The Case Against Ted Koppel
Miller, Matthew
The Case Against Ted Koppel Like most reporters, the king of TV news doesn 't understand economics by Matthew Miller It's not that circumcision, cremation, and baldness aren't important. Or...
...Nor is it meant to belittle the economics reporters who round out the network staffs...
...The sonnet-like constraints of TV news hardly compose a formula for edification...
...While an occasional piece—like an October 1986 Post editorial attacking the inadequate FSLIC bailout plan—seemed to recognize the stakes, the S&L story mostly remained a business-page item...
...Unfortunately, Koppel and others who bring America much of its news—particularly the political reporters on TV—don't have the grasp of economics that will inspire consistently hard-hitting coverage...
...But the S&Ls then feel pressured to generate extra-high returns to cover the extra-high interest they owe, which accelerates the pattern of high-risk lending that got them fouled up in the first place...
...How tough would it have been to add that "while this is encouraging, it still leaves our savings rate dramatically below that of Japan, which saves 16 percent of its income, and West Germany, which saves 12 percent...
...Others point to the occasional in-depth special, rather than the ongoing coverage, in their defense...
...Koppel's intelligence has earned him the kind of plaudits that would be laughable if applied to any other million-dollar-ayear journalist...
...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...
...Sinking productivity...
...That's all I can tell you...
...To explain manage ment buyouts, Krulwich took International Carrot private (represented by the vegetable itself), then literally put the company "on the block" to chop off divisions (like carrot tops and carrot tips) for sale to service the company's debt...
...Gray's accusation in the spring of 1987 that the losing institutions he regulated were angling to get taxpayers to pick up the tab (Post, E-10...
...But even this program subjects the layman to that last great vice of the journalist's need for conflict: the battle of the experts...
...Leading recent examples of the genre include Jim Lardner's book, Fast Forward, which showed how Sony fumbled its VCR market share when its organizational ego alienated rivals whose cooperation was essential to establish Betamax as the industry standard...
...With theatrical costcutting gusto, he proceeded to shave "expenses" from the remaining core business, leaving him with a lean, mean middle of the carrot to take public again...
...Due to rising interest rates, the industry was caught in a squeeze...
...Piggy: "Well, I've been watching out there, waiting for Kermie...
...It's a delight to have you with us...
...You're lucky you're over there and not here, Koppel...
...A few days before the October 1987 crash, Kilborn, in a typical piece of overstatement, exaggerated then-Treasury Secretary James Baker's position on the dollar...
...When I asked Lesley Stahl if she thought she had done a good job communicating the deficit problem to the American people, she brought up a one-hour, prime-time special she did in 1987, "The In The Red Blues" That show was excellent...
...I'm one of the authors," he says, "and Gramm-Rudman-Hollings is not working...
...But in only one Kilborn piece I've read of this genre, did he explain why the deficit remains a problem: our low savings rate means that government borrowing still keeps real interest rates high...
...No arguments here...
...The Times ran its report in the business section...
...You can bet, for example, that Dan Rather's brief chat with Bill Plante about "the myth and reality" of the deal was too subtle to compete against images invisibly captioned, "Yes, We're Reducing the Deficit...
...It's a case study in near-perfect coverage—except it's about a half decade too late...
...But Koppel, of course, has more time than anyone...
...Kermit...
...Kilborn asked sincerely...
...What's new (i.e., yesterday's budget mud-slinging) is vastly different from what's important...
...depends on Japan to finance our budget deficit...
...Don't look to "Nightline...
...Thirsty for more than 31 words on the topic, you flip to Tom Brokaw...
...C'mon Ted—what do you say?q...
...The problem is that the "dueling expert" format invariably makes fringe views look plausible...
...For politicians who live and die on page one and the evening news, the lesson was clear: So long as we agree to tell the same lie, that's the story...
...With the deficit itself still high, Kilborn consistently featured the argument that its insidious effects were in decline, since the deficit was shrinking as a percentage of GNP...
...But the Times's own statistics a few pages away from Kilborn's article that Sunday showed real interest rates at continued highs...
...The announcements of trade news, in fact, should be particularly easy for the networks to handle intelligently, since they come with plenty of advance warning...
...sorry about that, Ted" Koppel: "I guess I should be the one apologizing...
