When anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois took over CBS Evening News last year, part of the network’s strategy was to imitate a local news format, with a genial cast of personalities reporting from the field.
The new anchor of CBS Evening News is trying a different approach: confrontation.
Before he even sat down in the anchor chair for his first official week of broadcasting, Tony Dokoupil had already started skirmishing online with academics, fellow journalists, and a reality television celebrity — and he promised not to go easy on the new owners of his network.
In his opening monologue, Dokoupil lamented that his colleagues in the news business had leaned too much into the perspectives of subject matter experts.
“The press has missed the story because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American, or we’ve put too much weight in the analysis of academics and elites, and not enough on you. I know this because, at certain points, I have been you. I have felt this way too. I have felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn’t reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life.”
He continued: “So here’s my promise to you, today and every time you see me in this chair: You come first. Not advertisers. Not politicians. Not corporate interests — and yes, that does include the corporate owners of CBS. I report for you.”
The monologue prompted strong backlash from critics, who cast Dokoupil’s remarks as pandering.
When Bravo star Andy Cohen commented on the monologue on Instagram, writing, “Listening too much to experts? Wtf?” Dokoupil replied: “Can you really not think of any examples where academic advice turned out narrow or bad? I basically gave you a multiple-choice list. It’s possible you were living outside or above the issues I mention.”
Dokoupil also defended the show’s new broadcast ethos, which included declarations like “We love America. And we make no apologies for saying so,” and that the show will not use “weasel words or padded landings.” After not tweeting for over two years, Dokoupil returned to Twitter to needle the Guardian’s media reporter and push back against criticism of the show’s new framing from commentators like Larry Sabato and Atlantic writer Tom Nichols.
In response to an Instagram comment saying CBS had “lost its Tiffany shine” since the days of Walter Cronkite, Dokoupil promised that he would be “more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or any one else of his era.” (That transparency hasn’t extended to speaking to media reporters just yet; the network declined to make him available for Semafor or for other national media reporters’ requests for interviews this week.)