Ted Koppel

Barack Obama’s invitation to Warren Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, to tonight’s State of the Union Address is bound to please not only Bosanek’s boss but also the liberal media that has allied with Buffett in his mission to raise taxes on the rich. For over 10 years the Berkshire Hathaway CEO has campaigned to sop the wealthy with burdensome taxes, and his friends in the media have been all too willing to advance his myth that secretaries pay more in taxes than their boss.

The following articles from the MRC’s archive represent just a few of the more recent and obnoxious examples of Buffett and Obama’s friends in the media carrying water for their crusade to soak America’s job creators:

While Brian Williams warned of "those lethal weapons known as super-PACs" in the GOP primary race on NBC's Rock Center, he and correspondent Ted Koppel failed to recognize their own network's routine advocacy on behalf of liberal causes and in favor of Democratic candidates. Not to mention the barrage of negative coverage directed toward conservatives and Republicans.

The report itself on the Monday night broadcast was pushing the traditional liberal cause of greater government regulation of campaign finance. Koppel interviewed comedian Stephen Colbert, whose farcical super-PAC in South Carolina has begun running ads calling Mitt Romney a "serial killer." Koppel praised it as "proving how ridiculous this system has become."

On Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer asked new NBC special correspondent Ted Koppel about the success of Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign: "He has said some very controversial things over the last month....Is being outspoken – and some would even say a little bit reckless – necessarily a bad thing in this election cycle?"

Koppel lamented how Gingrich had not been damaged by scandal: "For some reason or another, the three marriages don't seem to have hurt Newt Gingrich. For some reason or another, taking 1.6 million from Freddie Mac [don't seem to have hurt]." He later observed that Gingrich was like the class clown of the GOP 2012 field: "There's the sort of kid that has everybody laughing in class all the time. At the moment, that's Newt."

Appearing on Sunday's Meet the Press, Koppel told moderator David Gregory that the idea that Gingrich could be overcoming past political baggage, "leaves me absolutely breathless."

President Barack Obama's nicknaming his new tax increases on the wealthy the "Warren Buffett rule" is fitting since the billionaire has spent a decade campaigning for a tax hike, a campaign his friends in the liberal media have been more than willing to join. For over 10 years the media promoted Buffett's complaint that the wealthy in America don't pay enough in taxes, spurred on by a Buffett's anecdote that he pays less in taxes than his receptionist. 

But even the AP has pointed out, the idea that secretaries pay more in taxes than their bosses is inaccurate. A review of IRS 2009 tax tables (Link to Excel spreadsheet) shows that those making under $100,000/year pay an average of no more than 12.3% of their income in taxes, while those making above $500,000 pay an average of no less than 26.3% of their income in taxes. However, this fact hasn't stopped the liberal media from happily advancing Buffett's call to soak his fellow rich.

Former ABC anchor Ted Koppel raised eyebrows when The Washington Post's Sunday Outlook suggested getting rid of things in a "spring cleaning," and Koppel said "Democracy." (Or "Democracy," in quotation marks, as if that's less shocking.) Koppel began:

"Democracy." Let's dump it; toss it on the scrap heap of history. The concept remains worthy, but the word is rapidly being exhausted of all residual value. 

Koppel tossed several buckets of cold water on the "Arab spring." This is par for the course for Koppel, of course, who began mourning the Soviet Union before it dissolved as a wonderful pillar of geopolitical stability, and projecting Eastern Europe as hardly a democratic wonderland. From our newsletter Notable Quotables, an interview on John McLaughlin One on One on June 3, 1990:

When Democrats opposed war in Iraq, they were often presented by the networks as principled statesmen. But on Meet the Press Sunday, NBC host David Gregory asked Ted Koppel to suggest Republican opponents of Obama's Libya actions are just a feckless mess:

GREGORY: Ted Koppel, what about the Republican opposition? I mean, is there, is it principled here? Or is it much more feckless and inconsistent? Because the--many of them wanted a no-fly zone, then said it was too little, too late. Then said, as Newt Gingrich said, "Well, no, you shouldn't have intervened at all." They either sound inconsistent or a lot more like President Bush, who became quite unpopular within Republican circles and the country at large on the war.

Former Nightline host Ted Koppel appeared on Sunday's Reliable Sources and wistfully called for a return to "more serious objectivity" and the need for reporters who can tell audiences "what's really important in the world."

This is the same Ted Koppel who once stopped just shy of calling Rush Limbaugh "hateful," who in a commentary said of enhanced interrogation techniques, "You know, it’s almost the moral equivalent of saying that rape is an enhanced seduction technique."