...In print you see it as the propensity to quote...
...it includes a premium tacked on by the lender to compensate for inflation...
...The FSLIC insurance guarantee encourages this vicious cycle because if the banks' gambles don't pay off, the government will...
...But they need a frame of reference if they're to mean anything...
...A rollercoaster dollar...
...And Koppel hasn't exactly cornered the market on neglectful economics reporting...
...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...
...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...
...On TV, it's seen in the debate format that's too often considered essential...
...Lavish lifestyles You'd have to have the current events passion of the Oliver North jury not to know that our S&Ls are screwed up...
...The Gorbachev visit brought an in-depth look at the legacy of the Cuban revolution...
...Dan Rather's myth "Nightline" aside, the media has increased the quantity and quality of economic coverage in recent years, particularly with the advent of cable...
...They [the editors] didn't believe it" So the story, like many that followed, was buried deep in the paper...
...Other back-of-the-book stories included: Edwin Gray's losing fight in December 1986 over limits on direct thrift investment in riskier real estate ventures (limes, D-1...
...Indeed, there have been countless stories about the deficit, but they're almost always lacking in vital information...
...Oil shocks, stagflation, and skyrocketing interest rates made clear that huge international forces were at work that most Americans—and most journalists—knew little about...
...A quick look at the show's backlist shows why...
...In February, Kilborn had explained that "lower oil prices help close the deficit by speeding the economy's growth, which in turn means more jobs and higher profits for business, which in turn imply higher tax revenues for the government" Fair enough...
...you're most likely to see them when a new inflation or unemployment statistic is released...
...But his touch has not been unerring...
...The monthly trade news announcements give us a chance to look at another genre of TV economic coverage: the single statistic story...
...It overwhelmed whatever reservations network correspondents offered...
...Two reporters told me the story of Kilborn at an Office of Management and Budget press briefing...
...Andrea Mitchell says "you can't overstep your bounds" on the Sunday chat shows to get answers on the debt...
...Piggy: "Pork bellies...
...But it turns out the trade deficit has in fact been on the rise again the preceding few months, and that the improved rate is a whopping four times higher than what was considered a troubling deficit in 1980...
...How are you, Miss Piggy, on the subject of pork bellies...
...New publications like Money, Business Month, and Manhattan, inc...
...The cross-section of household names I spoke with all readily admitted economics wasn't exactly their strong suit...
...The MEGO factor You can't blame anyone for expecting a lot from Ted Koppel...
...But it's still the journalist's obligation to make things clear and compelling...
...If that's true for most subjects, it's doubly true for economics...
...Apart from pleading ignorance, it's the MEGO factor that Koppel has cited to explain his allergy to economics: My Eyes Glaze Over...
...End of item...
...The "real" rate is the actual cost of money, the nominal rate minus inflation...
...We'll get three from this...
...Turn to Koppel's post-crash "town meeting," with co-hosts Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy helping to explain terms like "bull" and "market" and "liquidity...
...Instead of seeing the four-day news peg as a chance to explain America's economic strengths and weaknesses, the networks conspired in the scripted style of summitry...
...Foley: "No, on the contrary, I think it was one of Congress's best moments...
...In a 1984 program on "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Deficit But Were Afraid to Ask," he began with an American woman who'd gone crazy with her credit cards, and then got Bob Dole to translate her pickle to the national level...
...I wanted to ask him, but Koppel declined to be interviewed for this piece...
...Eisner took the opportunity to advance his usual accounting hobby-horse that the deficit is really a surplus...
...It's not that there was any shortage of reforms worth exploring...
...That, in turn, means that the Government's tax collections are less...
...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...
...Oh yeah, yeah, that's right," the correspondent said...
...Koppel did scare up about 25 shows on such assorted economic topics as the stock market, takeovers, and specific industries, like cars...
...When it comes to TV, most correspondents ignore this distinction when they discuss the attention they've given the problem...
...The deficit was $137.3 billion, down $33 billion from the year before" Wait a minute— that still sounds big...
...I'll bet you can probably catch me on a few other things, too" As a matter of fact, we can...
...In June 1986, Kilbom claimed that "curious turns" in the economy, including a drop in oil prices, foiled budget deficit declines, which he'd led readers to expect with two page-one features months before...
