Ted Koppel made me want to be a journalist.
I don’t remember a specific moment when I realized this, but I do remember that at some point I began to tell everyone that I was going to be a journalist like Ted Koppel and work on a show like Nightline. One of my teachers even wrote in my Sophomore yearbook, “See you on Nightline”. She might have been joking, but I wasn’t.
I went to Missouri to study journalism. I worked at the NBC affiliate in Columbia, Missouri, reporting news and feature stories, and occasionally anchoring the noon and weekend news. By the end of this run, I began to realize that I wasn’t interested in doing 90 second stories on “what can we all do to cool off in this hot weather” or “localizing” (making a national story somehow relevant to the local audience) the latest news from Washington.
The thing I wanted, the kind of reporting they did on Nightline, wasn’t going to be found in whatever local market I might land in. And with so many other people around me who really wanted it, all of them meeting with “consultants” and having their on-air reel evaluated and thinking about doing something different with their hair, I realized that what I really wanted all along was to be a filmmaker. But for some reason before this, I thought being a filmmaker would be harder than being a journalist (hell, every town had journalists, but you had to go to LA or NYC to find a filmmaker, so I reckoned), until I realized the only kind of journalist I’d ever wanted to be was a Nightline journalist.
Flash forward ten years and I’m standing on the Brooklyn side of the East River with then-Nightline correspondent Robert Krulwich. A Nightline producer and crew videotapes us as we intro an episode of Nightline UpClose that is a special edit of my film, Gigantic. Seems They Might Be Giants did some work on a Nightline Primetime series with Krulwich and the gang at ABC News got word of Gigantic and decided to showcase TMBG and the movie by putting 20 minutes of it on network television. The show began with Ted Koppel in the studio tossing to Robert & me in Brooklyn. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it was thrilling to hear Ted Koppel say “filmmaker AJ Schnack” and “let’s go to Robert and AJ in Brooklyn”. It was definitively one of the highlights of the entire path we took during the making and screening of that movie.
I’ve been thinking about all of this and had been planning to write something like this at the end of next month, when Koppel finally leaves ABC News and the program that he made famous. I wrote briefly a week ago about Nightline’s plans to replace Koppel with a trio of anchors, and to move to more of a magazine format - series of shorter stories rather than an in-depth look at a single topic. [Full disclosure: After the UpClose airing, I became friends with a Nightline producer and have occasionally brought up story ideas when they have been open to using reporters and filmmakers outside of ABC News.]
In that same post a week ago, I wrote the following:
Perhaps the new format will allow them to cover
important political stories that the show has seemed
to avoid of late - how else to explain why they have
almost never dealt with the CIA Leak investigation
other than to opine on tainted reporter Judy Miller's
behalf.
In recent months, I had to admit to being somewhat disappointed with Nightline - I'd still Tivo’d it every night, but something was missing. The topics seemed, well, off. There was a story about “the real-life Horse Whisperer” and there was an episode about celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and his plan to change school lunch programs in the UK that seemed to be lifted from a British television program (related or no, Nightline’s new executive producer is James Goldston, former head of Britain’s “most watched current affairs program” and producer of new co-host Martin Bashir’s “Living with Michael Jackson”). There were social justice mini-documentaries about the disabled in Ghana and updates on getting back to normal in New Orleans. While these were of varying degrees of interest, none was what you would call “time-sensitive”. They all seemed like they could have been made or aired at almost any time. Indeed, the Jamie Oliver piece seemed like it had aired, months ago, in the UK.
For the past two weeks, I kept tuning it, waiting to see how they would handle the CIA leak case. The prosecutor was clearly nearing the end of his investigation, indictment(s) were expected and most news programs were running summary packages, explaining the history of the leak case and why it was and may be important. As the gold standard in television journalism, I kept waiting for Nightline to weigh in. And waiting. And waiting.
Thursday night, October 28. The lead story eminates from Washington, but the topic is the withdrawl of Harriet Miers. The leak case is mentioned only as one of a myriad of problems past, present and future for the Bush administration. At the end of Thursday’s broadcast, Ted announces that Friday night’s show will come from Houston, Texas, and the topic will be emergency & disaster preparedness.
I thought, well, you say you’re going to be in Houston, but clearly, if there are indictments tomorrow, you’re gonna have to reschedule.
October 29, 2005. From ABC News, this is a special
edition of Nightline.
Good evening, I’m Ted Koppel and we’re coming to
you tonight live from the Wheeler Avenue Baptist
Church in Houston. We’ll be spending the vast
majority of this program tonight talking about how
prepared or unprepared and vulnerable we all are to
the vast menu of disasters that may be waiting for
us just over the horizon. But we can’t very well go
on the air tonight without acknowledging and briefly
discussing the fact that Vice President Cheney’s Chief
of Staff resigned today. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was
indicted on five criminal counts that, technically at
least, could put him in prison for up to thirty years
with additional fines of up to one and one quarter
million dollars.
Joining me live now from Washington, my Nightline
colleague Chris Bury...
Chris then summarizes the CIA leak case and the charges against Libby, noting specifically that Vice President Cheney was among those who discussed Valerie Plame’s CIA status with Libby. Chris says that the underlying crime - outting a CIA agent (on which Libby was not charged) - is a much more serious felony. Chris ends by saying that Libby says he expects to be fully exonerated.
