Not many knew about the Second Petra Conference held last month in the Jordanian town of Petra where 25 Nobel laureates including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Elie Wiesel gathered to discuss pressing global problems on the theme, Petra II: A World in Danger. That is because the conference received little attention from the world’s media, feels Ted Koppel, former host of Nightline on ABC News.
Upset about the lack of attention the conference received, Koppel embarked on making a one-hour program featuring interviews with Nobel laureates for the Discovery Times Channel, AP reported July 11. Most of the program is a discussion between Koppel, the Dalai Lama, Irish peace activist Betty Williams, literature award winner Wole Solinka and Columbia University medical researcher Eric Kandel. It airs on Discovery today at 10 PM.
AP said the Discovery special titled “Petra – A Quest for Hope,” was an outgrowth of Koppel’s participation in the Petra conference. He was invited by one of the organisers Elie Wiesel to moderate a seminar.
Recounting his impressions about the conference and its participants, Koppel was quoted by AP as saying, “You couldn’t imagine a nicer, more dedicated group of people, and you can’t imagine issues that deserve more attention.”
In the introduction of the show, Koppel dryly notes in his introduction how many more people cared about the “American Idol” finale in an oblique reference to the general indifferrence among the majority towards pressing and pertinent global issues that affects everybody’s lives, reported AP.
Discovery Times is available in about 400 million of the nation’s 110 million television homes.