Talking to CNN anchor Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Koppel proclaimed, "I think the journalism requires, and our times require, a little more serious objectivity." He added, "And I think there has to be a willingness on the part of the public to accept that journalism is trying to do an honest job of giving them an objective accounting of what's going on in the world and an objective appraisal of what's really important in the world."

Keith Olbermann on Monday attacked Ted Koppel for not speaking out against the Iraq War as vehemently as he did.

During his Special Comment, the "Countdown" host arrogantly claimed "Koppel and everybody else in the dead, objective television news business" failed the previous decade for not reporting "the utter falsehood and dishonesty of the process by which this country was committed to the wrong war" (video follows with commentary and transcript at end of post):

 On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann used his latest "Special Comment" to respond to former ABC anchor Ted Koppel’s inclusion of him and MSNBC in his recent Washington Post op-ed criticizing the modern news industry. After praising former news man Edward R. Murrow for taking a stand on Senator Joseph McCarthy and Walter Cronkite for doing the same on the Vietnam War and Watergate, Olbermann complained that, unlike himself, Koppel had "worshiped before the false god of utter objectivity" instead of going after the Bush administration over the Iraq war, and claimed that last week he criticized President Obama more than Fox News primetime did President Bush in eight years. Olbermann:

Moreover, while Fox may be such, we are not doctrinaire. I cannot prove it, so I'll have to estimate it here, and if I'm proved wrong I'll happily correct it, but my intuition tells me I criticized President Obama more in the last week than Fox's primetime hosts criticized President Bush in eight years.

And, even though Olbermann has a history of distorting the words of conservatives to portray them in the worst possible light, and of passing on incorrect information without retraction, Olbermann congratulated himself for recently deciding not to include misinformation about President Bush on his show, and suggested that FNC or CNN would not have made sure not to include such incorrect information. Olbermann:

Ted Koppel on Sunday published an op-ed at the Washington Post wherein he claimed that opinionated television personalities like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann represent the death of real news.

The "Countdown" host apparently isn't taking this lying down for he tweeted the following Sunday evening:

Former Nightline host Ted Koppel will use an op-ed appearing in Sunday's Washington Post to compare the current state of cable news to financial swindler Bernie Madoff and to express "nonpartisan sadness" over the success of Fox News and MSNBC.

The veteran journalist touted the suspension of Keith Olbermann for donating to Democratic congressional candidates as "a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust."

Attacking Fox and MSNBC for bias, he even compared, "This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone." Koppel expressed the not exactly original wish of many journalists to return to a time when only a few network and reporters were the final arbiters of news: "The commercial success of both MSNBC and Fox News is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me."

Former ABC Nightline anchor Ted Koppel may have taken his pomposity off-camera, but it certainly remains. In a gassy op-ed for Sunday's Washington Post, Koppel announced that that "canny tactician" Osama bin Laden has won the War on Terror by pressing America into a series of wild overreactions. He began:

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

It's important to remember that Koppel was not a measured critic of Bush foreign policy. Before the Iraq War, as Brent Bozell noted, he devoted a show to conspiratorial anti-Bush cranks who compared neoconservatives to Nazis and alleged that America was bent on global domination:

Former Nightline anchor Ted Koppel appeared on Monday's edition of BBC World News America and longed for the "good old days" when the big three networks didn't have to compete with cable. Speaking to host Katty Kay, Koppel also lamented opinion journalism: "And we now feel entitled, not to have the news that we need, but the news that we want."

He chided, "We want to listen to news that comes from those who already sympathize with our particular point of view. We don't want the facts any more." After being asked who was responsible for this, Koppel wistfully proclaimed, "Well, I think it's the producer who is at fault who so desperately needs the consumer, because, in what I like to consider the good old days, when you only had ABC, NBC and CBS, uh, there was competition. But, the competition still permitted us to do what was in the public interest."

Koppel continued, blaming capitalism and competition for this supposed decline in journalistic standards: "These days, all the networks have to fight with the dozens of cable outlets that are out there, the internet that is out there. They're all competing for the all mighty dollar and the way to get there is to head down to the lowest common denominator."

The latest media buzz is that longtime Nightline anchor Ted Koppel, who left ABC News back in 2005, might soon return to the network to replace George Stephanopoulos as host of This Week. Here’s a hint of the perspective Koppel might bring with him to his potential new job: appearing last night as an analyst on BBC’s World News America, Koppel insisted that President Obama’s first (non)reaction to the attempted bombing of a U.S. airline on Christmas Day “was the right one,” but media “yapping” and “24-hour cable channels going at it, hour after hour after hour” pressured Obama into an “overreaction.”

