CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil’s broadcast from Taiwan ended in chaos on Wednesday after the cameraman suffered a medical emergency on air.
The moment unfolded at the end of Dokoupil’s broadcast from Taipei, the capital of the Republic of China, where he went live from after reportedly failing to get his visa for the People’s Republic of China.
Dokoupil, 45, was in the middle of introducing the summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping when the camera shook, and the broadcast abruptly cut to B-roll footage.
A thud sounded before Dokoupil stopped mid-sentence and asked, “Is he OK?”
After a moment, Dokoupil said over muffled noises in the background, “We’re gonna take a quick break, we have an—a medical emergency here.”
“We’re calling a doctor,” Dokoupil said.
More B-roll footage of Chinese landscapes played before the feed cut to CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman in a studio.
“So I’m going to sign off for Tony Dokoupil, who’s been reporting in Taiwan,” Gutman said. “We’re going to go to break, we’ll be right back.”
CBS Evening News later addressed the incident in a post on its X account, explaining the events that disrupted the live coverage.
“Tonight during the final segment of CBS Evening News, our cameraman on set suffered a medical emergency,” the account wrote, adding, “Thankfully, he’s okay and recovering.”
The broadcast had been plagued by technical issues throughout, with Dokoupil appearing to struggle with his earpiece.
When CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang, who was reporting from Beijing, tried to pass the broadcast back to Dokoupil, saying, “Tony,” the feed cut to a visibly confused Dokoupil holding his earpiece. He remained silent for roughly eight seconds before thanking Jiang and moving on.
A similarly awkward pause unfolded after CBS News foreign correspondent Anna Coren finished her report.
An Emmy-winning network TV executive told the Daily Beast it was “amateur, amateur, amateur hour” and dubbed the broadcast “cascade failure.”
When reached for comment, CBS referred the Daily Beast back to the X post.
Dokoupil is broadcasting from Taipei, while his competitors, NBC News’s Tom Llamas and ABC News’s David Muir, will be anchoring from Beijing, where Trump arrived on Wednesday, roughly 1,070 miles from Taipei.
CBS News was prepared for Dokoupil to provide its viewers with similar coverage, but was forced to position Dokoupil in Taiwan at the last minute, Semafor reported.
It remains unclear whether Dokoupil’s visa issues were due to a late application or another problem, according to Semafor.
At the beginning of the broadcast, Dokoupil acknowledged: “On the surface, it might look like all the action is over there,” referring to Beijing. “...But if you zoom out from the state visit, you see one of the most important geopolitical stories of our time, and the big question tonight, will China, under Xi Jinping, try to take over Taiwan, risking war and economic catastrophe? This is what could happen here on these shores and in these streets if Xi decides to invade.”
The reported visa setback comes as CBS Evening News ratings have been in a free fall since Dokoupil took over the storied program in a rocky debut earlier this year, during which he introduced himself twice within 80 seconds and admitted, “first day, big problems here.”
Ratings for the week of May 4 show that Dokoupil brought in an average of just 3.7 million total viewers and only 473,000 average viewers in the key demo of 25-54 year olds, which TV advertisers closely watch.
The ratings lag significantly behind those of ABC World News Tonight, which averaged 8.2 million total viewers and 976,000 in the key demo, and NBC Nightly News, which averaged 6.1 million total viewers and 903,000 in the key demo.
