KOPPEL ON DISCOVERY
Sunday, May 6, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery Channel and Discovery Health Channel
More than 10 million Americans are living with cancer. As early detection has become more prevalent and as treatments have become more effective, many cancer survivors are finding that they can treat their cancer as a chronic disease.
On Sunday, May 6, Discovery Channel presents a special three-hour broadcast of Koppel on Discovery dedicated to the discussion of living with cancer.
In a live town hall meeting at Discovery Communications headquarters, Ted Koppel will be joined by Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards; Lance Armstrong, seven-time Tour de France champion; and Leroy Sievers, Koppel's longtime executive producer and friend — each of whom will discuss their experience with coping with a cancer diagnosis.
The panel will interact with an audience comprised entirely of people living with cancer, their loved ones and the professionals who care for them. Immediately prior to the town meeting, Discovery Channel will broadcast a series of Koppel's conversations with Sievers and Armstrong.
As colleagues for more than 15 years, Koppel and Sievers have covered news events in hotspots around the world, including the war zones of , Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq. They are also neighbors and close friends. Six years ago, Sievers was diagnosed with colon cancer and was treated successfully. In December of 2005, doctors discovered that the cancer had returned, spreading to Sievers' brain and lungs.
Shortly after the diagnosis, he agreed to allow Koppel to document his battle with the disease. In Koppel on Discovery: Living with Cancer, Koppel and Sievers discuss what it's like to face the prospect of dying, as well as the highs and lows that come with living with cancer.
Sievers recounts how cancer has affected his personal relationships, his professional life and simple day-to-day activities. He also jokes that cancer has been his greatest career move yet — throughout the program, Sievers reads from his popular blog on NPR.org, "My Cancer," through which he has created a unique and expanding online community.
In his discussion with Koppel, Armstrong speaks candidly and even credits cancer with contributing to the full, rich life that he leads today. Looking back on his 1996 diagnosis, Armstrong recalls the pain of watching his mother react to the heartbreaking news that her only child had a 50/50 chance of surviving the disease. He describes the grueling nature of the chemotherapy he received, and reflects on the competition that arose between him and his cancer, as well as his triumphant return to professional cycling.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Koppel on Discovery is produced by Discovery Channel's managing editor, Ted Koppel and Tom Bettag, executive producer. They are joined by a team of some of the best researchers and producers in the industry.
Together they are producing a slate of long-form programming exclusively for Discovery Channel that touches on some of the most important events, people and places changing lives today. From field reporting to script writing, every aspect of the series is shaped by Koppel's 42 years of experience and unparalleled journalistic integrity.
In Ted's Words
My analogy [of 24/7 news] is it's rather like standing 2 feet away from a railroad track and watching the trains go by. And, boy, you're close and it's exciting and there's a lot of energy and you really feel as though you're on top of it, but you can't for the life of you see what's going on. And if you really want to know what's going on, you've got to step back 10 feet, 20 feet, 50 feet, sometimes half a mile, so that you can see the locomotive and the caboose and everything that is in between.
The kind of programming we're going to be doing here at Discovery is stepping back, allowing a little bit of time to pass, so that people get a perspective on the importance of some events and the relative unimportance of other events, which seemed important only because they just occurred.
This program has already aired. Check TV schedules for similar programs.
If you expect the War on Terror to end with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, or with the establishment of a stable government in Afghanistan, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. While the eyes of the world focus on those conflicts, the U.S. military is fighting an unconventional war that could last generations.
Widely known as the "War on Terror," the outgoing commander of the U.S. military's Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, refers to it as "The Long War." Ted Koppel presents an in-depth special report on a war that may last longer than any in which the U.S. has been involved before.
U.S. military officials point out that al-Qaeda and other terror organizations are not thinking in terms of a campaign that will end in five, 10 or even 20 years. Instead, they are looking as far as 100 years into the future, and the U.S. has no choice but to do the same. In this special report, Koppel explores the challenges the prolonged struggle presents and how America's military is trying to adapt. His interview with Gen. Abizaid is featured throughout the broadcast.
Koppel and his team of producers take viewers to Afghanistan, where the American military is fighting an increasingly powerful Taliban; to Djibouti, where the U.S. is building schools and digging wells; to Ethiopia, where the U.S. is training commandos while the war in next-door Somalia rages; and to North Carolina, where private military firm Blackwater USA is training military and civilian personnel for life on the front lines.
The third chapter in this trilogy is something that the Pentagon calls "The Long War." And what they're really referring to is the battle against terrorism, which many of the leaders in the Pentagon now perceive as being an endless battle — one that may go on for 20 years, 30 years or more.
So they have begun to preach the gospel that we have to adapt to this notion that we are in a permanent state of war, and that what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and certain other parts of the world right now and the way that we are fighting this, this war, requires a certain level of adaptation and we have to adapt to these new realities.