Of course, the successful smuggling of a bomb onto a U.S. passenger jet — by an al-Qaeda operative who was already known to intelligence officials — exposed significant problems in the government’s security process, a fact which even Obama himself now concedes. “This was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had,” the President confessed yesterday.

But rather than scrutinize the government’s failing, Koppel apparently prefers that nothing happened: “Doing something is exactly what the terrorists want. They want to feel as though they control our actions, rather than we controlling them ourselves.”

Network anchors and reporters didn't hesitate to apply strong ideological labels (not just quoting others) to President Bush's two Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Will they be as willing to tag President Obama's nominee, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, as “staunch,” and “hardline” and “ultra” liberal, or at least as “very liberal”?

In July of 2005, on the night Bush announced Roberts, ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Ted Koppel both described him as not just conservative, but as “very conservative.” NBC's Brian Williams called Roberts “a kind of 'bedrock conservative,' not what is called a 'movement conservative.'”

The next night, CBS Evening News anchor John Roberts (now with CNN) wanted to know of his namesake: “Has President Bush attempted to move the court further to the right with this pick?” On NBC, Chip Reid (now at CBS) highlighted how one liberal activist “says he worries that Roberts might be a stealth candidate, moderate on the outside but as conservative as Justices Scalia and Thomas on the inside.”

Former ABC News anchor Ted Koppel took to BBC's World News America newscast on Monday night to denounce former Vice President Dick Cheney as Koppel declared U.S. policy should be that “torture is always illegal, and those who use it will always be prosecuted.” Koppel shared how his “greatest disagreement” with Cheney is over describing water-boarding as an “enhanced interrogation technique,” which Koppel contended is a “euphemism” for torture that is “almost the moral equivalent of saying that rape is an enhanced seduction technique.” Furthermore, Koppel contended in mocking the carefully construed legal reasoning that allowed water-boarding, if you do that “you might as well go all the way to the red-hot pokers.”

In his first commentary for the hour-long, Washington, DC-based newscast run on the BBC America channel and the BBC World News channel, “contributing analyst” Koppel recalled how water-boarding “has a long and notorious history dating back to at least the Spanish Inquisition,” before proposing: “If we object to a technique being used on a captured American, we shouldn't use it, either.” So, he declared: “Let those who violate our stated national principles on torture be put on notice, it is against American law no matter where or under what circumstances it's employed, and violations of that law will lead to prison.”

The Denver Post's attempts to dish on celebrities at the Democratic convention included this typical slice of Dan Rather, critic of spineless media:

Dan Rather got a standing ovation in the Big Tent's DIGG stage on Tuesday after castigating the current structure of the media and the resulting weak news coverage.

"Much of the press is rolling over and playing dead," the former CBS newsman said. "The American media is in need of a spine transplant." As he often did on the air at CBS, Rather welled with tears when speaking of American casualties in the war in Iraq.

They also found Ted Koppel, and compared his hair to dessert:

The experts — Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, Rice University history professor and talking head Douglas Brinkley and others — sat around the table on the top floor of the downtown Denver library talking about Hurricane Katrina. Ted Koppel, his hair in full meringue, led the back-and-forth. Ethel Kennedy and Kerry Kennedy occupied chairs against a wall, listening closely, nodding.

Great Job, Boss!

ABC anchor, and former Clinton employee, George Stephanopoulos interviewed his old boss on ABC’s "This Week." Stephanopoulos sycophantically highlighted a story in The Atlantic about the ex-President's  philanthropy. Stephanopoulos quoted the author, "'History may remember Bill Clinton as the philanthropist who happened to be President" and then asked if Clinton was "okay" with that description.

He Hates Puppies

Why did President Bush veto a federal health insurance bill "for children?" Well, ABC painted the President as uncaring and not concerned about the poor, rather than mention the program actually covers more than just the destitute.

On the Wednesday "Today" show, Ted Koppel joined NBC's Matt Lauer in refusing to expose the lie behind the Media Matters and Democratic attack on Rush Limbaugh over "phony soldiers", choosing instead to write the controversy off as just another "foolish" thing the talk show host had said. However when asked about Dan Rather's lawsuit of CBS, the former longtime host of ABC's "Nightline" expressed sympathy: "I feel great pain for Dan."

