New Year, New CBS News

By John Fund

Sunday, January 04, 2026

 

The venerable CBS Evening News is getting a makeover that will debut at 6:30 p.m. EST on Monday. The news division at CBS is now run by Bari Weiss, who has made a name for herself by puncturing “woke” orthodoxies at her publication, the Free Press, and calling for media outlets to view issues through a broader lens than usual.

 

Tony Dokoupil, Weiss’s selection to be the new anchor of CBS Evening News, has demonstrated some curiosity and independence of thought during his nine years at CBS. In a two-minute video released by CBS last week, Dokoupil promises a new approach to news based on a blunt admission: “No one trusts mainstream media anymore.”

 

He says the reasons are clear:

 

On too many stories, the press has missed the story. 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. And I know this because at certain points, I have been you. I have felt this way too. I felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn’t reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life, and that the most urgent questions simply weren’t being asked.

 

Liberal critics immediately leaped on Dokoupil and accused him of downgrading CBS News’ standards. Jon Passantino of the media newsletter Status accused him of sending “a clear dog whistle to those on the right who have long nurtured grievances about news coverage that fails to comport with their worldview.”

 

But Dokoupil is hardly a conservative shill. He has leaned hard on liberal talking points for many of his questions to guests on CBS Mornings. His journalism career included stints at the liberal Daily Beast and at MSNBC, where he met his wife, anchor Katy Tur. What Dokoupil often does, however, is challenge conventional wisdom without worrying whether it offends his media colleagues. In 2024, he challenged author Ta-Nehisi Coates on his comparison of Israeli policies toward Palestinians to those of the Jim Crow South. He asked Coates if he objected to “the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place.” Top CBS News executives reprimanded him and said he had violated network standards. Dokoupil refused to back down and defended his interview.

 

In 2020, amid Covid-era measures nationwide, he presented an investigative report CBS had conducted on mail-in voting. His team set up a P. O. box in Philadelphia and mailed themselves 100 “ballots.” The early results were disastrous: “Twenty-one percent of our votes hadn’t materialized after four days.” That number improved, and 97 eventually arrived, but Dokoupil concluded “that means three people who tried to vote by mail in our mock election were, in fact, disenfranchised by mail.” Moreover, “in a close election, three percent could be pivotal, especially in what’s expected to be a record year for mail-in voting.”

 

In his message to viewers last week, Dokoupil clarified his position: “I love talking to people about what works in this country, what doesn’t, and not only what should change, but the good ideas that should never change. I think telling the truth is one of them. . . . Hold me to it.”

 

That’s about as good a mission statement as one could have from a news outlet, along with Dokoupil’s invitation to have the audience monitor his performance. We might soon see one of the four big broadcast networks break from the pack and report from a fresh perspective. NBC, ABC, and PBS may likewise need to step up their game in the transparency department.