Tony Dokoupil should move from morning to evening at CBS News.
Dokoupil, currently co-anchor of “CBS Mornings,” has signed a new deal to take over as anchor of “CBS Evening News,” according to several people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly. One person said an announcement was expected as early as this week.
A CBS News representative declined to comment. Dokoupil, 44, did not respond to a request for comment.
The news division’s flagship program is expected to return to a solo anchor format after pairing John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois over the past year. Dickerson and DuBois will leave CBS News later this month.
Dokoupil’s appointment would not mean a major change in the direction of the program. Dokoupil, who has worked for CBS News since 2016 after three years at NBC, became co-host of CBS Mornings in 2019.
Bari Weiss, the recently appointed executive editor of CBS News, has reportedly expressed a desire to bring in an outside name, including Bret Baier, the Washington-based anchor of the conservative-leaning Fox News. CNN’s Anderson Cooper was also the subject of internal discussions, but he opted to sign a new deal with his network.
The Free Press, the digital news site co-founded by Weiss and acquired by Paramount, vigorously defended Dokoupil last year when he was at the center of controversy over an aggressive on-air interview he conducted last year with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Dokoupil was reprimanded at an editorial meeting for the way he questioned Coates about his new book, “The Message,” which examines the Israel-Gaza conflict. CBS News management said on the call that the interview did not meet the company’s editorial standards after receiving a number of complaints from staff.
A recording of the meeting was posted online on the Free Press website.
“It is journalists like Tony Dokoupil who are an endangered species in traditional news organizations, yielding to the pressures of this new elite consensus,” the Free Press editors wrote on the subject.
Shari Redstone, the former majority shareholder of CBS News parent company Paramount, also publicly expressed support for Dokoupil at the time. She said CBS News executives made “a serious mistake” in their handling of the matter. The two executives who led the editorial call, Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roark, are no longer with the network.
