Status founder and former CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy took to his newsletter site Tuesday night for a psychotic tut-tutting over the supposed grave of CBS News under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, claiming Weiss’s “catastrophic,” “turbulent” tenure’s “five-alarm fire” has “destroyed” the “trust” “smart” viewers have in the brand in favor of acknowledging humanity in “the MAGA movement.”
With networks looking to promote their allies and spoil their opponents using first-quarter ratings, Darcy chose to take this ball and run with it, starting in the second sentence:
But through a series of actions over her turbulent six-month tenure as editor in chief, it appears the proud anti-woke warrior has instead helped destroy that trust—something that is now laid bare in the network’s rapidly shrinking ratings. Indeed, new ratings data obtained by Status isn’t just bad for Weiss. It is catastrophic.
This pompous prick then boasted Dokoupil’s poised to have the network’s “lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic” at “4.3 million viewers” and “just 541,000 viewers” in the “35-54 audience.” Notice the accounting gimmick he deployed. Unless it was a typo, talk about some shuffling of the deck.
He also argued Weiss’s presence has caused Dokoupil’s former show in CBS Mornings to also tank (although Weiss has not exerted any reported influence over) to record-lows of “1.8 million total viewers” and “35-54 audience…to 268,000.”
“[T]he network’s two flagship daily news programs are seeing their audiences collapse. It’s a remarkable feat, given the unrelenting torrent of headlines emerging from Washington and–now thanks to a war…[T]he numbers from CBS News are an anomaly…where ABC News and NBC News, are both set to post year-over-year gains in total audience in both the mornings and evenings,” he added.
Of course, Darcy purposefully left out the sad-but-true fact about why NBC’s newscasts — and Today (plus 15 percent total viewers) in particular — have seen a gain in ratings for 2026: Nancy Guthrie.
Weiss’s wife Nellie Bowles mocked a chart showing the last seven months of evening news ratings (which, not-so-coincidentally, The Wrap and others have also taken up to bash Dokoupil):
In other words, all three network evening newscasts have seen a drop in March.
That didn’t stop Darcy from piling on his vindictive gruel, mocking Dokoupil’s ratings as “an especially brutal outcome because the bar was so low for him to begin with” given the struggles of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois and his “high-profile launch–complete with…an expensive “Live From America” tour[.]”
A chieftain of the Bluesky Brigade, Darcy tried to have it both ways by both mocking Dokoupil’s numbers and then arguing CBS is chasing away valuable viewers: “Of course, it is not hard to see why. Viewers are smart. They understand that under David Ellison’s ownershoip, and with Weiss at the helm, CBS News has charted a new course for the network–one that is friendlier to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he leads.”
Yes, Oliver. The whole world thinks like you.
Like seemingly all of CBS News’s critics on the left (and right), none of them actually watch CBS News to begin with. Case in point: Darcy’s Dokoupil examples were all from the first two weeks and the 60 Minutes item was from January:
That has played out in a string of high-profile incidents in recent months: Dokoupil’s cringe-inducing on-air “salute” to Marco Rubio; the ride-along segment with Kristi Noem during an immigration raid; the both-sides report marking the January 6 insurrection; the softball Trump interview, in which the supposedly transparent broadcast did not report a brazen legal threat Karoline Leavitt delivered on behalf of the president to the program; and so much more.
That is not to mention Weiss’ unprecedented intervention stalling the “60 Minutes” story on the notorious CECOT prison in Venezuela, her failed attempts to recruit Fox News and MAGA personalities, her chasing away of talent like Anderson Cooper and Scott MacFarlane, and more.
Darcy made one factual error. In the Noem mention, it was homeland security and justice correspondent Nicole Sganga, not Dokoupil (although he interviewed here for CBS Mornings in April 2025).
An anonymous smear later from “a television news veteran” he quoted twice, Darcy excitedly said “CBS News’ new direction…does not appear to be pleasing the CBS News audience” and thus been “driving loyal viewers away” that “should” be “a five-alarm fire for Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski.”
He closed by openly rooting for an end to their tenures (and thus a pivot to a glorified MeidasTouch or TV version of The Atlantic), arguing they face “a brutal uphill battle” and continued “bleeding” since the world sees CBS as “no longer reflect[ing] their values or delivers the kind of aggressive journalism they expect[.]”
In 2026, the CBS Evening News has not been spared of incoming fire from NewsBusters as we’ve penned dozens of stories calling out liberal narratives. So, no matter how hard Darcy and his ilk insist its “MAGA-coded” TV, we’ll continue to call balls and strikes and praise them when they show a commitment to all Americans and slam them when they fall short.
We’ll see if this gets our Status account suspended.
