Anyone of a certain age remembers that CBS was once hailed as ‘The Tiffany Network.’  The network had a reputation for excellence, especially when it came to news and the journalism giants who followed in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow.

To illustrate how far the mighty have fallen, consider a startling statistic: In the 60s and 70s, the ‘CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite’ was must-see-TV for nearly 30 million Americans!  Now, even though the population of the US has almost doubled, only 4 million tune in to the Evening News. True, network news viewing is down across the board, but no one has come crashing down like CBS.

The network’s latest stab at relevancy came earlier this year when it installed co-anchors Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson.  Dickerson’s pomposity was only exceeded by an anti-Trump bias that showed through on nearly every little-watched episode.  The duo’s anchor chairs barely had time to get warm before they signed off a week ago. 

Meanwhile, the staff at CBS News is in open revolt because a new boss and another anchor may try to exhibit just a bit of fairness.  The newly-installed editor-in-chief is Bari Weiss, a former editorial writer at the New York Times who quit the paper because of its shift to the extreme left.  Weiss, a Jewish and lesbian old-school liberal, is not exactly MAGA material, but her pro-Israel and anti-woke stances make her persona non grata in the newsroom.

Weiss has named 44-year-old Tony Dokoupil as the anchor who will front the CBS Evening News.  One anonymous ‘journalist’ referred to him as a ‘mediocre straight white man,’ which tells you all you need to know about the prevailing newsroom culture.  Dokoupil raised the ire of lefties when he had the temerity to ask a few tough questions of author Ta-Nehisi Coates, a revered figure among ‘progressives.’  While co-hosting the CBS morning show, Dokoupil challenged Coates’ latest anti-Israel screed; network suits felt the need to apologize to the staff and reprimand Dokoupil.

Now, still another incident is causing CBS apparatchiks to collectively gnash teeth, clutch pearls, and head for the fainting couch.  A ’60 Minutes’ segment on the notorious prison in El Salvador that houses Venezuelans deported from the US was pulled by Bari Weiss at the last minute.  ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, as reliably liberal as her colleagues, is crying ‘corporate censorship’ and hurling verbal darts at Weiss.  Some employees are reportedly threatening to quit, but of course, that’s a threat that is rarely carried out.  The once-revered ‘60 Minutes’ was accused of editing an interview with Kamala Harris to make her look at least slightly coherent and routinely tries to damage Donald Trump.  

So as CBS News rings in 2026, Tony Dokoupil will try to succeed where many others have failed, most recently Katie Couric, Scott Pelley, Jeff Glor, Norah O’Donnell, and the inglorious DuBois/Dickerson duo.

Meanwhile, Bari Weiss will do her best to restore the news operation to some measure of its former grandeur. Trying to right the CBS News ship brings to mind an analogy:  Dropping and shattering a Tiffany lamp is quite easy; putting it back together is a whole different story.