For Koppel, there is life after 'Nightline'

<p>Here's what you probably know about Ted Koppel: He served as prominent anchor of ABC's "Nightline" for 25 years, then left the network to make documentaries for the Discovery Channel and provide commentary to NPR's "Morning Edition" and the New York Times.</p><p>And here's what you may not know: Koppel wasn't ABC's first choice to host "Nightline," and his close relationship with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- who tried to hire Koppel as State Department spokesman in 1974 -- led media analysts to question his objectivity.</p><p>Koppel, 70, appears twice next week at the Marin Center, speaking about current events.</p><p>Born in England to German-Jewish parents who'd fled Nazi Germany, Koppel moved to the U.S. with his family in 1953. The arc of Koppel's career, more than four decades in TV journalism and not over yet, begins at the height of the network news era.</p><p>Koppel joined ABC as a radio reporter in the early 1960s and by 1966 was working for ABC's TV news division, covering the Vietnam War.</p><p>Back then, the network "didn't care what the hell the news division did," Koppel told PBS's "Frontline" in 2006.</p><p>"They gave the news division a few million dollars a year, and said, 'Here it is; go do whatever it is you people do, and do not come back for any more money.' "</p><p>But during the 1970s, when CBS's "60 Minutes" showed that a news division could rake in big bucks, ABC began itching to broaden its news coverage.</p><p>ABC's Roone Arledge wanted to expand the evening news program to onehour, Koppel said, but the network's affiliates were making too much money to give back the time slot.</p><p>Then the Iran hostage crisis began in November 1979. That was the story Arledge had been waiting for, the story with legs, that led to the creation of "Nightline" in early 1980 and the ascension of Koppel as one of the country's most prominent TV news journalists.</p><p>Yet he wasn't ABC's first choice to anchor "Nightline," Koppel said.</p><p>"They wanted Dan (Rather) to do it. They wanted Tom Brokaw. They wanted Roger Mudd," Koppel told "Frontline."</p><p>"And when they couldn't get any of them, they just said, 'OK, guess it will have to be Ted.' "</p><p>The show was an immediate success, proving that viewers hungered for TV news coverage with greater depth.</p><p>Koppel said "Nightline" in those early days often had more viewers than Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" and was grossing more than $100 million a year.</p><p>Nightline continued after the Iran hostage crisis ended, and Koppel became widely lauded for his intellect and incisive interviews.</p><p>But a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a national media watchdog group, found that almost all his guests came from inside the Washington D.C. Beltway.</p><p>And progressives found Koppel's close relationship with Kissinger, one of his most frequent guests, troubling.</p><p>"Koppel's multi-decade public infatuation with Kissinger, and vice versa, is a sad indication of how enmeshed Koppel has been with the assumptions of official U.S. foreign policy, including the proclivities of the warfare state," said Norman Solomon, author of "War Made Easy."</p><p>Despite Kissinger's involvement, as President Nixon's secretary of state, with bombings that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and his probable role in helping elevate Augusto Pinochet as ruler of Chile, Koppel has praised him effusively.</p><p>"Henry Kissinger is, plain and simply, the best secretary of state we have had in 20, maybe 30 years -- certainly one of the two or three great secretaries of state of our century," Koppel said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review in 1989.</p><p>In 2006, when it was announced Koppel would join NPR, Solomon, who lives in west Marin County, criticized Koppel for not providing alternative perspectives, especially during the run-up to the Iraq war.</p><p>"Koppel's show was primarily a conveyor belt for elite opinion at crucial junctures," Solomon said. "Later, if he got around to exposing official deception, he was apt to debunk propaganda that he helped to spread in the first place."</p><p>Reflecting on the Iraq war coverage, Koppel told "Frontline" that criticisms were "legitimate."</p><p>All news outlets "could have done more," he said. "Part of the problem is, who knew? . . . I accepted at face value, because it made perfectly good sense to me, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."</p><p>During its 30 years, "Nightline" has seen its audience chipped away by the Internet, cable news shows and entertainment programs, such as the satirical "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."</p><p>Yet Koppel's name has become more prominent than the show he once anchored. His Discovery Channel programs, especially his documentary on Iran, drew much of their praise because Koppel was host. In his noteworthy Iran program, Koppel interviewed ordinary Iranians to give Americans a clearer, fairer view of life in that country.</p><p>But Koppel said it's not just about his name: When he's working for major news outlet, a producer or editor checks his work, which isn't the case for the work of most citizen journalists, who often toss unvetted reports online.</p><p>"In the final analysis," Koppel said, "the most important thing about journalism is editing."</p><p>Michael Shapiro writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat.</p>