...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...
...subsequently sprang up...
...Now, however, Kilborn argued that lower oil prices and lower inflation instead meant "that businesses and individuals get lower profits and wages than they otherwise would...
...Partly it's the unquestioned norms that govern what "the news" is and how it's reported...
...Robert Krulwich of "CBS This Morning" and Paul Solman of "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour"—both of whom are armed not with a background in economics, by the way, but with energy and curiosity—craft amusing, but not silly, dramas to help the uninitiated understand what all the fuss is about...
...I understand all about animals, yes...
...Today he's made "Nightline" a media institution...
...And for those who weren't, the industry's chief regulator, Edwin Gray, then chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, tried to make things easy...
...When I asked Kilborn, he said, "It sounds like you caught me there...
...We might well have averted it ." How did a $100 billion whopper blindside our leading news organizations...
...So did last summer's seven-nation economic summit in Toronto...
...But these objections did little to alter the impression created by the main thrust of the "objective" coverage—that something really had been done...
...A singular exception a few days later was Paul Blustein's page one Post analysis, noting high in the story that the deal wouldn't cut the deficit at all...
...Brokaw: "Do you think that this was not one of Congress's best moments...
...Why...
...four from this," Wright began, obviously referring to billions of dollars, as anyone fluent in the area would know...
...By the mid-eighties, this problem was evident to anyone willing to look...
...Baker stated that West Germany's latest interest rate hike was inconsistent with "the spirit of our recent consultations...
...They mouth esoteric terms and include numbers in their sentences...
...The Washington Post's story—appearing next to a big photo of the president and congressional leaders sealing the deal—was headlined "Reagan, Hill Agree to Cut $76 Billion ." The New York Times similarly wrote, `Agreement Signed to Reduce Deficit $30 Billion in 1988" Both papers were faithful on page one to the bipartisan make-believe, quoting predictably upbeat official remarks about "working together" and sending the world "strong signals " More substantive doubts were voiced—like Senator Bob Packwood's comment, quoted in the Times, that a deficit-reduction package that didn't include COLAs was "a miserable pittance...
...Between 1982, when Texas S&Ls were already in financial straits, and 1985, the deposit base at these institutions almost doubled...
...No—he's already moved on to a much longer and obviously more important piece on Rock Hudson's homosexual lover...
...You're new to Planet Earth, and you're determined to get a fix on America's trade situation...
...But there is a problem in letting already tottering banks use it for rapid growth...
...At least The Washington Post had the sense to put Gray's speech—and his threat to rein in the industry—on page one, an especially admirable move since space was tight that day because of Indira Gandhi's assassination...
...If you'd only been watching "Nightline" since 1981, you wouldn't be too concerned that the national debt had tripled...
...There wasn't a single reporter on the budget beat that fall who believed what was said," says Carol Cox of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington group that monitors the budget process...
...Ted Koppel is sitting in for Peter Jennings...
...Isn't that airtime better spent than Bill Plante's investigation of a Canadian chain-link fence...
...The pretense that all opinions are created equal only lends incoherence to the show...
...I remember the first story I wrote that talked about hundreds of insolvent financial institutions," says one reporter...
...But the lengthy piece spilled too much ink on the lavish lifestyles and low-down shenanigans of certain S&L buccaneers and shortchanged the inane policies that had induced the crisis and the sane ones needed to cure it...
...The "nominal" rate is the one you pay on your mortgage...
...Money, fame, and influence without responsibility are the assets of a courtesan," Koppel said in a 1985 speech...
...The room exploded in laughter...
...Solman used plates of sushi to show how the U.S...
...We're culpable like others in getting too immersed in the politics at the expense of the substance," he says...
...The result...
...But the picture—leaders of both parties clasping hands and announcing a "significant" if imperfect deal—was irresistible television...
...Much of that increase came from brokered funds—large pools of centrally managed, sophisticated capital understandably seeking the best returns...
...But neither would it be "boring" In fact, wouldn't it be something if Koppel announced henceforth he'll do more economics because it's an important area he knows little about and invited the audience to join him in learning...
...That represents a sea change from the fifties and sixties...
...Chamber of Commerce, and Alice Rivlin of Brookings and Benjamin Friedman of Harvard...
