Ted Koppel and Bill McCartney

Friday, April 01, 2005

I’ve been in public relations for nearly three decades, and Ted Koppel, who is leaving Nightline, is the only anchor or reporter in the MSM who has ever opened the Scriptures for a discussion during my visit to a television green room.

The time was 1997, and I was accompanying Promise Keepers President Bill McCartney on media interviews in Washington, D.C. the day before Stand in the Gap. McCartney was about to tape a segment with Koppel for that night’s Nightline, when Koppel strode into the green room and greeted us warmly. He sat down and chatted with McCartney about the remarkable gathering of men, and asked him about the Scriptural basis for the event and the Promise Keepers movement, which McCartney provided. Then Koppel pulled out his copy of the Jewish Scriptures (would that be the Torah?) and said,”Llet me share with you what I was reading in the Scriptures today.” I don’t remember the reference; I think I was in shock that a network anchor was sharing from his daily devotional.

It hadn’t happened before, and hasn’t happened since. But that, together with his commencement address at Duke many years ago when he said that the Ten Commandments were not the Ten Suggestions, gave me a higher opinion of Koppel than other network news characters.

--James Jewell