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"Good evening. This is a new broadcast in the sense that it is permanent and will continue after the Iran crisis is over," Ted Koppel, the show's 40-year-old anchor, intoned evenly. "There will also be nights when Iran is not the major story, when we'll bring you briefly up-to-date on Iran but will focus on some other story."
And it was good.
Or was it?
"The premiere did not provide viewers with anything worth knowing. . . . The gambit was cheaply theatrical, mawkish and self-promotional. . . . Of course, it wasn't really news at all. It was new news, neo-news, non-news, pseudo-news, a sugary news substitute. Newsohol. In fact the program was produced like an entertainment show," wrote Tom Shales, television critic of the Washington Post, whose caustic words now aptly describe every news show except Nightline.
Less than a year later, Shales would abjure his first impression, calling Nightline "the most successful programming initiative in ABC News history" and lauding Koppel for his "bull's-eye interviewing style," which he described as "a verbal and rhetorical combination of Sugar Ray Leonard and Mikhail Baryshnikov."
Four thousand-plus shows to his credit, tenacity and grace continue to characterize Ted Koppel's approach. He is the second degree of separation for a public looking to question those whose actions define our days. "There is a phenomenon that takes place during a television interview; it is something unseen and very difficult to prove but nevertheless I know that it is so," explains Ted Koppel from his D.C. office, where a computer shares space with a manual typewriter, creating a curious combination of modernity and nostalgia that reveals an aspect of Koppel's character.
"When an interview begins, the audience out there is by and large identifying with the interviewer. The interviewer is their surrogate. The audience is sitting there and saying either consciously or subconsciously, if I were interviewing President Clinton, here's what I would ask. "And again, consciously or subconsciously, as each answer comes in there is a point at which they say either that was a terrific answer, I hope he follows up on that, or that was a really evasive answer, don't let him get away with that."
That distinct Koppel pause fills the space between us. He steps back from the trees to glimpse the forest.
"A live interview on television is more than an interview-it is the whole editorial process: it is the interview, it is the editing, it is the structuring and restructuring of a story on the spot," says Koppel.
"I almost never have prepared questions in front of me. . . . I usually have an idea, when I walk in the studio, about where I want to begin, but that's about it. The reason? I want to be engaged in a genuine conversation with my guests."
Such reflections appear throughout Nightline: History in the Making and the Making of Television, co-authored by Koppel and former Nightline producer Kyle Gibson. The book chronicles 16 years of history's seminal and, at times, trivial moments from an array of perspectives-an approach that mirrors the show's judicious format. We get the story behind the story behind the story of events as seemingly incongruous as the end of apartheid in South Africa and the death of John Belushi. We step away from our private memories to revisit times shared collectively. And we return to ourselves informed, enriched, and, yes, entertained.
"We both agreed that the book should be somewhat irreverent," says Kyle Gibson, who assumed the bulk of the writing duties. "Ted said if you write anything that makes me sound self-aggrandizing, I'll pull it. Our book had to have a sense of humor even in its most serious moments."
Time in Koppel's company makes apparent his arid wit and penchant for comedic understatement. A specious idea strikes him as "curious in the extreme" and a furrowed brow delivers eloquently more than one punch line. Ever-serious in discussions of ideas, Koppel, nonetheless, never strays too far from humor, especially the sort that novelist Milan Kundera defined as "the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity . . . the strange pleasure that comes of the certainty that there is no certainty."
Humor provides distance which in turn provides perspective, and Koppel sees with concerned detachment the role of journalists. He cautioned his collaborator not to mistake news reporters for news makers.
"Ted firmly believes that Nightline has rarely if ever affected policy,Ó Gibson says, a note of suspicion evident in her tone-for the appearances on Nightline by such public figures as South Africa's former foreign minister, Pik Botha, a politically enervated Michael Dukakis, and an agenda-driven Ferdinand Marcos suggest otherwise.
Koppel's belief, doubtless more humble than disingenuous, begins to explain his meaningful longevity in an often ephemeral profession. He assumes responsibility. He will not pillory a public that continues to scapegoat the media. Invited to discuss the standards to which he would hold viewers, Koppel declines.
"I don't think I have any right to expect any standard from them; it's their choice to watch," says Koppel, elongating each "any" for emphasis. "If my colleagues and I are not clear, are not interesting, if we are not entertaining, then it is reasonable to assume that people will stop watching us in droves."