...In an October 1984 speech to the major S&L trade association, he chided the "go-go crowd, the daredevils, the high-fliers...
...Koppel: "Good evening, Miss Piggy...
...The point is that these shows have been consistently swamped by the kind of daily coverage that stresses the political melodrama rather than the economic stakes...
...That's three million...
...Piggy: "Liquidity, tee-tee-tee" Kermit: "Sure" Koppel: "Well, maybe I need something a little closer to home...
...Journalists cite these trends to argue that today's economic coverage must be pretty good—after all, it couldn't be worse than the old days, when there were fewer business sections in newspapers and those that were around read like Chamber of Commerce press releases...
...Why isn't it a problem when Japan and West Germany run deficits that are a similar percentage of their GNP to ours...
...Koppel's suffer-no-fools demeanor, deft live-TV touch, and ambitious choice of subjects make "Nightline" unique...
...On the wheninRome theory, you flip to where you've heard "more Americans get their news than anyplace else"—ABC...
...And apathy...
...My current position may carry with it some social irresponsibility," MacNeil says...
...savings rate "soared" last year to 4 percent...
...Piggy: "Yes...
...Gargantuan budget and trade deficits...
...to claim credit for the success of his economic policies...
...But maybe in American currency those big numbers mean nothing, like those Italian lira you've heard of...
...Koppel: "Watching and learning" Piggy: "Yes...
...Consider how "brokered" deposits exacerbated the crisis in Texas...
...He's incisive on Central America...
...The Economist, by contrast, is probably the best example of an organization whose substantive compass makes its reporting on economics consistently reliable...
...My favorite this year was Tom Brokaw's announcement that the savings rate in the United States had "soared" to more than 4 percent—"up a full point...
...The Kilborn genre The failures don't belong just to television...
...And then let's even concede that most news organizations can cite a piece or two or ten that they've done that said the right things...
...Senator Ernest F. Hollings says that the press and politicians alike are complicit in playing makebelieve...
...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...
...We must accept responsibility for what we do, and we must think occasionally of the future ." How does Koppel square such sentiments with his six shows on the deficit in eight years...
...In economic news," he says, "the nation's trade deficit actually grew smaller last year" Sounds good...
...Journalists like Irving R. Levine and Mike Jensen (NBC), Ray Brady (CBS), and Steve Aug (ABC) do a good job...
...I wish it had received more media attention at an earlier stage...
...You're in luck: the final figures have just been released for the full year 1988...
...Shows on these topics do more than showcase Koppel's well-advertised talent for, as the ABC ad men put it, "tackling the issues that others wouldn't touch ." They point to his problem with priorities...
...There are other broadcast journalists to whom Koppel could look for ideas...
...Which is it...
...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 on "The Debt: America Over a Barrel" would send the dailies, networks, and politicians scurrying to respond...
...One night, CBS's Bill Plante wasted much of his time detailing security precautions, featuring an exciting discussion of "rooftop sharpshooters and a 10-foot-high chain link fence" Huge trade imbalances...
...But it, like most others, was buried after the jump...
...Will Koppel explain...
...It offered nine on Elvis, rock 'n roll, and video...
...are already in pretty good shape" And Bill Plante's coda might have been penned by Marlin Fitzwater: the meeting, he said, was "a final opportunity for [President Reagan...
...News & World Report in January treated its readers to what the cover claimed was "the shocking, inside account" of the S&L crisis...
...Koppel himself has, in fact, shown the kind of creativity that makes economics work on TV...
...Maybe, but Robert MacNeil thinks doing so would involve editorializing that might hurt the show's long-term credibility...
...Instead of these segments, the networks could have used the summit to provide an education in economics the way they admirably used Bush's recent trip to Japan or Gorbachev's to Cuba to offer lessons in politics...
...The problem is that the editor doesn't know what an S&L is, or what FSLIC is, or even what the FDIC does" The warning signs were already in place by the early 1980s...
...In tackling complex issues, the Journal's reporters have nearly perfected the art of finding the compelling microcosm and drawing the reader to the big picture from there...
...And if we want to put Asian cockroaches into perspective, do we really need Ted Koppel's help...
...As economic news goes, networks love them, since they take so little time (and thought) to announce...
