge Hegseth. “@tonydokoupil is the latest member of Trump’s state-run media team. Giving @PeteHegseth 20 mins of softball questions on the evening news? Walter Cronkite is rolling over in his grave right now.”
But many media liberals have their own agenda, believing that Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, is pushing the operation to the right. She describes herself as a “radical centrist.”
Dokoupil’s transition into the evening anchor chair itself has attracted criticism, not just for the content of the interview but for the strategy he signaled. Some critics claim he tried to appeal to audiences who distrust legacy media and that this may shape how interviews like Hegseth’s are conducted.
In a promo video, Dukoupil made this pronouncement: “On too many stories, the press has missed the story…we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you.” And that set off a firestorm of criticism from those on the left. Bravo’s host Andy Cohen wrote: “Listening too much to experts? WTF.”
TheWrap highlighted Dokoupil’s adaptability, noting that the early broadcast debut, moved up for the dramatic breaking news in Venezuela, “was actually a better launch than anything else we could have come up with.”
The verdict? Dokoupil may have ruffled feathers with a Cronkite comparison and faced the predictable storm from the left, but his handling of Hegseth shows he’s willing to challenge power, even if one of the administration’s chief spinners tried to dodge the questions.
As for Monday’s performance, it was a chaotic launch that underscored just how far CBS Evening News still has to climb. CBS can only hope this was a bad night, not a bad omen.
When he signed off, Tony Doukopil told viewers: “I can’t believe they let me keep that line.” A nice touch, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who smiled.
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