Ted Koppel was anchor and managing editor of ABC News Nightline from 1980 to 2005. Over those years he hosted more than 6,000 programs, becoming the longest-serving network news anchor in U.S. broadcast history. Overall Koppel spent 42 years at ABC News, serving as bureau chief in Miami and Hong Kong, covering events as diverse as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery and more than two years as a war correspondent in Viet Nam. In 2003, Koppel did his final stint as a combat correspondent, embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq.
As ABC’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, Koppel accompanied President Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972 and Henry Kissinger during his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East. He covered every presidential campaign from Barry Goldwater in 1964 to Barack Obama in 2008. In 2012, New York University named Koppel one of the top 100 American journalists of the past 100 years. He has won every significant television award, including 8 George Foster Peabody Awards, 11 Overseas Press Club Awards (one more than the previous record holder, Edward R. Murrow), 12 duPont-Columbia Awards, and 42 Emmys. Since 2005 he has served as managing editor of the Discovery Channel, as a news analyst for BBC America, as a special correspondent for Rock Center, and continues to function as commentator and non-fiction book critic at NPR. He has been a contributing columnist to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal and is the author the New York Times bestseller Off Camera.