Ted Koppel Popular Books

Ted Koppel Biography & Facts

Edward James Martin Koppel (born February 8, 1940) is a British-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline, from the program's inception in 1980 until 2005. Before Nightline, he spent 20 years as a broadcast journalist and news anchor for ABC. After becoming host of Nightline, he was regarded as one of the outstanding serious-minded interviewers on American television. Five years after its 1980 debut, the show had a nightly audience of about 7.5 million viewers.After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel, a news analyst for NPR and BBC World News America and a contributor to Rock Center with Brian Williams. Since 2016, Koppel has served as a special contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning. His career as a foreign and diplomatic correspondent earned him numerous awards, including nine Overseas Press Club awards and 25 Emmy Awards. Early life and education Edward James Martin Koppel, an only child, was born in Nelson, England. His parents were German Jews who fled Germany after the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In Germany, Koppel's father operated a tire-manufacturing company. To help the British economy, the Home Secretary invited him and his wife to move the factory to Lancashire, England, where he was promised they would be protected in the event of war. The factory moved in 1936, but when war broke out in Europe in 1939, Koppel's father was declared an enemy alien and imprisoned on the Isle of Man for a year and a half.Koppel was born in 1940, shortly after his father was taken away. To provide for her infant son, his mother sold her personal jewelry and did menial work in London. After he was released from internment, Koppel's father was not permitted to work in England, nor would he allow his wife to work. Following the end of the war, the family earned some money from their confiscated assets and decided to leave for the United States. While in England, Ted Koppel was a pupil at Abbotsholme School, in Derbyshire. In 1953 when he was 13, the family immigrated to the United States, where his mother, Alice, became a singer and pianist, and his father, Edwin, opened a tire factory. Koppel's boyhood hero was radio broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, whose factual reports during the bombing of London inspired him to become a journalist.After attending the McBurney School, a private preparatory institution in New York, Koppel attended Syracuse University, graduating at age 20 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He was a member of the Alpha Chi chapter of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. One roommate recalled that Koppel "was incredibly focused and had a photographic memory. He remembers almost every conversation he ever had with anybody. And the man never needs sleep."Koppel then went to Stanford University, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in mass-communications research and political science. While at Stanford, he met his future wife, Grace Anne Dorney. Career 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. He was scheduled to do a short report, but a delay during the crisis forced him to ad-lib for an hour and a half.In 1964, he covered his first of many presidential nominating conventions. He also began covering the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama. ABC officials were impressed by Koppel's ability to clarify issues using plain language. In 1966, he became the ABC News correspondent for the Vietnam War, moving from radio broadcasting to national television. He accepted the assignment only after the network agreed to send his wife and their two children to Hong Kong so they could be nearby. Before going he took a course to learn the Vietnamese language.He returned in 1968 to cover the campaign of Richard Nixon, before becoming Hong Kong bureau chief, and U.S. State Department correspondent where Koppel formed a friendship with Henry Kissinger. According to Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman, Koppel's friendship with Kissinger was partly due to their similar backgrounds, having Jewish refugee parents and emigrating to America in their youth.Koppel was among those traveling to China with U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972. He spoke about it with the USC US-China Institute in their "Assignment: China" documentary series about American media coverage of China. 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. He said about Kissinger: "I have a high regard for Henry. He has a first-class mind. A half hour with him gives me a better insight into a foreign policy question than hours with others."In the mid-1970s, Koppel took a year off from his career, to stay home with his children so that his wife could complete her education at Georgetown Law School. Koppel's decision upset ABC News president Roone Arledge, who demoted Koppel from news anchor when he returned to the network.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". For the series he received an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award. Host of Nightline In 1980, Koppel became known for his work as the host of a late night news program called Nightline. The program originated as a series of special reports about the 444-day-long Iran hostage crisis, during which Iranian militants held 52 Americans captive, beginning in early November 1979. At first, the program was called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, and was hosted by Frank Reynolds. Koppel eventually joined Reynolds as co-anchor. In March 1980, the program evolved into Nightline, with Koppel as its host. 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, fr.... Discover the Ted Koppel popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ted Koppel books.