'The Kalb Report: Goodnight and Good Luck': Long-running broadcast interview series airs final segment Feb. 18

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.”

For more series history, click here to see the longer version of this story.