Ted Koppel and the False Premise, Part I: ABC News Nightline

My, how time does fly. It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly twenty-five years since my first and only appearance on ABC News Nightline. I must confess that my memories of that show do not bring tears of joy to my eyes. Tears, maybe … but joy? Not so much.

The producer of ABC News Nightline called me one day out of the blue and said he would like to do a show on “fear in the workplace.” He had already lined up Harold Geneen, former chairman of IT&T, and a psychiatrist from Wharton to be two of the guests. He said that because my name was “synonymous with intimidation,” he felt I would be the ideal person to round out the program.

I told him that although I admired Ted Koppel and thought it might be fun, it probably would be unfair for me to do the show. I explained that my book, Winning Through Intimidation, had been incorrectly positioned by the media as a book about how to get ahead by intimidating others, and that if he was counting on me to play along with that misrepresentation, he would be sorely disappointed.

The producer said that he understood what I was saying and assured me that I needn’t worry about being cast as “the bad guy.” I warned him one last time that I had resigned from playing the role of master intimidator for TV producers years ago, and that Koppel might be less than thrilled with my answers if he took that approach with me.

He again assured me that he fully understood and that there would be no problem. So, based on those assurances, I agreed to do the show. In my haste, however, I had forgotten one well-established fact about producers and interviewers: Most of them have no qualms about lying in order to suck you into their game plan!

The first half of ABC News Nightline that evening consisted of film clips of scenes from Psycho, The Exorcist, and Poltergeist. From this rather odd beginning, Ted Koppel segued into the evening’s discussion topic: “Fear and the marketplace: How executives use it to get more out of their subordinates.” It was a stretch that proved to be too difficult even for a professional like him.

Koppel started by asking Harold Geneen if he attributed his remarkable success at IT&T to his ability to motivate his executives though fear. Geneen replied that he had never advocated motivation through fear, and that he saw himself only as a demanding board chairman who set challenging goals for his people.

Looking disappointed by Geneen’s answer, Koppel then addressed me by saying, “Mr. Ringer, you’ve been called ‘the Apostle of Intimidation.’ How do you feel about motivating workers through fear?”

I politely but firmly told him that I objected to his introduction, and proceeded to explain that my book, Winning Through Intimidation, was not about intimidating others, but about how to defend yourself against intimidating people. He twitched so noticeably that I feared his hair mousse would crack, and the interview went downhill from there.

It was a long, uncomfortable hour for everyone involved. The producer’s good-guy/bad-guy scenario had failed to materialize. As you might have guessed, he neither thanked me nor said goodbye when I left. Standing on principle can be very lonely endeavor.

As annoying as that ABC News Nightline experience was for me, I was proud of the fact that I had held fast to my beliefs and refused to play the producer’s deceitful game of “pin the tail on the villain.” Years earlier, when I was a naïve young man, I had fallen into the trap of playing the bad guy in a number of interviews. The low point for me was when I play-acted the role of an intimidator on The Tonight Show, making an utter fool of myself – to the delight of producer Freddie de Cordova, who held me over for a second segment.

I shall not go into that story in detail here, as I have discussed it at length in my book Action! Nothing Happens Until Something Moves. But I will say that it was a turning point in my life in that it made me think a great deal about the danger of accepting false premises — and the efficacy of learning to challenge them.

In Part II of this article, I’ll tell you what it was that prompted me to think about the details of my ABC News Nightline experience in the first place.