We’ve detailed how the Media Research Center long smeared onetime CBS morning host Tony Dokoupil as a “socialist” because he once did a segment on income equality. That was joined by a 2020 headline declaring “CBS Radical Tony Dokoupil Demands YOU Admit YOUR Racism.” But Dokoupil rather abruptly changed his ideology a couple years ago; we noted last year how the MRC’s Curtis Houck praised Dokoupil for having “stood tall for the tens of millions of Americans who supported President Trump or simply identify as conservatives and independents by defending Trump’s insistence that the Smithsonians emphasize America’s greatness and not perpetually dwell on its shameful moments like slavery.” In 2024, Nicholas Fondacaro cheered Dokoupil because he challenged “race hustler and author Ta-Nehisi Coates for his new book The Message, where Coates took the side of anti-Semitic, genocidal terrorists in their fight to exterminate Israel” and “suggested Coates essay read like the manifesto ‘in the backpack of an extremist.'”
It appears that Dokoupil’s ideological shift had results: New CBS News chief Bari Weiss named him the new anchor of the CBS Evening News. Houck gushed in a Dec. 10 post:
Following months of rumors, CBS News’s parent company Paramount Skydance announced Wednesday that CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil will become the new anchor of the CBS Evening News on January 5, signifying editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’s biggest gamble yet, the network’s most serious attempt to break out of a lifetime in third place, and the most concrete effort to nudge a legacy newscast back to the center since the days of Jeff Glor from December 2017 to May 2019.
[…]Weiss acknowledged the non-existent levels of trust in the media, writing in a press release that “[w]e live in a time in which many people have lost trust in the media” and Dokoupil will be “the person to win it back…because he believes in old school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead and holding power to account.”
CBS News President Tom Cibrowski added Dokoupil represents “what everyone wants in an evening-news anchor – authentic, compassionate, unafraid” and “connects instantly, whether he’s talking with world leaders or with families navigating difficult news in their own backyards.”
Houck made no mention of how Weiss and Dokoupil seem to share a common right-leaning ideology. Instead, he dishonestly framed Dokoupil as being “toward the center” after having complained about his “socialist” segment:
The NewsBusters archives reveal a lengthy record of bias, most infamously an early 2020 segment in which he used pies to promote socialism (and earned fawning praise from Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren).
But in the last few years, Dokoupil has noticeably tacked toward the center (or at least ensured conservative/non-liberal arguments were accurately articulated, such as here and here). Not-so-coincidentally, one inflection point was his reporting since Hamas’s barbarism on October 7, 2023, which personally affected him because his two older children and ex-wife were living in Israel.
Houck concluded by declaring that “readers can expect NewsBusters to provide rigorous oversight of the new CBS Evening News and see if this newscast — which will start with a series of trips across the country to speak with ordinary Americans — will live up the standard Cibrowski, Weiss, and Dokoupil himself have set.”
Tim Graham gushed even more about Dokoupil in a Jan. 2 post:
Ahead of Tony Dokoupil’s first night anchoring the CBS Evening News on Monday, CBS released a video of Dokoupil making promises to the audience about how he’ll serve them. He’s admitting the networks have a trust problem, acknowledging he has heard people lament coverage of certain stories, such as Russiagate, Hunter Biden’s laptop and COVID lockdowns.
“The point is that, on too many stories, the press has missed the story,” Dokoupil said. “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.”
Dokoupil insisted he’s been one of the “average Americans” on this, that the news didn’t reflect his life experience.
[…]It would be unusual for a network anchor to admit they’ve been inaccurate on anything. It would be even rarer to “hold everyone in public life to the very same standard.” The Left cannot abide that. It would mean holding the Democrats as accountable as Trump, and he could start with their Hitler smears.
Graham did not explain why everyone who’s not as right-wing as Dokoupil is on “the Left,” or why Trump-Hitler smears are inaccurate given that the MRC never called out anyone who likened, say, Barack Obama to Hitler.
The next day, Houck whined that Dokoupil and his right-leaning ideology was criticized:
Along with the liberal media meltdowns that resulted from incoming CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil’s brief commentary Thursday about the state of the legacy media, the onslaught continued Friday and into the weekend following both the publication of the newscast’s core values and subsequent think pieces and anonymously-sourced invective at Dokoupil and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
The “5 simple values” replace what was “once a 38-page handbook” and make complete sense, representing yet another step forward in its promise to appeal to, listen to, and work for all Americans. Read these and try to see how many of them would trigger liberals (spoiler alert: all of them).
First up in the meltdowns was Jusin Baragona, currently with The Independent (and formerly with The Daily Beast and Zeteo). His piece went for the shock value, right from the headline: “Private jets, armed security and ‘Bari pitches’ including jet-skiing with DJ Khaled: Inside Weiss’ chaotic ‘CBS Evening News’ reboot.”
Baragona began by contrasting Dokoupil’s video about “claim[ing] that legacy media has ignored the views of the ‘average American’” with his own anonymous source telling him “Weiss is scoping out a private jet and a troop of armed guards to facilitate her participation in a multi-million dollar tour of the country” for Dokoupil’s first two weeks as anchor.
The tour – which was supposed to consist of Dokoupil anchoring the show from a different city – has now been postponed due to the U.S. military action in Venezuela.
[…]Over at Status, Jon Passantino was also afflicted by a serious case of coping and seething, particularly as it pertained to Dokoupil’s Thursday monologue validating those who no longer trust the press.
Passantino screeched Dokoupil delivered “a clear dog whistle to those on the right who have long nurtured grievances about news coverage that fails to comport with their worldview.”
Like the biased tool that he is, he painted a picture in which the right, center, and left have all come to hate Dokoupil and this reimagined CBS News, ignoring those who’ve publicly weighed in with messages of support[.]
Given that those who “weighed in with messages of support” are right-wingers like himself, it’s unsurprising Houck would refuse to discuss the ideology of Dokoupil’s supporters.