Posted on: Monday, April 7, 2003
Top 'embed' Koppel happy back at front
By David Bauder
Associated Press
Ask him again in a few weeks, and Ted Koppel's answer may be different. For now, he pledges allegiance to MREs — military jargon for meals-ready-to-eat.
"I'm astonished at how good the food really is," Koppel said by satellite phone from just outside Baghdad. "The hamburger, if you put some barbecue sauce and a little melted cheese on it, it's really quite good."
Koppel has more important matters on his mind, of course.
The "Nightline" anchorman and his crew have offered some striking battlefield reporting since the war began. He's probably the most high-profile TV network personality on the front lines; one newspaper called him the "king of the embeds."
A crisis in Iran 24 years ago gave birth to "Nightline"; now war in a neighboring country is rejuvenating it. At the war's outset, "Nightline" beat the late-night talk shows in ratings for the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Koppel, 63, is one of the few embedded reporters with experience covering the Vietnam War, when he was ABC News' Hong Kong bureau chief, 1969 to 1971. The chance to cover a war that combined satellite technology with the kind of access he had in Vietnam was too inviting to pass up, he said.
Given the cool relationship between the Pentagon and news media during the first Gulf War and the conflict in Afghanistan, Koppel worked contacts in the military ahead of time to find out if promises of access were real.
Everyone assured him they were.
"I feel about as well-informed as anyone out in the field," Koppel said. "I've been just astounded at the level of access."
"If the principle here is that a free people have a right to know what the military is doing at a time of war, we are putting that principle to the test," he said. "I'm trying to be responsible about it and handle it in a serious way."
His status earned Koppel a plum position with the 3rd Infantry Division that put him in place to report on the takeover of Baghdad's airport last week. ABC News referred to his positioning by naming today's 7 p.m. special based on his reporting "Tip of the Spear."
One of the more remarkable moments came when Koppel and anchorman Charles Gibson disagreed on the air over whether television should be showing pictures of the dead.
"I don't think Charlie and I disagreed as much as people thought," Koppel said. "We have always shown the dead for as long as I've been a reporter, following certain ground rules."
As standards in television have grown looser, Koppel said, "it strikes me as the ultimate paradox that the one thing we can't show on television is reality."
