'Kalb Report' signs off for last time with segment to air Feb. 18

“The Kalb Report: Goodnight and Good Luck” with Marvin Kalb and Ted Koppel concludes Club’s historic broadcast series after nearly three decades

 

After 28 years and 103 programs, the longest-running and most successful long-term project in National Press Club history, The Kalb Report public broadcasting series, comes to a close this spring as moderator Marvin Kalb and his long-time friend and fellow network news correspondent Ted Koppel look back, around and ahead at the challenges for both journalism and our democracy.

The program, recorded in November, will premiere on Maryland Public Television on Saturday, Feb. 18, at 7 p.m., with an encore presentation Sunday, April 23, at 4 p.m. It also will be available online via MPT and the Club, and a spring reception is planned at the Club to conclude the series.

In the series finale, the 92-year-old Kalb reflects on his broadcast news career that stretches back to 1957 as Koppel turns the tables on him and becomes the interviewer. They explore the symbiotic state of American democracy and the press from the Cold War to the War on Truth. Interwoven into the program are video excerpts and photographs from past Kalb Reports, as well as of Kalb as he reported for CBS News in the eras of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

“This is a concluding opportunity for me to express my own views about the current state of journalism, about its continuing central importance to maintaining American democracy, which I describe as ‘fragile,’ constantly in need of fresh reinforcements of truth, honesty and honor to survive,” Kalb said.

American democracy, he said, “has never been a sure thing. It now desperately needs a vibrant, unafraid corps of get-up-and-go journalists.”

Perhaps the program that Kalb most enjoyed was the 2014 joint appearance of Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who despite disagreeing on many court decisions, were close personal friends.

Kalb asked them to select one freedom that is most essential to the functioning of a democracy. Scalia said freedom of speech, because democracy depends on open discussion, while Ginsburg said freedom of the press. A free press is a watchdog of government and keeps government “from getting too far out of line,” she said.

When Kalb interviewed Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS News anchor once known as “the most trusted man in America,” in 1998 he said something prescient that has become a central issue today. Kalb asked if he were concerned that politicians who don’t like the press would push for legislation to contain it, opening the way to a totalitarian state.

The response, Kalb said, was that Cronkite believed democracy was not in danger – unless the Supreme Court loses its objectivity and becomes too closely connected with a political party or a political movement. 

“It sounds almost as if Walter was taking a peek into the future and seeing us today,” Koppel said.

Also highlighted throughout the 28-year run was the expanding role of women in the upper levels of journalism. Diane Sawyer, the first female correspondent on “60 Minutes,” remembered her early days:

“I knew I was in trouble when the entire group of the '60 Minutes' correspondents walked down the hall on something really important and said, ‘Here's what we're going to do,’ and ended it in the men's room.”

The Kalb Report was created in 1994 when Kalb was on a one-year sabbatical from Harvard University to return to Washington to teach at George Washington University. Kalb was the last correspondent personally hired by Edward R. Murrow, and his career had taken him around the world as the CBS News chief diplomatic correspondent. He was later moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press before leaving the networks after more than 30 years to become the founding director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

At GW, Kalb found a partner in former CBS Radio Network General Manager Michael Freedman, who went on to become Club president in 2020. Freedman brought Kalb to the Club to present the idea for the series to then-President Gil Klein, who quickly embraced it. The first of nine programs for the first season was produced on Sept. 29, 1994, and Freedman remained executive producer for the entire 28-year run.

Freedman arranged grants to produce the series, with Oklahoma-based Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, a division of Inasmuch Foundation, underwriting the project for the past two decades, and he successfully worked to get programs aired on public television stations across the country as well as on National Public Radio, Sirius XM Satellite Radio and Federal News Radio in Washington. Maryland Public Television has served as “presenting station” for the series for the past several years.