Tony Dokoupil will take over as the new anchor of “CBS Evening News,” the network announced on Wednesday.
Dokoupil, 44, is currently one of three anchors of “CBS Mornings,” which he has co-hosted with Gayle King and Nate Burleson since 2019.
“After 20 years in journalism, traveling through all 50 states and talking with people in hundreds of far-flung American places, I realize why a country this big needs a show this ambitious,” Dokoupil said in a statement. “The strength of our nation is that we benefit from fair reporting and the open discussion of all ideas. … I’m honored to join a fearless team at this important moment, and with what I can promise is a commitment to trust and the plain truth.”
Dokoupil will take over the role on Jan. 5 for the dual-anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who announced their departures from CBS earlier this year.
Their announcements came after Paramount purchased CBS and installed former New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of the company’s news operations.
“We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in the media. Tony Dokoupil is the person to win it back,” Weiss said. “That’s because he believes in old-school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead and holding power to account.”
Weiss’ post-NYT outlet, the Free Press, covered a CBS News controversy surrounding Dokoupil last year. CBS executives publicly reprimanded Dokoupil for his questioning of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates about an Israel-Palestine piece Coates had written.
“It is journalists like Tony Dokoupil who are an endangered species in legacy news organizations,” the Free Press wrote in an opinion piece on the controversy.
Dokoupil, who’s married to MS NOW’s Katy Tur, began working at CBS in 2016. He previously worked for MSNBC, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, also authoring a book about his father’s life as a drug smuggler, “The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana.”
“CBS Evening News” has lagged behind its broadcast competitors at ABC and NBC in ratings, with ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” pulling in the best numbers for several years running.
NBC also recently switched its news anchor, with Tom Llamas taking over for the retiring Lester Holt in March.
