When South Africa Called, We Answered

seemed like they were part of the set. Like a good TV is how out to stoke controversy, they ensured that a black Republicans and former Reagan administration officials would get their questions in. Mandela handled them all with a facility that made one think he had been a practiced Nightline regular for years. But unlike the news talk show professionals, he went beyond a sprinkle of sound bites. He insisted on completing his thoughts, employing a reasoned and legalistic style.

It did not appear that Mandela is one of Koppel’s many adoring fans – judging by the sharpness and dismissive quality of his responses and by the fact that he hardly looked at his interviewer once. To ABC’s disappointment, one of the most electric TV shows of all time, a program on which Koppel was occasionally speechless or “paralyzed,” to use Mandela’s phrase, pulled down a low national rating. On day two of his trip, Mandela had hit it big on Broadway, but the fever hadn’t reached the rest of the country yet.

Media coverage in New York was overwhelmingly positive.

I’m told that the local TV stations that cut away for live coverage did extremely well in the ratings. He impressed the press corps, which after initially playing up stories about Jewish community protests, seems to fall in love. I never thought I’d live to see the day when the New York Post, so often accused of stirring the pot of racial divisiveness in the city, would run a picture with one word, “AMANDLA,” (Power) bannered across page one.

The New York Times was, as one would expect, much more restrained. On the first day of Mandela’s visit, a rather skeptical article ran below the fold with a sub-head calling him a “former inmate” on the jump page. The scope of the coverage improved after Mandela met with the paper’s editorial board, although, reportedly, editor Max Frankel refused to attend the meeting when 133