Former Nightline anchor Ted Koppel attempted to explain away disgraced journalist Brian Williams’s lies as “tales” that would be acceptable at a bar. In an interview for the November 2 Time magazine, Koppel spun, “There is a difference unfortunately between the kinds of tales that you can tell while sitting at a bar, entertaining your friends, and what you can say when you’re on the air.”
So, Williams’s false statements about being under RPG fire aboard a helicopter in Iraq are okay in certain circumstances? Describing his fellow journalist as an “old friend,” Koppel added, “Brian slipped and took the routine and did it on the air, and he has more than paid the price.”
The former anchor lamented the variety of media choices for the modern viewer:
It’s become more difficult because at one end of the spectrum you have MSNBC and at the other end you’ve got Fox, and on all your radio stations you’ve got a variety of highly politicized talk-show hosts who make any kind of movement in the direction of moderation seem like a betrayal.
The later Peter Jennings, Koppel's colleague at ABC, said this about American voters in 1994 after they swept Republicans into power:
"Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming. It's clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around. It's the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week....Parenting and governing don't have to be dirty words: the nation can't be run by an angry two-year-old."
-- ABC World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings in his daily ABC Radio commentary, November 14, 1994.
Is that what Koppel means by moderation?
On the subject of Williams, who he worked with on NBC’s Rock Center, here is Koppel's full answer:
Look, Brian is an old friend, and I understand what happened to him. There is a difference unfortunately between the kinds of tales that you can tell while sitting at a bar, entertaining your friends, and what you can say when you’re on the air. Brian slipped and took the routine and did it on the air, and he has more than paid the price.
Regarding his old show Nightline, which is now a superficial program that airs reports on topics such as “bootleg butt injections,” Koppel was asked if “a show like the old Nightline could exist today.” The veteran journalist bluntly replied, “Apparently not.”