Koppel's compassion wasn't just reserved for Rather but he extended it to criminals too, as he was invited on "Today" to promote his latest Discovery Channel documentary on overcrowded prisons. During the segment, Koppel criticized "three strikes" laws and griped about the state of prisons in this country:

From the birds-of-a-feather department comes news that former ABC "Nightline" host Ted Koppel is "hurting" for former CBS anchor Dan Rather.

The latter's ouster was a "travesty," Koppel said, on account of the fact that Rather's infamous National Guard story was "much more correct than incorrect." More:

“Dan Rather was squeezed out” with such little class from CBS News, Mr. Koppel said today at a forum at Fordham University in New York City that was put on by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

If anyone in the media blames the Minnesota bridge collapse on "cheap Republicans" who like tax cuts, it would not be the first time. In 1989, after a memorable San Francisco earthquake, an interstate highway bridge collapsed and killed hundreds. Media figures demanded new taxes, and some even suggested the Proposition 13 ballot initiative may have caused unnecessary deaths. We reported in the November 1989 MediaWatch:

As aftershocks rumbled through the San Francisco Bay area, media figures began calling for more taxes. On the October 18 Nightline, Ted Koppel asked an agreeable Democratic politician from California: "We all remember a few years ago Proposition 13 which rolled back taxes. And at the same time the point was made you roll back the taxes, that's fine, but that means there are going to be fewer funds available for necessary projects. Any instances where the money that was not spent because of the rollback of Proposition 13 where money would have made a difference?"

Over at the liberal website Slate.com, Jack Shafer mocks former ABC personage Ted Koppel his latest commentary for National Public Radio on Iran's British hostages, claiming "If history is any guide, Iran may wait until Tony Blair's tenure as prime minister comes to an end in a few months." Oops. Shafer also finds the subject of Iran is too close for Koppel to ignore himself:

Is there a more pompous egomaniac purring on the airwaves today than Ted Koppel?

Two days ago, the bouffanted one filed a commentary piece on NPR pegged to the seizure of 15 British sailors and marines by the Iranians. For self-obsessives like Koppel, all journalism is autobiography, so the story doesn't seem new to him. Instead, it echoes the hostage-taking of American diplomats 28 years ago in Tehran because, as Koppel doesn't have to remind listeners, it was the news event that started the show America Held Hostage that became Nightline and made his career!

Former “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel was one of Tim Russert’s guests on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” As amazing as it might seem, he made some truly shocking and compelling statements about the Iraq war and the war on terror that virtually no Democrat or media member is willing to accept or report:

• First, Koppel made it clear that America’s premature departure from Iraq would turn the entire Persian Gulf region into a battlefield between Sunnis and Shia, “something the United States cannot allow to happen”
• Second, he said the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are part of the war on terror that “has been going on for the past 24 years” starting when “the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon” in 1983 
• Finally, he stated that America’s departure from Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of when it occurs, will not represent the end of this battle, but, instead, that it is just “going to be a different war” after that point. 

Here are the shocking excerpts in chronological order (MSN video available here with segment 1 at minute 14:10, segment 2 at minute 19:00, and segment 3 here. Update: Dan Riehl has all three quotes edited together in one video here):

On Friday’s "Good Morning America," veteran journalist Ted Koppel talked with co-host Diane Sawyer about his new Discovery Channel special on the war against terror, "Our Children’s Children’s War." Koppel used the appearance to suggest that America stop calling the conflict a war, rely more on negotiations and he also blamed the U.S. for actually making things worse, asserting that " we turned al Qaeda into the biggest franchise since McDonalds."

Throughout the interview, Koppel discussed the need to take the long view. A plan that apparently means pulling out of Iraq:

As the 2008 campaign heats up, members of the mainstream media are having trouble deciding between their old favorite (Hillary) and the new flame (Obama). Both CNN and ABC leapt to the defense of Senator Barack Obama after he was accused of attending an Islamic madrassah as a child. (Of course, ABC once devoted an entire episode of "Nightline" to murky allegations that George W. Bush did coke as a younger man.)

But perhaps Obama should be a little worried. The "Early Show" demonstrated exactly why Hillary is still the media’s favorite. Over on MSNBC, Chris Matthews told Hillary Clinton that "ideologues on the right" were responsible for the death of her famous health care plan.

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos asked another 2008 candidate, Bill Richardson, if, as president, he would please just raise taxes.

