Koppel: Charges he's unpatriotic beneath contempt

JoFerret

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Apr-30-04 08:50 PM
Original message

Koppel: Charges he's unpatriotic beneath contempt

Edited on Fri Apr-30-04 08:53 PM by JoFerret

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/30/koppel/

....
KOPPEL: Oh, I thought we'd have people who would question our motives. They always do. But, I mean, the fact that the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, for example, would charge me with being unpatriotic, would say I was doing this to undermine the war effort, I think is beneath contempt, quite frankly.

COOPER: Let me quote you two things that they have said in their statement. One, "Mr. Koppel and 'Nightline' are hiding behind the so-called tribute in an effort to highlight only one aspect of the war effort, and in doing so to influence public opinion against the military action in Iraq."

KOPPEL: Yeah. If this were the only thing that "Nightline" had been doing on Iraq or the only thing that "Nightline" was doing in Iraq, that might have some merit to it. I think of all the programs on network television, "Nightline" probably has done more on Iraq over the last 18 months than any other program out there. To suggest that this program exists in a vacuum by itself is just to ignore reality.

COOPER: The other thing that Sinclair brings up, they say, quote, "before you judge our decision, however, we would ask you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorist attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001."

I don't quite get the analogy, but I put it to you.

KOPPEL: I don't either. And it ignores the fact that we have done any number of programs in tribute to the people who have died on 9/11.

And ABC News as a whole has done live coverage of the reading of the names of the people who died on 9/11. I'm not quite sure what he's saying.

COOPER: Lisa de Moraes, the TV columnist of "The Washington Post," I was actually most surprised by what she wrote. She basically said, "It is a cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race."

KOPPEL: Yeah. Well, as, you know, I -- I have to confess that when it comes to thinking of all the things we could have done to bag a huge rating on the second night of sweeps, I have to admit, I'm not proud of this, that I didn't realize the May sweeps began in April. So I didn't even know ...

COOPER: Is that really true, you didn't realize that?

KOPPEL: I didn't realize that. And secondly, I must tell you that the only conversation my executive producer and I had was our perception that most people would probably tune in to this program for a couple of minutes or three or five, and then realize that it's essentially all the same.

Only the faces and the names are changing. And that if anything, we were going to lose audience tonight. And we said, you know something, we don't give a damn. Let's do it anyway. But the suggestion that we did this because we thought we could artificially, you know, hype our ratings, it's pretty contemptible.

COOPER: Because I got to tell you, if you did think that, there was a Michael Jackson hearing today, and you've got to get some better people advising you on how to boost ratings.

KOPPEL: You and I were kidding about it beforehand. We could have done Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Laci Peterson, anyone of them would do more to boost the ratings. But I'm afraid that's not "Nightline," as our viewers know.

COOPER: Let me ask you, how much of your decision was -- to do this was based on your own experience as being embedded during the war?

KOPPEL: I wouldn't focus it on that. Over the course of the past 41 years, I've covered about 11 wars, or 12 wars, beginning in 1967 in Vietnam.

And if there's one thing I've come to feel very strongly is that we have a responsibility in our business to keep reminding people of the cost of war.
<more>