2 cents on Ted Koppel and Nightline

Tonight, Ted Koppel and Nightline will spend their entire show running the pictures of soldiers who have dies in Iraq. For all the defenses of Nightline's "The Fallen", there are two issues that Koppel cannot defend: time and space.

Koppel declares: "Just look at these people. Look at their names. And look at their ages. Consider what they've done for you. Honor them."

The problem is two-fold:


1) The timing of this show is wholly unwarranted. To honor our war dead before the war has ended is to enumerate losses with overtones of burdensome warning. Burdensome, because the loss is great to bear. Warning, because we know there will be more dead soldiers. If Nightline truly wishes to honor the dead it would wait until the war is over or at least until Memorial day.


2) The medium for the event is wholly inappropriate. When you visit a war memorial (a good one just opened up on the mall by the by) you go of your own accord, for however long you want, and you look at whatever names you care to look at. The repetitiveness and the length of “The Fallen” lends itself to an elongated dirge, an endless wake of overwhelming loss. TV is not the medium for this tribute.