...Asking such questions will never be as dramatic as Ted Koppel's rout of Jim and Tammy...
...Ignorance buried other important stories...
...Suddenly, a voice interrupted...
...Only in Washington, of course, are reductions from hypothetical increases called "cuts ." It was clear even at the time that the actual deficit wouldn't be dented at all...
...The best of these new outlets mimicked the standards of excellence that by the 1980s made The Wall Street Journal arguably the best newspaper we have...
...Kilborn's lead had Baker threatening the Germans with a cheaper dollar in response, as if it were an ultimatum...
...And naturally, it couldn't radiate enough light back there to catch the eye of the network news...
...Al Hunt, Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, says the problem extends beyond coverage of the post-crash summit...
...As usual, ignorance of economics played a part...
...There's nothing wrong with brokered money...
...it was forced to offer far higher rates to attract deposits than it could earn on its old mortgages...
...Headlines like "Deficit to Make Real Interest Rates Higher Than They Otherwise Would Be" will never capture interest like "Budget Gap Means Depression Starts Tomorrow:' But the deficit's claim on our paltry savings, the upward pressure on interest rates that results, and the effect on the dollar and our trade balance, don't change with the moons...
...The Journal was also among those institutions that nurtured a brand of business reporting rarely seen two decades ago: the effort to probe the bureaucratic cultures of businesses for insights that financial analysts can't deduce from paper reports...
...This doesn't mean that we want a phalanx of printout-toting econometrics nerds doing stand-ups on the White House lawn...
...It's no wonder, then, that so many Americans viewed the crisis as a postelection bolt from the blue...
...A complex nugget, but surely manageable for a man pulling down more than $1 million a year...
...stocks and bonds and the Fed to respond by hiking interest rates to defend the dollar—was quite possibly one of the factors that contributed to the market crash...
...Stagnant productivity...
...Or killer bees, SATs, and cabbage-patch mania...
...Don't look to the networks for clues: "The fact is," reported ABC's Steve Shephard, "economically the seven nations at this summit are doing quite well now and there are not many hot issues to debate here" NBC's Chris Wallace said that not much would happen at the meeting because "big issues like the world economy...
...The narrative line...
...It's a function of my own ignorance...
...The Economist's credibility doesn't seem to be suffering, and it takes dozens of strong stands—including routine dismissals of the Eisner view...
...It's very hard for an editor in New York or Chicago to be told by a reporter that we have a big problem in the S&L industry," says one reporter on the beat at a leading paper...
...Why should these Wall Street operators—who are hardly in Texas to fulfill their dreams of home ownership—be given federal insurance protection...
...He's on top of nuclear arms...
...Certainly most economists don't allay Koppel's fears...
...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...
...When the GNP grew heartily, interest rates were 4 percent, and inflation was what you did to your kid's football, where was the story...
...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...
...And Tom Brokaw's live interview with Tom Foley was no better...
...Let that sink in—six out of 1,850...
...The Bush trip brought features such as serious looks at Japanese education...
...Koppel's solid on the Mideast...
...So did shows like CNN's "Moneyline" and "Pinnacle," and network offerings like ABC's "Business World" with Sander Vanocur...
...But did the early 1980s "cat craze" matter that much...
...Since so much of politics today is about economics, our leading news organizations owe us a first team— including the key producers and editors—that understands how the whole thing works...
...The bank board's April 1987 report that an astonishing one in four S&Ls was unprofitable, and that they had doubled their losses in 1986 (Post, D-9...
...This problem has been brewing for at least six years," says William Isaac, who chaired the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 1981-85...
...Let's even say that it was the best show ever done on the deficit anywhere...
...While time bombs like the twin deficits and the S&L bankruptcies have ticked away, our leading news sources have been blowing the story...
...And while he's at it, why not toss in, "this increase in savings is important, because the more we save, the more money there is available for businesses and government to borrow...
...Unprecedented American debt...
...But their turf is narrowly defined...
...Research assistance for this story was provided by Bill Rademakers, Barbara Frye, and Rosa Kim...
...He announces that "overall" the trade situation is "much better," with the deficit showing "a 20 percent decline from the year before" That does it—they're both so upbeat about things, it must be good news...
