Tony Dokoupil
Tony Dokoupil is an American broadcast journalist and author who has been the anchor of the CBS Evening News since January 2026. He was previously the co-host of CBS's morning program, CBS Mornings. Before joining the network in 2016, he was a news correspondent for NBCNews and MSNBC and a writer at Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
Early life and career
Dokoupil was born in Connecticut on December 24, 1980. He is of Czech descent. His mother, Ann, worked as a teacher, while his father, Anthony, was a marijuana dealer. Growing up, Dokoupil was told of his father's involvement in real estate, which was a front.His family relocated to Miami in 1981. Dokoupil, his mother, and his step-father Ray relocated to Maryland in 1992, shortly after his father's drug operation received greater attention from law enforcement. In Maryland, he attended Severna Park High School, where he played on the baseball team. Dokoupil anchored his third Evening News broadcast from Miami, tearing up as he spoke of being "robbed of the full Miami experience" because of his father's legal troubles.
He attended George Washington University, where he received a bachelor's degree in business administration and played NCAA Division 1 baseball, graduating in 2002. Dokoupil earned a master's degree in American studies from Columbia University and spent two years on a PhD track fellowship in media studies at Columbia before leaving to pursue journalism in 2007.
From 2007 to 2013, Dokoupil was a senior writer at Newsweek and the website The Daily Beast. In September 2013, he joined NBC News as a senior writer. He released a memoir titled The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana on April 1, 2014. He later became a reporter on MSNBC.
Though he originally focused on news-gathering and writing in his career, he shifted to on-screen reporting with MSNBC. On January 5, 2016, Dokoupil made one of his earliest appearances when he interviewed militia-member LaVoy Finicum live on-air during the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
''CBS Mornings''
Following his departure from NBC News and MSNBC, Dokoupil joined CBS News as a New York-based correspondent in August 2016.On May 6, 2019, Dokoupil was named the new co-anchor of the morning program CBS This Morning. he made his debut on May 20.
In September 2024, Dokoupil and Adriana Diaz began hosting CBS Mornings Plus, a new third hour of CBS Mornings. The move followed other broadcast networks expanding their morning shows in previous years. In October 2024, The New York Times described Dokoupil as a rising star at the network.
Controversies
On September 30, 2024, Dokoupil discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with author Ta-Nehisi Coates during the latter's appearance on CBS Mornings to promote the book The Message. Dokoupil implied that the book reads like the work of an extremist and questioned Coates about his opinion regarding Israel's right to exist. Some CBS staffers were angered by the interview, and CBS executive Adrienne Roark said that an internal review found that it did not meet network standards. Shortly after the October 7 attacks, Dokoupil had spoken about how he struggled to separate his views as a journalist from his fear for the safety of his children from his first marriage, who live in Israel with their mother.Dokoupil was defended by Paramount chair Shari Redstone and other CBS staffers, including Jan Crawford, who argued that Dokoupil was journalistically correct to challenge Coates's argument.
The following April, Dokoupil interviewed North [Carolina Tar Heels football] head coach Bill Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, for CBS’ Sunday Morning. The six-time Super Bowl–winning coach insisted that the segment was intended to promote his football memoir, The Art of Winning. However, CBS stated that it had informed Belichick that Dokoupil would discuss a wider variety of topics, including the 73-year-old’s relationship with Hudson, 24, who immediately told Belichick not to answer the question about how they met when Dokoupil asked him about it. "There were no preconditions or limitations to this conversation," the network said. Belichick felt that the final piece that aired painted Hudson as "attempting to control the conversation — which is simply not true".
''CBS Evening News''
In October 2025 it was reported that Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, was considering Dokoupil to replace John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois as anchor of CBS Evening News in order to remake the program and increase the program's viewership. Other reported candidates included former Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell, 60 Minutes correspondent and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, and both Dana Perino and Bret Baier of Fox News. Dokoupil became the new anchor of the program. His first day was set for January 5, 2026. Because of the 2026 [United States strikes in Venezuela|United States strikes in Venezuela], his first day was Saturday, January 3, 2026.The official CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil debuted as scheduled on January 5. The broadcast included stories about Venezuela, including one on Nicolas Maduro's United States v. Maduro [et al.|New York City trial], and spotlights on Delcy Rodriguez and Maria Corina Machado. Dokoupil's sign-off phrase from his debut was "that's another day in America."
Dokoupil's version of the Evening News also restored other features from its past including a retro anchor desk in front of an active newsroom and an opening theme from Dan Rather's tenure as anchor.
The January 5th premiere broadcast drew 4.37 million viewers, according to Nielsen, around 9 percent above the program's Q4 average of 4.02 million. The viewership for the show on the same day a year earlier was 5.69 million and Dickerson and DuBois's debut—on January 27, 2025—reached about 5.35 million. The debut episode still reached a smaller audience than the January 5, 2026 broadcasts of both NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight.
Criticism
Varietys Chief TV Critic Daniel D'Addario called Dokoupil's debut an "inauspicious" sign for the network's future news programs, arguing that he was chosen to follow Weiss's agenda, "but Dokoupil lacks the charisma and aptitude to turn the Evening News into whatever it is she may want," later comparing Dokoupil's performance as an anchor to that of Jerry Springer. Jeff Jarvis—writing for former Evening News anchor Katie Couric's website Couric Media—wrote that it was "a nail in the coffin" for the reputation of CBS News.Reviewers have also criticized Dokoupil's Evening News for undue deference to Trump administration officials, including multiple interviews with Pete Hegseth, an embedded interview with Kristi Noem and ICE, and a "salute" to Marco Rubio as "the ultimate Florida Man." Margaret Sullivan argued that Dokoupil and CBS were was representative of a Trump sycophancy in the mainstream media with its "Fox Lite" approach.
Some conservative commentators, including Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, expressed optimism about CBS and Dokoupil's rightward shift. Others, like Sean Spicer, have rejected Dokoupil, with Spicer claiming that he was trying to gaslight conservatives into forgetting his tenure on the ostensibly liberal CBS Mornings. Megyn Kelly also criticized Dokoupil for tearing up about his early life in Miami, citing him on her The [Megyn Kelly Show|podcast] as a key example of the "feminization of the newsroom."
Personal life
Dokoupil's first wife, Danielle Haas, filed for divorce in 2015. She later relocated with the couple's two children to Israel. After around two years of dating, Dokoupil eloped with fellow broadcast journalist Katy Tur in October 2017. They have two children together. After the birth of his fourth child, Dokoupil announced on CBS Mornings that he had undergone a vasectomy, urging other men to consider it to take on the burden of birth control from their female partners.Dokoupil converted to Judaism in 2008 while engaged to Haas. He took classes at a progressive synagogue in Manhattan and received a second circumcision as an adult to complete his conversion, which he wrote about for The New Republic.