The case against Ted Koppel; like most reporters, the king of TV news doesn't understand economics

Washington Monthly, May, 1989 by Matthew Miller

Mathew, Miller is a New York writer Research assistance for this story was provided by Bill Rademakers, Barbara Frye, and Rosa Kim.

Like most reporters, the king of TV news doesn't understand economics

It's not that circumcision, cremation, and baldness aren't important. Or killer bees, SATs, and cabbage-patch mania. It's not that we don't care whether astroturf or the selling of human organs should be outlawed, or social sanctions leveled against the pushy parents of 12-yearold stars. But did the early 1980s "cat craze" matter that much? And if we want to put Asian cockroaches into perspective, do we really need Ted Koppel's help?.

Whether we needed it or not, we got it. Shows on these topics do more than showcase Koppel's well-advertised talent for, as the ABC ad men put it, "tacksing the issues that others wouldn't touch." They point to his problem with priorities. Koppel's solid on the Mideast. He's incisive on Central America. He's on top of nuclear arms. But Ted Koppel has a blindspot, and it's one that many top journalists share: he doesn't do economics.

If you'd only been watching "Nightline" since 1981, you wouldn't be too concerned that the national debt had tripled. Gargantuan budget and trade deficits? A rollercoaster dollar? Sinking productivity? Don't look to "Nightline." "Financial stories really bore me," Koppel told Newsweek in 1987. "U's a function of my own ignorance."

And Koppel hasn't exactly cornered the market on neglectful economics reporting. True, if you like your economics spiced with metaphors from sports or crime, there's no shortage of pieces on budget "showdowns" or S&L "villains." But if you're looking to understand the economic stakes, the pickings are lean: Tom Brokaw announces with a straight face and no elaboration that the U.S. savings rate "Soared" last year to 4 percent. Andrea Mitchell says "you can't overstep your bounds" on die Sunday chat shows to get answers on the debt. And Peter Kilborn, an economics correspondent for The New York Times, regularly suggests that budget deficits are either going away or don't matter anyway.

Partly it's just ignorance of economics. And apathy. Partly it's the unquestioned norms that govern"the news" is and how it's reported. The result? While time bombs like the twin deficits and the S&L bankruptcies have ticked away, our leading news sources have been blowing the story. The MEGO factor

You can't blame anyone for expecting a lot from Ted Koppel. A decade ago he was an obscure State Department correspondent best known for his stint as a house-husband during his wife's first year in law school. Today he's made "Nightline" a media institution. What's refreshing about his ascent is that it's deserved. Koppel's suffer-no-fools demeanor, deft live-TV touch, and ambitious choice of subjects make "Nightline" unique. Koppel's intelligence has earned him the kind of plaudits that would be laughable if applied to any other million-dollar-ayear journalist"I've covered them back to Rusk," Marvin Kalb told Newsweek in 1987, "and Ted would be an outstanding secretary of state."

No one's offering him a post at Treasury, however. A quick look at the show's backlist shows why. Koppel's "Nightline" tenure roughly coincides with President Reagan's two terms. While the administration and Congress added $1.6 trillion to our children's IOUs, Koppel devoted exactly six shows out of 1,850 to the topic.

Let that sink in-six out of 1,850. During the same period, the World According to Nightline included eight shows on strange animals and another eight on either fatness or hair loss. It offered nine on Elvis, rock 'n roll, and video. Koppel did scare up about 25 shows on such assorted economic topics as the stock market, takeovers, and specific industries, like cars. But that pales next to what Koppel did on other serious issues: 180 shows on the Middle East, about 70 each on Africa and Central America, and at least 100 on East-West relations.

Apart from pleading ignorance, it's the MEGO factor that Koppel has cited to explain his allergy to economics: My Eyes Glaze Oven Certainly most economists don't allay Koppel's fears. They mouth esoteric terms and include numbers in their sentences. But it's still the journalist's obligation to make things clear and compelling.

The sonnet-like constraints of TV news hardly compose a formula for edification. If that's true for most subjects, it's doubly true for economics. That's why more of the longer segments-like ABC's "American Agenda"-should be devoted to the economy. After all, you don't need a whole five minutes to understand that die crack epidemic is bad. You do to begin to learn why the budget deficit is.

But Koppel, of course, has more time than anyone. No one's asking him to risk "Nightline" 's market share by running a show on the deficit every night (though who doubts that a two-week run o"The Debt: America Over a Barrel" would send the dailies, networks, and politicians scurrying to respond?) . But it's not unreasonable to expect a journalist of Koppel's seriousness to invest some of the capital he's amassed on topics critical to our future.