The dizzying pace at which we transmit information today at times pulls Nightline away from stories that warrant a sustained attempt at understanding. The protean nature of the show, nonetheless, provides an opportunity to turn a glance into a stare. Of the thousands of topics considered throughout the years on Nightline, a number continue to trouble Koppel. One in particular stands out.
"I think that arguably the most inflammatory, important and, yes, in some respects, interesting issue in America today is the issue of race," states Koppel. "And we have just committed ourselves to what will be-at least as far as my involvement in Nightline is concerned-an endless series of programs on the issue of race."
Responsibility. Morality. Ethics. Objectivity. Nebulous terms. Slippery abstractions. Paradoxically, mention of them suggests their absence. Shaped in contemplation and evidenced in action, such concepts, ideally, form the underpinnings of journalism, a profession repeatedly, and often justly, fingered as one cause of society's sundry ills. Koppel mentions none of these words during our interview, yet they echo sharply from his responses.
"There is a reason that societies develop a mode of behavior that is commonly referred to as courtesy," says Koppel, commenting on today's social climate. "And to the degree that we are a courteous culture, to the degree that we pay any sort of attention to these rules, we find that our lives with one another can be rather harmonious.
"To the degree that we decide not to care, and not to pay too much attention to these customs, we find ourselves caught in the consequences: violence, litigation, distrust and so on."
"We have become so horrified by the complexity of law, by the tendency toward litigation, by the paradox that exists between political correctness on the one hand and a move toward obscenity and a total disregard of any kind of courtesy on the other. We are a confused nation that is now looking for some kind of simplicity again. That's why we're moving toward deregulation; that's why we're moving toward less and less government intervention. That's why we're moving toward, ironically, legislation that is trying to do away with litigation."
"All of this is a search for what is perceived as a simpler, gentler time and mode of life, which probably did exist at one time or another." Reluctant to romanticize a time of grave injustice, Koppel acknowledges the shortcomings of the recent past and the rose coloring of nostalgia before locating something of value in yesterday's yesterday, something he believes is in short supply today-shame.
"Did young men look at dirty magazines in the 1950s? Of course they did, but at least they were a little bit ashamed. I mean they recognized that there was such a thing as shame, and shame does have a valuable contribution to make. Today having no shame presupposes that there is nothing worthy of shame: there is nothing that anyone of us is capable of doing that we should be ashamed of doing. Well, I think that's a ludicrous principle. The threshold for shame keeps getting raised."
Such ideas could ring quaint and wistful if not prudish in the mouth of another. But Koppel's candor and sincerity, cultivated in the public eye for the past 16 years, bolster his convictions. And his view of history explains his sober optimism.
"I think we're reaching a point in the United States where the pendulum is beginning to swing in the other direction in matters of civility. Within the recent past that pendulum has swung as far as is reasonably healthy for any country."
Forthcoming in discussions of issues and ideas, Koppel nonetheless remains reticent when asked about personal matters. And he should, for he has accomplished that rarest of feats: blurring the line between who he is and what he does. Need we witness the private dramas of a man who in 1987 told Al Campanis, then vice president of the Los Angeles Dodgers, in no uncertain terms that his perspective on race sounded like garbage? What confession from an intimate would shed more light on Koppel's character than his candid admission following the 1995 broadcast of an execution?
"If I had been expecting a moment of revelation, it did not come. What horrified me is that I had no reaction. It was so sterile, it was so professionally done-so smooth, so clean."
The profession that attracted a young man of nascent character now bears the stamp of his identity.
"I think you'll find that a great many professional journalists are people who were fairly shy as children and who value the protective cloak of an institutional identity," suggests Koppel. "I mean, being able to say hello my name is Joe Smith of ABC News is very nice. When you're young it gives you the credibility that you might otherwise lack in the eyes of the people with whom you're talking. Secondly it gives you permission to ask questions you might not otherwise be permitted to ask."
Koppel, of course, has his detractors. Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice-presidential candidate in history, still regards him as "rude, arrogant, pompous, pedantic and sexist," animus born of their 1984 exchange. Others note an absence of deference in Koppel's interviews with world leaders.
"A year and a half ago, when I was in Russia with President Clinton, there was some criticism of my questioning him as though he were an equal of mine. And my point was I have no illusions about our relationship: I know he's President of the United States, and I'm a television anchor. Those things are not of equal standing. But for the half hour that the program is on, anyone who agrees to come on as a guest is agreeing to field provocative questions.
"And as a surrogate for the millions of people watching the program that night, I feel I have the right to ask such questions."
Ron Fletcher is a freelance writer in Boston, Massachusetts.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.