As Tony Dokoupil himself put it on his chaotic first official day anchoring the “CBS Evening News,” “First day, big problems here.” He was supposed to start his new gig as anchor on Monday, but his debut, in a kind of preview appearance, was moved forward to Saturday, Jan. 3 following the breaking news of Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. Hand-picked by CBS News editorial director Bari Weiss, herself plucked for the position by parent company SkyDance Paramount CEO David Ellison, who has ties to Trump, Dokoupil’s first week as anchor was hyped as a coronation of sorts. Instead, his carefully stage-managed rollout — a 10-day private jet tour to promote a new ideological era at CBS News — was derailed by reality in Trump’s America. When the U.S. government abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, suddenly Dokoupil’s “reinvention” of the evening news had to contend with actual breaking news.
In his first week on the job, and in the bizarre publicity blitz that preceded it, Dokoupil has attempted to position himself as something more than an anchor. He seems to be, at least in his own mind, the main character of the news. Take the grandiosity of his ascent to the role, in which CBS News put forward a manifesto of the newsroom’s guiding principles. On too many stories, Dokoupil claimed in a promotional video, the press has missed the story because “we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.” His bizarre claim that the new broadcast would be “more transparent than Cronkite” was startling, but it became more revealing as the week wore on.
