SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly sounded off Thursday with a blunt assessment of the state of American media, declaring the death of legacy news outlets and predicting that “nothing will happen at CBS,” no matter who sits behind the anchor desk.
Kelly made the remarks in a post on X after seeing a clip of incoming CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil telling viewers they should demand that he “earn” their trust. Kelly seized on the moment to unload on the network and the broader evening news model.
“Nothing will happen at CBS,” Kelly wrote. “Nothing. Legacy media is dead and evening news has been totally irrelevant for a long time.” She added that CBS has not had a competitive evening audience in more than a decade and argued the decline is permanent. “It’s not reversible,” she said.
Dokoupil’s comments came as part of an effort to acknowledge public skepticism toward mainstream media. In his original remarks, he agreed with critics who say news organizations have not always told viewers the full truth or reflected reality. Kelly, however, dismissed the gesture as far too little and far too late.
The social media exchange unfolded amid a wider conservative media feud that erupted at Turning Point USA’s America Fest. At the event, commentator Ben Shapiro publicly blasted fellow conservatives, including Kelly and Tucker Carlson, for refusing to denounce conspiracy theories promoted by Candace Owens regarding the death of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
A transcript of Shapiro’s speech was later published by The Free Press under the headline “Only Cowards Tolerate Conspiracy Theorists.” The piece intensified tensions among right-leaning media figures and set off a fresh round of online sparring.
Kelly soon found herself in the middle of the fallout after GOP pollster Frank Luntz questioned her about what he described as a rapid shift in her attitude toward Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press. Kelly responded by turning Weiss’s own language back on her and warning that she was done pulling punches.
“I was reliably informed this week that it is cowardly not to call out your friends with the unvarnished truth about their defects,” Kelly wrote on X. “So my days of being a polite friend (to her) are over. And there’s more truth coming.”
Kelly’s declaration about CBS and legacy media fit neatly into her broader argument that traditional news institutions have lost credibility and relevance. She has long argued that corporate networks are unable or unwilling to reform themselves, even as trust in media continues to erode.
By dismissing Dokoupil’s call to “earn” viewer trust, Kelly suggested that individual anchors cannot fix what she sees as a fundamentally broken system. For her, the problem is structural: shrinking audiences, years of perceived bias, and a failure to adapt to a media environment where independent voices now dominate.
The episode underscores how fractured the conservative media landscape has become, with disputes no longer limited to left-versus-right battles but increasingly spilling into public fights among prominent figures on the same side. At the same time, Kelly’s comments reflect a widely held belief among conservatives that the era of appointment television and trusted network news is over for good.
In Kelly’s view, CBS’s struggles are not an exception but a symbol of a broader collapse. And no amount of rebranding, new anchors, or promises to “earn” trust will change that reality.
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