DAVID BRINKLEY: Sunday Morning Sage
David Brinkley, a veteran of 48 years of broadcast journalism, this week celebrates his 10th anniversary as anchor and moderator of “This Week With David Brinkley,” ABC’s live, award-winning Sunday morning news series.
Brinkley, 71, began his career as White House correspondent for NBC News in 1943 and has reported on every President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1956, NBC teamed Brinkley with newscaster Chet Huntley as anchors of NBC’s “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.” The duo reported the nightly news for the next 14 years. In September, 1981, Brinkley joined ABC News.
Oft-noted for his wry observations, Brinkley has won every major broadcasting award, including 10 Emmys and two George Foster Peabody Awards. Brinkley also is the author of the best-selling 1988 book, “Washington Goes to War.”
Brinkley spoke with Susan King from Washington about the state of politics and journalism, and, of course, about “This Week With David Brinkley.”
What editions of “This Week With David Brinkley” are you especially proud?
It is the nature of journalism that today’s sensational scoop is next month’s bore. This is a very fragile, fleeting temporary business we are in. Yesterday is yesterday and we got another paper to get out or another program to air.
I have really spent my life not looking back. You can’t. It was like an editor I used to have at a newspaper, whatever I gave him, whatever I wrote, however good it was, he’d say, “Yeah, that’s OK, but what have you got for Sunday?”
(After the show) we congratulate ourselves once in a while, though we very often agree the program wasn’t worth a damn. We get people we think would be good and then they aren’t. We have a little green room and we serve a brunch to our guests (after the show), and then we eat it ourselves, and after the second cup of coffee we stop talking about today and wonder what we are going to do next week.
When do you begin to prepare for Sunday’s show?
Friday and Saturday. We like to keep it close to the news and we like to keep it live. We can’t tape it, and I don’t want to tape it anyway. You know there’s a little fact about television that I cannot explain, but I know it’s true--when you tape something, somebody always makes a mistake. When you do it live that never happens.
Being live you can really be a news program.
Has this year been the most newsworthy in recent memory?
It has been the damnedest year I can remember, with Russia collapsing and all of the rest of it. The world has turned upside down in just a short time. The other high moments have been the moon landing, which is so fantastic I still find it hard to believe, and some others. There hasn’t been anything like this year I can recall--World War II maybe, but I wasn’t on the air then.
How has television journalism improved over the past four decades?
I think it has gotten better in this respect--it is not that we are any better or any smarter, but the technology has advanced so rapidly. The engineering has been so good that I alone can, and did, stand in the desert in the Gulf with a little transmitter the size of a traveling salesman’s sample case and transmit directly to ABC’s studios. It allows us to do a great deal more and better than we used to. We covered the Gulf War better than we have ever been able to cover anything like that because of the technology.
What were your feelings about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings?
There has never been anything like that on the face of the Earth.
I do know that somebody on the staff of one of the Senators leaked (the FBI report). If (it had been leaked to me) I would have put it on the air. And you know all the Senators said, “I didn’t do this and my staff didn’t do it.” The asterisk you need there is a member of the Senate really doesn’t know what his staff is doing.
The Senate (Judicial) Committee knew about this sexual harassment (charge) and chose to do nothing about it. It was just one more damn woman bellyaching. That’s what they thought. They can’t do that anymore.
I was in London a few days last week and it was the top half of page one of the London Times, the Telegraph and every good paper in Europe that I saw. The British were hanging on to every word. It was embarrassing. That is what they think our country is like and to a degree it is, but we never had anything like that before and I pray we don’t again.
What do you think of President Bush’s chances of being re-elected in 1992?
I am more than half serious when I say if you do not have a record of felonies, you should run. I am serious. It is time for a woman and if the recession continues and the economic troubles continue, George Bush is going to have a hard time.
There are polls and polls and I don’t know which I am quoting, but some 70% say that the country is going in the wrong direction, which I happen to agree with. It is not all George Bush’s fault, but he is in office and he has to take the blame.
What I think is that a month ago it looked like a shoo-in (for Bush). To think of anybody running against Bush would induce laughter. That is not altogether turned around, but it has turned part way and it could turn all the way.
Do you ever think of retiring?
In two or three years. I enjoy journalism. I can’t think of anything else I would ever want to do. Every day is different. Every day is new. Every paper is new. Every broadcast is new. The alternative is some kind of paper shuffling as a lawyer, and I can’t stand that.
“This Week With David Brinkley” airs Sundays at 10:30 a.m. KGTV; 11 a.m. KESQ, and 11:30 a.m. on KABC and KEYT.