...You do to begin to learn why the budget deficit is...
...Financial stories really bore me," Koppel told Newsweek in 1987...
...Business coverage exploded...
...Joseph Wright, the budget director, was explaining Reagan's final budget, including planned deficit reductions...
...While most reporters share the Koppel-Kilborn mystification on things economic, one media outlet that deserves special praise for its deficit coverage is the "MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour" It makes great efforts to explain numbers and abstract relationships, particularly through Paul Solman's creative introductory segments, which often run 10 minutes...
...Take last November's tag-team debate between economists Robert Eisner of Northwestern University and Richard Rahn of the U.S...
...It's a total charade" In-the-Red News There's another knotty problem in covering issues like the deficit—their effects are too long term to permit reporting to be both accurate and sexy...
...Partly it's just ignorance of economics...
...What's refreshing about his ascent is that it's deserved...
...Koppel: "Well, what about liquidity...
...You sound like you know something about this," one network correspondent asked me...
...Even now, when the story has exploded, some journalists prefer to hype its sexier criminal aspects...
...The first major story of the Bush administration, it's been done in depth, continually, and with rigor...
...Many papers—from The New York Times on down—devoted new daily sections to it...
...That's true if you were looking at the analytically irrelevant nominal rates, which were boosted when inflation was in double digits...
...Answer: Because their vastly higher savings rates let them finance their government borrowing without pushing up interest rates...
...Kilborn's mischaracterization—which could have encouraged foreigners to dump U.S...
...But it's a mistake to confuse improved coverage of business affairs with intelligent coverage of national economic issues, like inflation or the budget deficit...
...But Ted Koppel has a blindspot, and it's one that many top journalists share: he doesn't do economics...
...Isn't there some duty to help the viewer separate the wheat from the chaff...
...During the same period, the World According to Nightline included eight shows on strange animals and another eight on either fatness or hair loss...
...Matthew Miller is a New York writer...
...Chained links It's February 17, 1989...
...Whether we needed it or not, we got it...
...But the only curious turns were in Kilborn's reasoning...
...The norms of American journalism say that's just too "editorial" By giving the biggest play to the illusion of action, therefore, the best newspapers acquiesced in the hoax...
...Economics was once the blind date of journalism," says Jeff Greenfield of ABC...
...But he says Jim Lehrer and he realized that "the gland of punditry shriveled up in us much earlier in our careers?' That's too easy...
...Koppel's "Nightline" tenure roughly coincides with President Reagan's two terms...
...President Reagan's valedictory turn on the world stage...
...The S&Ls reward brokered money with very high interest rates because it's a source of instant cash, which strapped institutions, by definition, need...
...Turn to the case of Peter Kilborn, an economics correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times...
...Take 1987's post-crash budget summit, which under the peculiar rules, of Beltway mathematics purported to "slice" the deficit by $76 billion over two years...
...With today's computer graphics, the creative possibilities are endless...
...Official winks Print reporters, meanwhile—though equipped with more space—wouldn't challenge the official view high in their pieces without a vocal group of dissenting officials to lean on...
...Nightly segments featured shots of Canadian bagpipes and ornate ceremonies, with even Irving R. Levine turning in a piece for NBC on Reagan's evolution from "Hollywood cowboy" to economic leader...
...Real good...
...That's why more of the longer segments—like ABC's "American Agenda"—should be devoted to the economy...
...In January 1987 Kilborn wrote (in another overstated piece on the death of the business cycle) that though you'd expect the deficit to make interest rates soar, the rates were actually "at only half the level they were" in the early eighties...
...The first time that's happened since 1980...
...Kermit: "Yes, you learned all about bull markets and bear markets, right...
...In fact, the deficit rose from $150 billion in FY 1987 to $155 billion in FY 1988 and is projected to come in at $170 billion for FY 1989...
...After all, you don't need a whole five minutes to understand that the crack epidemic is bad...
...To pay those rates, the industry began investing in ever-riskier ventures, creating a system-wide problem of bad assets in which good money chased bad risks in spiraling amounts...
...Several economists told me they've had appearances scratched when no one could be found to disagree with them...
...It was better than staying home, but not by much" The 1970s changed all that...
...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...
Vol. 21 • May 1989 • No. 4