On Thursday’s "Good Morning America," ABC’s Jake Tapper continued the media’s campaign to defend Senator Barack Obama against charges that, as a young child living in Indonesia, he attended a madrassah, an Islamic school that teaches virulent anti-Americanism. Co-host Robin Roberts and Mr. Tapper alternatively referred to the charges as "smears," "dirty tricks" and "lies." According to a 1999 MRC Reality Check, ABC gave no such courtesy to then-Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. On August 24 of that year, "Nightline" host Ted Koppel devoted an entire half hour episode to the unsubstantiated rumors that Bush used cocaine as a younger person. Obama, who has admitted trying cocaine as a teenager, was not asked about it in a January 24 GMA appearance. Here is Koppel’s explanation for the media’s interest in Bush’s youth:

Ted Koppel: "So here we are in this curious twilight in which [Bush] plainly acknowledges excessive use of alcohol until he turned 40, makes no claim of privacy in the area of marital infidelity, unlike some people we know he did not cheat on his wife, but leaves the question of youthful cocaine use ambiguously addressed with this assertion: I did make mistakes years ago."

-Nightline August 24, 1999

And here is the combined defense of Robert's introduction and Tapper's report on the January 25 "Good Morning America."

Robin Roberts: "Now, to the field of contenders, the presidential hopefuls who want President Bush's job. And the dirty tricks seem to have already begun. The target? Senator Barack Obama."

....

This past week saw The Washington Post ask a classically liberal question: Is America more racist or sexist?

Following the lead of this major paper, ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked the same question, adding a surreptitious angle. She wondered, "Is the nation, secretly, I guess, more racist or more sexist?"

The "Good Morning America" host wasn’t through, however. On Tuesday, she offered the query again. This time, Sawyer added a new spin, "secret genderism." The recipient of the question, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, readily agreed. America is guilty, she asserted, it just isn’t "very secret."

Speaking of The Washington Post, ever wonder how many times the paper mentioned "macaca?" According to MRC President Brent Bozell, the paper featured the phrase no less then 112 times!

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann absurdly linked domestic terrorism to "right-wing blogs."

While Olbermann slimed conservatives, CNN labeled the current low gas prices "a recovery." Why, just a few weeks ago, the falling costs represented a link between "Big Oil" and the GOP. What a difference an election makes!

As the guest on Wednesday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, Ted Koppel ribbed host Jon Stewart for not ridiculing President George W. Bush over his trip to Vietnam and then Koppel offered his own sharp-edged joke about it. Koppel scolded Stewart, "I'll tell you what I have been thinking: I can't believe you haven't done anything on George Bush in Vietnam." Koppel then delivered his wisecrack: “Thirty-five years ago, he joined the Texas Air National Guard to stay out of Vietnam. And now, he's going to Vietnam to stay out of Washington.” That generated loud applause and laughter from the audience in the Manhattan studio, as well as hearty laughter from Stewart, and Koppel chuckled at his own one-liner.

Seconds earlier, Koppel delivered another politically-loaded quip: "Remember the joke before -- it wasn't that much of a joke -- before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we used to say in Washington, 'we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we still have the receipts.'" That prompted Stewart to express bafflement with why Koppel's news agenda isn't shared more widely: "This is the thing that always befuddles me and you and I have this conversation all the time: Why isn't that joke the lead of every news story about Iraq? You know, the context that we sold them all those weapons, why isn't that more prominent in all this?" (Partial transcript follows)

Video clip (1:55): Real (3.2 MB) or Windows Media (3.7 MB), plus MP3 audio (670 KB)

This morning’s Wall Street Journal carries an editorial summarizing the findings of a new study from the Media Research Center that documents how the broadcast networks have skewed their coverage of the War on Terror in favor of those most concerned about civil liberties, not protecting the American people from another homeland attack. Here’s how it begins:

The title of a CBS special report Wednesday night posed the question that haunts us all after 9/11: "Five Years Later: Are We Safer?" Given the show's brevity--an hour minus commercials--and the complexity of the subject, CBS's treatment was predictably shallow. After host Katie Couric asked President Bush a few questions of the "your critics say . . . how do you respond?" sort, and we toured the federal antiterrorism command center, there was little time left for an in-depth examination of anything.

We're all familiar with this definition of a conservative: "a liberal who's just been mugged."  This morning, Ted Koppel devised a variation on the theme that could be taken as an insult to his fellow lefties: "a liberal is a conservative who just got arrested."

Koppel's line came in the course of a Today show interview with Matt Lauer to discuss a special that Koppel is about to air in his role as Managing Editor of the Discovery Channel [so that's where he went after leaving ABC!].  As Lauer described it, the documentary, entitled 'The Price of Security,' addresses "the balance between securing the nation and protecting our individual liberties."