Tony Dokoupil is expected to move from mornings to evenings at CBS News.
Dokoupil, currently the co-host 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 is expected as soon as this week.
A representative for CBS News declined comment. Dokoupil, 44, did not respond to a request for comment.
The news division’s signature program is expected to return to a solo anchor format after pairing John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois over the last year. Both Dickerson and DuBois are departing CBS News later this month.
The appointment of Dokoupil would not point to a major change in direction at the program. Dokoupil, who has been with CBS News since 2016 after three years at NBC, became co-host at CBS Mornings in 2019.
Bari Weiss, the recently appointed editor in chief at CBS News, reportedly expressed a desire to bring in an outside name, including Bret Baier, the Washington-based anchor at conservative-leaning Fox News. CNN’s Anderson Cooper was also discussed internally, but he chose 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 with author Ta-Nehisi Coates last year.
Dokoupil was admonished in an editorial meeting for how he questioned Coates about his new book, “The Message,” which examines the Israel-Gaza conflict. CBS News leadership said on the call that the interview did not meet the company’s editorial standards after receiving a number of complaints from staffers.
A recording of the meeting was posted on the Free Press site.
“It is journalists like Tony Dokoupil who are an endangered species in legacy news organizations, which are wilting to the pressures of this new elite consensus,” the editors of the Free Press wrote on the matter.
Shari Redstone, the former majority shareholder in CBS News parent Paramount, also publicly expressed her support for Dokoupil at the time. She said CBS News executives made “a bad mistake” in their handling of the matter. Both executives who led the editorial call, Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roark, are no longer with the network.
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