This announcement is annoying:
Ted Koppel, the former anchor of “Nightline” on ABC, has been named a contributing columnist for The New York Times. His column will appear on the Op-Ed page periodically.
Mr. Koppel’s appointment, which is effective Jan. 29, was announced by Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page.
Separately, NPR announced yesterday that Mr. Koppel had agreed to join the radio network as senior news analyst in June. NPR said Mr. Koppel would contribute analysis, commentary and perspective about 50 times a year.
In addition, Mr. Koppel is to serve as an analyst of breaking news and special events. His work will also appear at www.NPR.org and on NPR podcasts.
Nightline was a relatively serious news show by the low standards of our political media, but Ted Koppel is highly overrated as a journalist. For an example of his failure to take his responsibility to debunk false information seriously, consider this exchange from an interview with Larry King after the first Bush-Gore debate:
KING: Okay. Were you impressed with this “fuzzy [math],” top 1 percent, 1.3 trillion, 1.9 trillion bit?
KOPPEL: You know, honestly, it turns my brains to mush. I can’t pretend for a minute that I’m really able to follow the argument of the debates. Parts of it, yes. Parts of it, I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about.
That is a professional embarrassment. Doctors don’t say that information given to them by patients turns their brains “to mush.” But Koppel, who ABC paid millions of dollars, couldn’t be bothered to figure out the issues at stake in a presidential debate.
More generally, why do media outlets insist on giving precious commentary slots as rewards to supposedly distinguished old journalists? Think of David Broder at the Washington Post or Daniel Schorr at NPR. And the ironic part is that the Times is trying to charge people for its op-eds. I feel confident saying that no one on earth is willing to pay money to read Ted Koppel’s fascinating insights into the world of politics. His “Meet the Press” appearance with Tom Brokaw was some of the most boring television that I’ve ever seen.
Update 2/1: Jack Shafer points out that Broder has been a columnist since middle age; my apologies for the error. A better way to put my argument is this: why do newspapers persist in drawing their columnists from the ranks of reporters, when the reporter’s mindset generally makes for bad columns? Nick Kristof, Broder, Koppel and many other ex-reporters fit this profile.