Overview
- Vanity Fair on Thursday published a profile citing more than 20 current and former CBS staffers who derided Tony Dokoupil as a “useful idiot” and said he “lost the room.”
- CBS responded that Dokoupil is “an exceptional talent” and dismissed the magazine’s reporting as relying on “old and false rumors.”
- Nielsen data for the week of April 6 showed CBS Evening News averaging about 3.81 million viewers and 477,000 adults 25–54, far behind ABC’s 8.42 million and NBC’s 6.43 million.
- Staff accounts in the profile said editor-in-chief Bari Weiss rewrote parts of Dokoupil’s first-night teleprompter script minutes before airtime, which they said caused on-air stumbles.
- The reporting described churn inside the newsroom, with Vanity Fair saying 10 Evening News staffers left this year, and Mediaite noting insiders do not expect an immediate anchor change.