So the 9/11 show and how it's changed America, Iran and the influence that it's exerting throughout the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and the Long War, those are all, in a sense, three chapters of the same story.
This program has already aired. Check TV schedules for similar programs.
For his second Discovery Channel special in 2006, Koppel plans to take viewers to Iran 27 years after American hostages were seized in Tehran. He looks at the historical reasons for Iranians’ suspicions and for their support of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s refusal to halt Iran’s nuclear program. He will also explore Iranians' perspectives on Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel.
In Ted's Words
I (had) begun shooting certain elements in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah just before this latest cycle of violence broke out. I met with their principal military leader in the south. I wanted to go and talk to the people who run Hezbollah because Hezbollah and Iran are very, very close. And in the event of a confrontation between the United States and Iran, one of the battle fronts clearly was going to be southern Lebanon and Israel. I just didn't realize it was going to happen within a week or two of my being there.
I think there are a whole bunch of revolutionary guys waiting for me [in Iran]. They've been waiting for 27 years and they can't wait for me to get to Tehran. I went to Iran the first time in 1974, when the Shah was still in power. I was a diplomatic correspondent for ABC News in those days and I went with Henry Kissinger, and he was acutely embarrassed by the fact that his diplomatic correspondents who were accompanying him were giving the Shah all kinds of hell for human rights violations that were being committed by his secret police.
I must say, as I look back now on these last 27 years and on the degree of violations of human rights that have occurred over those 27 years, you know, certainly U.S. interests would have been better served if the Shah was still there, and I'm not sure that Iranian interests might not have been better served. But that's one of the reasons that I very much want to go back, to see for myself.
This program has already aired. Check TV schedules for similar programs.
"The experts are all but unanimous: There will be another terrorist attack on the United States. When that happens, the opportunity for rational discussion and debate will be over. That's why we feel it's so urgent to address this issue now." — Ted Koppel
Ted Koppel begins his groundbreaking Discovery Channel series with a three-hour primetime special on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 with The Price of Security. Integral to the special and the live town meeting are interviews with current and former administration members — including Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, and Presidential advisor Karen Hughes. Koppel also interviews military and security experts, including the man who oversees the 9/11 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Admiral Harry Harris, as he explores the dilemma the government faces in the war on terrorism.
The government has been criticized for not doing enough to "connect the dots," but it is also being assailed by civil libertarians for undermining the freedoms on which the United States was founded. Koppel sorts through these critical issues facing Americans and their lawmakers, succinctly bringing viewers all sides of the national debate.
Following the broadcast of KOPPEL ON DISCOVERY: The Price of Security, Koppel will host a live town meeting at Discovery Communications World Headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., with 9/11 family members, civil libertarians, administration officials and members of the 9/11 Commission to discuss what lies ahead for America and the delicate balance between national security and individual liberties.
In Ted's Words
I think if you just stop people in the street and you say to them, what are the biggest changes that have happened to America since 9/11, a number of them might be inclined to say: "Well, security is a lot tighter at the airports, you gotta take your shoes off, you can't carry a pocketknife onto the plane with you. And if you go to certain public buildings, there are these concrete dividers, there are more cops around." They will point to the visual things that have changed over the past five years.
Those are really among the least important changes. This country has changed. Our legal system is different from what it was. We have, after all, been at war in Iraq for three years now. When you look at the issue of what rights or lack of rights detainees have, what can happen to someone who is here on an expired visa or without a visa, the degree to which our laws have been adjusted to accommodate — if not torture, then certainly the violent interrogation of people, it is evident that a profound shift has occurred.
Now it may well be that all of these things are essential to the survival of the United States, but there is another argument to be made, and that is that the bedrock of the United States is the kind of legal system that we have had and enjoyed for many, many years. And when you start tweaking that legal system, when you start calibrating it, you make some changes that can lead to extraordinary ramifications later on in our lives, as well as in the lives of foreign detainees.
So that tension between security, on the one hand, and various liberties, on the other; the manner in which privacy has become more of a factor and less of a factor; the degree to which data mining — which is high-speed computers digging into these millions of pieces of information that exist about all of us and how that information is being used and by whom that information is being used — these are all rather important things that have happened in the United States over the past five years. So that tension is what this program is about.
You have to acknowledge that we, the American people, were pushing the issue of security five years ago, and it's only in the last couple of years that we have begun focusing a little more on the issues of liberties and freedoms and privacy. I don't think there are any real villains in this story. This is a story about America trying to come to terms with a new reality and how are we going to do that. Now is the time that we have to talk about issues of privacy and personal freedom and liberty and whether we want American law — U.S. law as it has always existed in this country — to continue being the bedrock of how we see ourselves and how we are seen overseas.
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