Tony Dokoupil Is the Face of the Bari Weiss Revolution at CBS News. Will He Survive It?
Others see all the angst round Weiss as slightly hysterical. One reporter who’s fond of her calls it “Bari derangement syndrome.” To her defenders inside CBS, she’s a well-meaning if naive liberal whose errors are born extra out of inexperience than malice. She might have been out of place amid the progressive paroxysm that engulfed The New York Times in 2020, however she’s hardly MAGA. The CBS journalist tells me that Weiss typically praises groups for robust protection of the Trump administration, and has described sure Trump insurance policies as “insane.”
There is perhaps slightly “Tony derangement syndrome” at play as properly. The clips which have gone painfully viral belie the actuality that the Evening Newson any given night time, is a reasonably anodyne broadcast. A latest episode combined simple stories on airport delays and the Iran warfare with some elder-millennial cringe. During a phase on the demise of Chuck Norris, Dokoupil reported the late motion star impressed “some of the funniest memes on social media,” together with: “When Chuck Norris slices onions, the onions cry.”
Even as Weiss—whom the former govt described as “booker in chief” at the community—has managed to land main interviews for the Evening NewsDokoupil has continued to face criticism for his kid-glove questioning of the highly effective. When Dokoupil carried out a mild interview with Netanyahu final October, producers had been shocked by his deferential perspective to the Israeli prime minister when the cameras weren’t dwell. At one level, in response to a former staffer who watched the footage, Dokoupil began “bragging” Netanyahu about his relationship with Weiss. Netanyahu did not appear to care. “Bibi didn’t give a shit about Bari Weiss,” a CBS supply says. “He was just like, ‘Okay, whatever.’” (CBS News disputed this characterization.)
There was one latest second of aggressive success for the present. After the United States joined Israel in placing Iran, CBS News moved shortly to get Dokoupil to the area to cowl the warfare on the floor. He caught one of the final business flights from New York to Amman, Jordan, touchdown simply hours earlier than the airspace shut down. According to CBS, Dokoupil was the solely community anchor to report dwell from the area as he delivered a nightly narrative of the warfare.
Even then, his inner detractors stay. “He was very clearly reporting this through the lens of Israel,” says the correspondent, describing a drastic shift from the type of journalism the Evening News used to ship. “We are just parroting Israeli talking points and being deeply curious about anything else outside the echo chamber Bari and Tony Dokoupil happen to live in.”
The new anchor returned to New York to a harsh actuality. The week after his journey, the Evening News Reportedly averaged simply 3.8 million viewers, a substantial drop from his first week in the anchor chair and under a dreaded threshold that spelled the finish of his predecessors’ careers. The scores final month had been equally grim: According to Nielsen, the present noticed its lowest-rated March this century. “There’s a lot of pressure on him,” says the former CBS govt. “Nobody thought [the ratings] could fail any further. Oh! Look, there we did.” (A CBS spokesperson instructed Vanity Fair that scores have been up over the final three weeks in comparison with this time final yr.)