Ted then throws to White House correspondent Terry Moran who notes that “the other shoe did not drop - the other shoe is Karl Rove”. Says the White House is letting out a huge sigh of relief because even though Patrick Fitzgerald says the investigation continues, his body language leads many, including Rove’s lawyer, to believe that Rove “may be out of the woods.” The focus is on Libby.
Ted asks if this could eventually lead to the Vice President himself. Terry says, “It could,” and goes on to describe hints in the indictment that Libby was not acting alone, that he learned of Plame from the Vice President and that he discussed the info with the Vice President prior to leaking it, even though the prosecutor was careful to say that he was not, as of yesterday, offering any evidence that anyone else was involved.
Terry sums up by repeating that the White House feels they have dodged a bullet.
So far, a bit average. A rote summary of the case from Chris Bury, a questionable speculative report on who may still be in danger from Terry Moran (he’s the only person I’ve heard say that Rove thinks he may be out of the woods), not one clip of Fitzgerald’s news conference where he talks of the gravity of the charges against Libby. Nothing spectacular, nothing appalling.
Yet.
What comes next is one of the most bizarre and certainly sad moments in the history of a program that I have held in supremely high regard for more than two decades. Ted Koppel lets loose on a monologue that could have been written by Donald Rumsfeld or Peggy Noonan, and would certainly be lampooned by the likes of Michael Moore. Hold on to your hats as Ted pivots from the Libby to Disaster Preparedness - or a little something I like to call, “forget about that nonsense, we’re all going to die.”
"Scooter" Libby's indictment today is indisputably a
major story. It was the lead on all the television
network news programs earlier this evening. It will be
the object of banner headlines in all your morning
newspapers tomorrow. As for its real impact on the
lives of most Americans though - not much. Not really.
That's the strange thing about our business, the news
business. Often, what seems so important to us,
reporters that is, is of little or no consequence to many
of you. And then, of course, there are stories like our
main focus tonight - disaster management - that isn't
leading our news programs these days. It has slipped
off of most of the front pages of our major dailies, but
it is of consequence to almost every single one of us.
Millions of Americans will live or die over these next
few years according to how well we are prepared for a
chemical or biological or, God forbid, nuclear attack on
one of our cities. And there's that Avian flu which, we
are told, could one of these days develop into a mass
killer of humans. We are not, in any fashion, ready for
that. Over the past two months, we've had three major
hurricanes hit the gulf coast. One of them, Rita, drove
hundreds of thousands of Houstonians onto the highways
and into one of the largest traffic jams in history...
From there he moves onto his town meeting.
But where to begin?
Point one on how completely wrongheaded this is: Koppel says that a case relating to the White House's leaking of the country's national securities secrets is of little consequence to us, the unwashed masses, because what we really need to worry about is national security - preventing a terrorist attack or dealing with its aftermath. Disconnect much?
Point two: The self-glorifying "thank God someone is still covering stories of real import" implication. As those other news outlets focus on stories that are "so important to us, reporters that is", aka the media "elites", we're here to talk about what's important to you, the people. Gee, thanks Fox.
Point three: Where was this concern for "the really important stories" when Nightline was doing night after night after night of O.J. Simpson trial recaps with Menendez brothers lawyer Leslie Abramson? Where was the "this is just Washington inside baseball mea culpa" during the Lewinski affair?
Point four: As noted above, the straight from the GOP talking points (truthfully, these should be the actual GOP talking points) - Well, the media can keep obsessing over this stuff that only they care about, but we're going to focus on what truly matters: "Millions of Americans will live or die over these next few years according to how well we are prepared for a chemical or biological or, God forbid, nuclear attack on one of our cities." Millions. Die. Chemical. Biological. Nuclear attack. Why would you care about a little thing like perjury. (Not for nothing, Nightline also ran a story in the past three weeks "exposing the nuclear threat posed by terrorists".)
Point five: That the idea actually formulated in Koppel's head and came out of his mouth that it would be of little consequence to Americans whether or not the highest officials in our government leaked our nation's secrets in order to squash a critic, lied about it and covered it up. (Maybe this is why clips of Fitzgerald were nowhere to be seen on Nightline - he so effectively knocked down this idea by talking about how this crime affected "every one of us".)
Ever since Koppel hosted Judy Miller's lawyer Floyd Abrams and blasted Fitzgerald and the judge for sending Judy Miller to jail, I've wondered why Nightline seemed to ignore the issue of the CIA leak. Now I know. Koppel apparently, and it gives me absolutely no joy to write this, does not care about the CIA leak. He finds it of little consequence. No wonder he was so outraged at the July Miller jail sentence (even as many of us already knew she was compromised to the core), he apparently came to the conclusion that the crime at hand was really nothing more than Washington politics-as-usual. How else to explain his position? If he thought it was important, and if he thought that we, the public, didn't grasp its importance, he, as a good journalist, would know that it was his job to explain it to us. He'd tell us why we needed to understand the issue and why we should appreciate its gravity. But instead, he tells us, don't worry, I agree. We're a strange bunch, us reporters. We get worked up over the craziest things. What you really need to do is be afraid. Be very afraid. There are dangers afoot.
Except for those that Nightline refuses to cover. They've got traffic jams to talk about.
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