#News anchor closing background series#

He spoke about it with the USC US-China Institute in their 'Assignment: China' documentary series about American media coverage of China. Koppel was among those traveling to China with U.S. According to Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman, Koppel's friendship with Kissinger was partly due to their similar backgrounds, having Jewish refugee parents and emigrating to America in their youth. State Department correspondent where Koppel formed a friendship with Henry Kissinger. He returned in 1968 to cover the campaign of Richard Nixon, before becoming Hong Kong bureau chief, and U.S. Before going he took a course to learn the Vietnamese language. He accepted the assignment only after the network agreed to send his wife and their two children to Hong Kong so they could be nearby. In 1966, he became the ABC News correspondent for the Vietnam War, moving from radio broadcasting to national television. ABC officials were impressed by Koppel's ability to clarify issues using plain language. He also began covering the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama.

In 1964, he covered his first of many presidential nominating conventions. He was scheduled to do a short report, but a delay during the crisis forced him to ad-lib for an hour and a half. His coverage of the Kennedy assassination in 1963 with Charles Osgood caused the national news audience to take notice. In June 1963, he became the youngest correspondent ever hired by ABC Radio News, working on the daily Flair Reports program. Koppel had a brief stint as a teacher before being hired as a copyboy at The New York Times and as a writer at WMCA Radio in New York. Career Early career Koppel as the diplomatic correspondent for ABC News, 1976 While at Stanford, he met his future wife, Grace Anne Dorney.

Koppel then went to Stanford University, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in mass-communications research and political science. He remembers almost every conversation he ever had with anybody. One roommate recalled that Koppel 'was incredibly focused and had a photographic memory. He was a member of the Alpha Chi chapter of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Īfter attending the McBurney School, a private preparatory institution in New York, Koppel attended Syracuse University, graduating at age 20 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Murrow, whose factual reports during the bombing of London inspired him to become a journalist. Koppel's boyhood hero was radio broadcaster Edward R. In 1953 when he was 13, the family immigrated to the United States, where his mother, Alice, became a singer and pianist, and his father, Edwin, opened a tire factory. While in England, Ted Koppel was a pupil at Abbotsholme School, in Derbyshire. Following the end of the war, the family earned some money from their confiscated assets and decided to leave for the United States. After he was released from internment, Koppel's father was not permitted to work in England, nor would he allow his wife to work. To provide for her infant son, his mother sold her personal jewelry and did menial work in London. Koppel was born in 1940, shortly after his father was taken away. The factory moved in 1936, but when war broke out in Europe in 1939, Koppel's father was declared an enemy alien and imprisoned on the Isle of Man for a year and a half. To help the British economy, the Home Secretary invited him and his wife to move the factory to Lancashire, England, where he was promised they would be protected in the event of war. In Germany, Koppel's father operated a tire-manufacturing company. His parents were German Jews who fled Germany after the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. His career as a foreign and diplomatic correspondent earned him numerous awards, including nine Overseas Press Club awards and 25 Emmy Awards.Įdward James Martin Koppel, an only child, was born in Nelson, England. Since 2016, Koppel has served as a special contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning. Īfter leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel, a news analyst for NPR and BBC World News America and a contributor to Rock Center with Brian Williams. Five years after its 1980 debut, the show had a nightly audience of about 7.5 million viewers. After becoming host of Nightline, he was regarded as one of the outstanding serious-minded interviewers on American television. Edward James Martin Koppel (born February 8, 1940) is a British-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline, from the program's inception in 1980 until 2005.īefore Nightline, he spent 20 years as a broadcast journalist and news anchor for ABC.