Ted Koppel

Ted Koppel is the host of the ABC News' program Nightline. A popular American TV news journalist, Koppel was embedded with the U.S. military during 2003 invasion on Iraq.

Tobacco issues
On his March 9, 1994 Nightline show, Ted Koppel revealed that R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris had bussed 16,000 tobacco workers to Washington, and paid them a day's wages, to attend what was supposed to appear to be a spontaneous public demonstration of anger at a Clinton administration proposal to tax cigarettes an additions 75 cents per pack to pay for national health care. In his introduction to the program, Koppel highlighted the absurdity of the tobacco industry's continuing stance that the evidence linking smoking to disease was not yet conclusive:


 * The battle has been going on for so many years that it is a surprise

sometimes to realize that it's still in progress, the tobacco industry staunchly insisting that the evidence on smoking and lung disease or heart disease is suggestive but not conclusive. More and more, however, the industry's apologists are coming to resemble those Japanese soldiers discovered on remote islands 20 and 30 years after the end of World War II .They had never realized the war was over.

SourceWatch Resources

 * media
 * Media control: Sinclair Broadcast Group
 * Operation Iraqi Freedom