Early career Koppel had a brief stint as a teacher before being hired as a
copyboy at
The New York Times and as a writer at
WMCA Radio in New York. In June 1963, he became the youngest correspondent ever hired by
ABC Radio News, working on the daily
Flair Reports program. His coverage of the
Kennedy assassination in 1963 with
Charles Osgood caused the national news audience to take notice. Koppel likened the trip to a "journey to the dark side of the moon". By 1975, he was anchoring the ABC Evening News on Saturdays, and he continued to file reports for ABC Radio. Koppel would often report on State Department foreign conferences, as when he traveled with Kissinger during his meetings in Egypt and Israel in 1975. In April 1979, he was lead reporter for an eleven-segment series, "Second to None?", which focused on explaining the dangers of nuclear war. He did his own research and wanted to present "complex material to an audience that hasn't paid much attention in the past but must in the future ...
if there is to be a future". Koppel spent twenty-five years anchoring the program, before leaving ABC and
Nightline in late November 2005. While hosting
Nightline, Koppel also hosted a series of special programs called
Viewpoint, beginning in 1981, which provided media criticism and analysis. The show was envisioned by ABC News Vice President George Watson as a way to address any media bias that viewers might believe that they encountered on the network. Broadcast before a live audience, it provided viewers with a chance to question how stories were reported or critique television news.
Viewpoint was broadcast sporadically, from 1981 until 1997. Some liberal groups suggested that Koppel was a conduit for the government's point of view and accused him of favoring conservatives when selecting guests. In the late 1980s, the progressive media criticism organization
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) claimed that policymakers and ex-officials dominated the
Nightline guest list, with critics of foreign policy less visible. In 1987,
Newsweek called him the "quintessential establishment journalist". Koppel responded that "We are governed by the president and his cabinet and their people. And they are the ones who are responsible for our foreign policy, and they are the ones I want to talk to". In 1990, Koppel interviewed
Nelson Mandela in a US-style
town hall meeting. Also in 1990, ABC News ran a one-hour special called "The Best of Nightline with Ted Koppel". In 1997,
Nate Thayer, a journalist writing for the
Far Eastern Economic Review who later interviewed
Pol Pot shortly before the latter's death, claimed that Koppel and
ABC News made a
verbal agreement with Thayer for the exclusive North American rights to use video from a show trial of Pol Pot that Thayer and Asiaworks Television videographer David McKaige witnessed on
Nightline. Thayer claimed ABC purportedly violated that agreement by posting
screenshot stills of video from the interview on
ABCNews.com, violating the license as the site was accessible throughout the world, though not uploading the actual video. On November 22, 2005, Koppel stepped down from
Nightline after 25 years with the program and left ABC after 42 years with the network. His final
Nightline broadcast did not feature clips highlighting memorable interviews and famous moments from his tenure as host, as is typical when an anchor retires. Instead, the show replayed an episode of
Nightline with Koppel's 1995 interviews with retired
Brandeis University sociology professor
Morrie Schwartz, who was dying of
Lou Gehrig's disease. On March 24, 2020, Koppel made a guest appearance on
Nightline to mark the program's 40th anniversary, discussing how he and his wife had been coping with the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Post-ABC career Following
Nightline Koppel has taken on a number of roles which span various formats of
news media: • He signed up as an
op-ed-contributing
columnist, effective January 29, 2006, for
The New York Times, • Following his departure from
Nightline Koppel formed a three-year partnership with Discovery Communications as managing editor of the
Discovery Channel. While at Discovery, Koppel produced several lengthy documentaries on a variety of subjects including a 2008 four-hour miniseries on China, which Koppel "ranks with some of the work that [he is] most proud of over the years". The four-part
documentary, called ''The People's Republic of Capitalism'', is an extensive look at the fast-changing country. It takes a look at the role of Chinese consumers in the growing yet
communist economy. Koppel and Discovery Communications parted ways in November 2008, terminating their contract six months early, prompting rumors that Koppel would be hired for NBC's
Meet the Press. Koppel stated that he was not interested in the job. As such, he participated in the annual
NPR Fourth of July reading of the
Declaration of Independence in 2007. Koppel ended his regular commentary on NPR in April 2008, and last appeared as a news analyst on the network in 2014. • Koppel made occasional guest appearances on
The Daily Show appearing in extreme close-up as a disembodied head, acting as
Jon Stewart's journalistic conscience, sometimes as the replacement for the so-called "Giant Head of
Brian Williams" projected on the screen behind Stewart. Koppel has jokingly insisted that "this is the actual size of [Koppel's] head" • Koppel worked for
BBC World News America as a "contributing analyst" covering the
2008 Republican National Convention and the
2008 Democratic National Convention and hosted a special edition of the program in 2011. • On December 12, 2011, Koppel made his first appearance on
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams as a reporter. He would later become a special correspondent for NBC's
Rock Center until the show's cancellation. • On August 6, 2013,
The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Koppel entitled "America's Chronic Overreaction to Terrorism". • In 2015 Koppel published the book,
Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, about the potential of a major cyber-attack on America's power grid. • Since March 2016 Koppel has served as a special contributor to
CBS News Sunday Morning. ==Honors and awards==