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USA Edition | Today Is Friday, March 12, 2010 |
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ABC News' Ted Koppel
There is a higher calling — one that rests in an honored realm beyond the ordinary affairs of men. It is a sacred place — having been erected in the traditions of freedom, and consecrated in the blood of those who have paid the ultimate price in pursuing journalism’s enduring quest for truth. It is called The Honorable House Of The Fourth Estate being that place in the American experience where the bells of freedom ring loud and clear so that all free men and women shall forever know what matters most to their livelihoods, families, communities and nation.
Robert Butche
Founder, Newsroom Magazine
New York
Excellence in television journalism may have been born when CBS and NBC were inventing the medium in the 1950s, but for many, the best traditions in broadcast journalism grew up at ABC under the auspices of Roone Arledge, one of the few network news division executives to earn the respect of both news makers and viewers. Roone Arledge’s first love had been the development and perfection of television sports.
Along with Chuck Howard, and Jim McKay, Arledge effectively invented sports television. He began with ABC Wide World Of Sports then expanded ABC to include full Olympics coverage, Monday Night Football and nearly every other sporting event of his era Then, in 1977, when Arledge was made CEO of ABC News as well as Sports, he made himself a journalist-executive every bit as good as he was at being both sportsman and showman.
Creator Of Programs, Talent and Excellence
Arledge created what is now ABC World News with crusty Frank Reynolds, Max Robinson, and a good looking Canadian, Peter Jennings. When Jennings proved his journalistic qualifications, and his immense abilities at being a skeptical editor, Arledge moved Jennings into the solo anchor chair.
Ted Koppel, ABC News Nightline
In 1980, Arledge moved Ted Koppel, then serving as ABC News’ U.S. State Department reporter, into the anchor chair of a new program he created to cover the Iran hostage crisis, Nightline. For the next quarter-century, Ted Koppel served as anchor and managing editor of Nightline. What Arledge was doing was staffing up his news division with men and women ( Barbara Walters ) known for their journalistic skills and professional standards.
Then, in 1981, Arledge lured David Brinkley into leaving NBC for ABC. Just as he had created a program that well fit Ted Koppel, Arledge created This Week With Brinkley. Unlike those who would succeed him, Roone Arledge was all about doing everything as well as it could be done. Most of those he put into positions of responsibility helped to make ABC News a leader in broadcast journalism. Two of them, Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel became well respected leaders in their profession.
In 2007, Newsroom Magazine spoke of Koppel’s 43 years in broadcast news. We think his words, and ours, have withstood the test of time.
Koppel’s View
What’s happening to television news is a scandal. Funny thing is, since the media is perpetrating this scandal, it goes unreported and unnoticed. Or does it?
“To the extent that we’re now judging journalism by the same standards we apply to entertainment — in other words, give the public what it wants — not necessarily what it ought to hear, what it ought to see, what it needs, but what it wants. That may prove to be one of the greatest tragedies in the history of American journalism.”
Ted Koppel
ABC NewsTed Koppel can be forgiven for focusing on what the commercialization of broadcast news had done to his profession. He spent 43 years in the business, and knows that of which he speaks, but the really significant damage is not to journalism, but to our nation, our freedoms, and our ability to govern ourselves in peace and civility. Journalism, the kind Koppel practiced and about which he speaks, is a fundamental foundation on which a free peoples exist.
The media concentration in this country is a threat to your freedoms and mine. Television news, at all levels in this country, is little more than a ghost of what it once was. The same can be said for newspapers, and journalist driven magazines.
A nation of free peoples cannot stand when the voice of inquiry is silenced in the name of profitability.
The battle against forces seeking our destruction is not in some foreign land, it is not against armies, or militias, or fundamentalism of any sort. The battle is here and now. In newsrooms in every newspaper, every magazine, and every television station in North America.
If you don’t take a stand against it, who will?