OFF CAMERA Private Thoughts Made Public

For a guy who travels all over the globe covering breaking news stories and hosting a TV show known for its depth, "Nightline," Ted Koppel doesn't have many enlightening or profound thoughts to share in what the publisher describes as "an intimate chronicle of the final year of the twentieth century." Koppel offers mostly pat restatements of newspaper editorial pages and some hypocritical laments on the sorry state of TV news. He describes his opulent lifestyle in one passage and decries Kosovo's civilian casualties in the next, creating a self-important, self-indulgent, and phony air throughout. Audio production is outstanding, unlike Koppel's ideas about how to keep a listener's attention. T.F. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 01]