Ted Koppel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ted Koppel
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Koppel in December 2017
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| Born |
Edward James Martin Koppel
February 8, 1940 Nelson, Lancashire, England
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| Education | Syracuse University (BS) Stanford University (MA) |
| Occupation | |
| Years active | 1963–present |
| Known for | Nightline (1980–2005) |
| Spouse(s) |
Grace Anne Dorney
(m. 1962) |
| Children | 4, including Andrea |
| Relatives | Kenneth M. Pollack (son-in-law) |
Edward James Martin Koppel (born February 8, 1940) is a famous journalist from America, originally from Britain. He is best known for being the main host of the news show Nightline. He hosted the show from when it started in 1980 until 2005.
Before Nightline, Ted Koppel worked for 20 years as a journalist and news host for ABC. When he became the host of Nightline, people saw him as one of the best interviewers on American television. Five years after it began, about 7.5 million people watched Nightline every night.
After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked for the Discovery Channel. He was also a news expert for NPR and BBC World News America. He also contributed to Rock Center with Brian Williams. Since 2016, Koppel has been a special helper for CBS News Sunday Morning. He has won many awards for his work as a reporter who covered news from other countries. These awards include nine Overseas Press Club awards and 25 Emmy Awards.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Ted Koppel was born in Nelson, England, in 1940. He was an only child. His parents were Jewish people from Germany. They left Germany because of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In Germany, Koppel's father owned a company that made tires.
To help the British economy, the government invited his parents to move their factory to Lancashire, England. They were told they would be safe there if a war started. The factory moved in 1936. But when World War II began in 1939, Koppel's father was seen as an "enemy alien." This meant he was from a country that Britain was fighting. He was put in prison on the Isle of Man for a year and a half.
Koppel was born in 1940, soon after his father was taken away. To take care of her baby, his mother sold her jewelry and worked hard in London. After his father was released, he was not allowed to work in England. The family earned some money from their old belongings after the war. They decided to move to the United States.
While in England, Ted Koppel went to Abbotsholme School. In 1953, when he was 13, his family moved to the United States. His mother, Alice, became a singer and pianist. His father, Edwin, opened a tire factory. Ted Koppel's hero was a radio reporter named Edward R. Murrow. Murrow's reports about the bombing of London made Koppel want to become a journalist.
After going to McBurney School in New York, Koppel went to Syracuse University. He graduated at age 20 with a science degree. He then went to Stanford University. There, he earned a master's degree in communication and political science. At Stanford, he met his future wife, Grace Anne Dorney.
Career
Early Career
Ted Koppel briefly worked as a teacher. Then he got a job at The New York Times and at WMCA Radio in New York. In June 1963, he became the youngest reporter ever hired by ABC Radio News. He worked on a daily show called Flair Reports.
His reporting on the Kennedy assassination in 1963 made people notice him. He was supposed to give a short report. But because of delays during the crisis, he had to talk without a script for an hour and a half.
In 1964, he covered his first of many presidential nominating conventions. He also started reporting on the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama. ABC leaders were impressed by how Koppel could explain difficult topics clearly. In 1966, he became the ABC News reporter for the Vietnam War. He moved from radio to national television. He only took the job after ABC agreed to send his wife and two children to Hong Kong so they could be close by. Before going, he learned the Vietnamese language.
He returned in 1968 to cover Richard Nixon's presidential campaign. Then he became the head of the ABC office in Hong Kong. He also became the reporter for the U.S. State Department. There, Koppel became friends with Henry Kissinger.
Koppel was among the reporters who traveled to China with U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972. He called the trip like a "journey to the dark side of the moon." By 1975, he was hosting the ABC Evening News on Saturdays. He also continued to send reports to ABC Radio.
Koppel often reported from foreign meetings with the State Department. For example, he traveled with Kissinger during his meetings in Egypt and Israel in 1975.
In the mid-1970s, Koppel took a year off from his job. He stayed home with his children so his wife could finish her law degree. When he returned to ABC, the news president was upset. He removed Koppel from his news anchor job.
In April 1979, Koppel was the main reporter for a series called "Second to None?". This series explained the dangers of nuclear war. He did his own research. He wanted to explain "complex material to an audience that hasn't paid much attention in the past but must in the future." He won an award for this series.
Host of Nightline
In 1980, Koppel became very well known as the host of a late-night news show called Nightline. The show started as special reports about the Iran hostage crisis. During this crisis, Iranian people held 52 Americans captive for 444 days, starting in November 1979. At first, the show was called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage. Koppel later joined as a co-host. In March 1980, the show became Nightline, with Koppel as its main host. Koppel hosted the show for 25 years. He left ABC and Nightline in November 2005.
