Goodnight, Nightline

Ted Koppel, who recently stepped down from Nightline, his long-running TV news show, "was a fine journalist and a decent man," writes Fred Branfman, "but to stay atop journalism's establishment, even he had to make a deal with the devil." Branfman recalls his own experiences with Koppel during the war in Indochina, praising his "charisma, good humor and an unusual mix of professionalism and human decency." At Nightline, however, he became "a card-carrying member of the journalistic establishment. ... And that is the point. The issue isn't Ted himself but what he symbolizes: the institutional and structural corruption of an American media that has chosen to define 'news' primarily as the information it receives from American officials, and which has traded a critical and independent stance for 'access' to powerful figures. As long as the TV lead and Page One stories primarily come, directly or indirectly, from government officials, and as long as critics and dissenting information are ignored or relegated to page A18, Ted Koppel will be the best we get."