Read the CNN interview of Koppel
COOPER: Let me ask you, how much of your decision was — to do this was based on your own experience as being embedded during the war?
KOPPEL: I wouldn’t focus it on that. Over the course of the past 41 years, I’ve covered about 11 wars, or 12 wars, beginning in 1967 in Vietnam.
And if there’s one thing I’ve come to feel very strongly is that we have a responsibility in our business to keep reminding people of the cost of war.
You may recall when I was embedded, Charlie Gibson and I got engaged in a friendly debate on “Good Morning America” one day on whether or not to show the pictures of wounded and dead. And while I agree that you don’t show their faces, you don’t, in other words, inform the families on live television that their loved ones have been injured or killed, nevertheless I feel it’s very important that we do show the consequences of war.
And not to do that is to airbrush it to such a degree that people may get too fond of war.