While hosting Nightline, Koppel also hosted special shows called Viewpoint. These shows, starting in 1981, looked at how the media reported news. The idea was to let viewers ask questions about how stories were reported or to share their thoughts on TV news. Viewpoint was shown sometimes from 1981 until 1997.
Some groups thought Koppel favored the government's views. They said he chose more conservative guests. Koppel said that he wanted to talk to the people in charge of the country's policies.
In 1990, Koppel interviewed Nelson Mandela in a special meeting like a town hall. Also in 1990, ABC News showed a special called "The Best of Nightline with Ted Koppel."
In 1997, a journalist named Nate Thayer said that Koppel and ABC News had a verbal agreement. This agreement was for ABC to have the only rights to use video from a trial of Pol Pot. Thayer said ABC broke this agreement by putting pictures from the video on their website.
On November 22, 2005, Koppel left Nightline after 25 years. He also left ABC after 42 years. His last Nightline show did not show clips of his famous interviews. Instead, it showed an episode from 1995 where Koppel interviewed a professor named Morrie Schwartz. Schwartz was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease.
On March 24, 2020, Koppel appeared on Nightline again to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary. He talked about how he and his wife were dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Post-ABC Career
After leaving Nightline, Ted Koppel took on many different jobs in news:
- He started writing opinion pieces for The New York Times in January 2006.
- He worked with Discovery Communications for three years. He was the managing editor for the Discovery Channel. While there, Koppel made several long documentaries. One was a four-hour series in 2008 about China. Koppel said this was some of the work he was "most proud of." This series, called The People's Republic of Capitalism, looked closely at the fast-changing country. It explored the role of Chinese shoppers in their growing, but still communist, economy. Koppel and Discovery Communications ended their agreement early in November 2008.
- Starting in June 2006, he gave comments for shows like Morning Edition on National Public Radio. He joined other news experts there. Koppel stopped his regular comments on NPR in April 2008. He last appeared as a news expert there in 2014.
- Koppel sometimes appeared on The Daily Show. He would appear as a large, floating head, acting as Jon Stewart's journalistic conscience. Koppel joked that "this is the actual size of [Koppel's] head."
- Koppel worked for BBC World News America. He was a "contributing analyst" covering the 2008 Republican and Democratic political meetings. He also hosted a special show in 2011.
- On December 12, 2011, Koppel appeared on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams as a reporter. He later became a special reporter for NBC's Rock Center until the show ended.
- In 2015, Koppel published a book called Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. The book is about what could happen if a big cyber-attack hit America's power grid.
- Since March 2016, Koppel has been a special helper for CBS News Sunday Morning.
Honors and Awards
- Eight Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Awards for broadcast journalism.
- Nine Overseas Press Club Awards for best TV comments on foreign news.
- Two George Polk Awards.
- Two Sigma Delta Chi Awards.
- Three George Foster Peabody Awards.
- 1987: An honorary degree from Duke University.
- 2004: Paul White Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association.
- 2006: An honorary law degree from the University of Southern California.
Koppel often returns to Syracuse University to speak. He was part of the student radio station WAER. He stays in touch with the student media at Syracuse. He is a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.
Emmy Awards
He has won 25 Emmy Awards, including:
- 1987 - Best Coverage of a Breaking News Story (Nightline)
- 1999 - Best Investigative Journalism (Nightline)
- 1999 - Best Coverage of a Breaking News Story (Nightline)
- 2004 - Best Feature Story in a News Magazine (Nightline)
- 2007 - Lifetime Achievement Award
Personal Life
Ted Koppel is married to Grace Anne (Dorney). He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1963. They have four children: Andrea, Deirdre, Andrew, and Tara.
Koppel speaks German and French, in addition to English.
A long-time friend of Koppel's was former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Both of them moved to the United States as children. Kissinger was often a guest on Nightline. In a 1989 interview, Koppel said, "Henry Kissinger is, simply put, the best secretary of state we have had in 20, maybe 30 years." He added, "I’m proud to be a friend of Henry Kissinger. He is an amazing man."
In 1993, Koppel and his wife bought 16 acres of land near the Potomac River in Potomac, Maryland. They sued their neighbors to make them stick to an agreement. This agreement was to limit the size of houses in the neighborhood to 10,000 square feet.
See also
- Koppel on Discovery: Iran, The most Dangerous Nation?
