During that year, he did radio broadcasts from home, anchored the network's Saturday night television news, and co-wrote a spy novel with a fellow journalist. Koppel does not recommend that aspiring journalists study journalism. Instead, he says, they need to know something in depth, be it economics, philosophy, history, art, or music. It does not really make any difference because, basically, this is a trade. It lies in taking arcane or complex information from a particular field and making it understandable to a mass audience.
Television is, for the moment at least, the ultimate mass medium.
He knows that his influence and power are ephemeral. The power that the press in general, and reporters in particular, have is built on trust, he believes. We have influence only for so long as our viewing public believes that we are not using it for our own ends. The minute that the viewers of my own program begin to believe that I have an agenda, that I am trying to achieve something, that I am trying to push them in one direction or another, then my influence is gone. My influence paradoxically rests in the perception of the viewer that I am not using it.