CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil hammered by insiders as 'useful idiot,' brutal report reveals

CBS “Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil is being portrayed as a “useful idiot” who landed the top job because he is “good eye candy” and was boss Bari Weiss’ “seventh or eighth choice,” according to a brutal new report.More than a dozen current and former staffers at the Tiffany Network’s news division, speaking anonymously to Vanity Fair, blasted Dokoupil’s rapid rise and questioned whether he is equipped to lead the struggling broadcast.“Tony has the biggest case of imposter syndrome out of any anchor or correspondent I’ve ever worked with,” a former producer who worked with Dokoupil told Vanity Fair, noting his view that Dokoupil is out of his depth.“And they’re filled with it, because they’re all full of vanity.But Tony knows he wasn’t ready for the chair.”The report claimed that Dokoupil’s position was undercut from the outset, with insiders telling Vanity Fair that Weiss had initially pursued bigger marquee names — including Bret Baier and Anderson Cooper — before ultimately landing on him after those efforts fell through.One industry source said Weiss “called everyone on planet Earth,” reinforcing the perception inside CBS that Dokoupil was not the first-choice hire but a fallback option, a dynamic that has shadowed his tenure from day one.Weiss further undermined her star anchor after she personally intervened in the script during his very first broadcast — an unusual move that backfired when her edits were mistakenly inserted twice into the teleprompter, according to Vanity Fair.The duplication left Dokoupil visibly flustered on air, stumbling through the segment before telling viewers, “First day, big problems here,” in an awkward debut that set the tone for his tenure.CBS News disputes that characterization.CBS News backed Dokoupil, telling The Post: “Tony Dokoupil is an exceptional talent and experienced journalist who continues to build a program designed to reach audiences wherever they consume t...