Ted Koppel

During more than 50 years that he has worked as a professional journalist Ted has embodied the term “eye-witness to history.”

In politics:

Ted has covered the presidential nominating conventions of both parties going back to 1964. . 52 years later came his news-making interview with Donald Trump at the 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland

He covered presidential campaigns going back to Barry Goldwater in 1964. Then the Nixon and Humphrey campaigns in 1968.

As ABC’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent:

President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972.

Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East in 1973 and 74.

Civil rights:

Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965

As war correspondent:

Three and a half years covering the conflicts in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. Several lesser wars, ending as an embedded correspondent and Nightline anchor during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (Ted had to promise his wife, Grace Anne that there would be no more assignments as war correspondent thereafter.)

Over the course of 26 years as anchor and managing editor of Nightline, Koppel became the longest serving news anchor in U.S. broadcast history.

Among the more than 6000 Nightline broadcasts he anchored was the one on the last day of the Soviet Union. Ted was the only reporter with Mikhail Ghorbachev inside the Kremlin. He was also the first journalist to interview Nelson Mandela at his home in Suweto, South Africa upon his release from 27 years in prison.

In 2012, New York University named Koppel one of the “100 outstanding journalists in the United States in the last 100 years. When he left ABC News after 42 years, he was the most honored reporter in that network’s history, having received more “Overseas Press Club” awards than the previous record holder, Edward R. Murrow, and eight “George Foster Peabody” awards. Television’s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize is the Columbia-DuPont award. Koppel has won 12 of them. He has also been awarded 43 Emmy’s, including one for lifetime achievement. His most recent Emmy was for his current work at CBS Sunday Morning

Koppel’s most recent book, a New York Times best seller, Lights Out (October, 2015) examines a threat unique to our time and evaluates potential ways for America to prepare for a cybersecurity-catastrophe.