CBS staffers say Tony Dokoupil completely lost | TV Shows

Tony Dokoupil’s first 12 months anchoring the CBS Evening News has been a mess, and his colleagues aren’t shying away from talking out about it.

A Vanity Fair story revealed this week particulars a chaotic start for the community’s new anchor, from a botched opening broadcast to an off-script tribute to Marco Rubio that left staffers livid.

Vanity Fair alleges that at the middle of the rukas is CBS News‘ Bari Weiss, who sources say has been operating her hand through Dokoupil’s scripts and feeding him traces on digicam.

Weeks before his first broadcast, Dokoupil posted a video slamming the “legacy media.”

He was standing in the center of the CBS newsroom when he recorded it. Weiss was just off digicam, sources told Vanity Fair, whispering traces in his ear.

“I just don’t even understand how you could say something like that,” said one former CBS government. “He completely lost the room.”

Opening night time went sideways, too.

Weiss, who had never labored in tv before taking over CBS News, rewrote half of Dokoupil’s teleprompter script to soften the framing of Trump’s overseas coverage, according to a producer.

“Of course, she writes it in the wrong place,” the producer said.

In another second, Dokoupil stumbled on air, useless air stuffed the studio, and he copped to it live, “First day, big problems here.”

“What a disaster,” one former CBS anchor said. “Honestly, I would’ve f–ing killed her. Are you serious? On the first night?”

Night two was no better as Dokoupil gave a few seconds of airtime to the fifth anniversary of the January 6 Capitol assault, then closed a section on Secretary of State Marco Rubio with an unscripted send-off, “Marco Rubio, we salute you. You’re the final word Florida Man.”

“The Marco Rubio thing was outrageous,” a CBS News journalist told Vanity Fair. “It just alienates the audience. I don’t think even a MAGA Republican wants to see that in their news.”

Scott MacFarlane, a longtime CBS correspondent who spent years overlaying the Capitol assault, called the January 6 coverage “highly objectionable and personally gutting.” He stop the community weeks later.

The week of April 14, the published averaged 3.8 million viewers, with just 482,000 in the key 25-54 demographic, trailing both ABC and NBC by.

Dokoupil wasn’t Weiss’s first decide for the job, the publication claims. She reportedly approached a string of greater personalities before touchdown on him.

“He must have been her seventh or eighth choice, because nobody would take the f–ing job,” one correspondent said. “A useful i—t for sure, but not a name.”