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[Wednesday at NAB]
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RTNDA Bestows Paul White Award
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by John Merli,
~ April 16, 2008
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TV TECHNOLOGY
Veteran TV reporter and anchor Sam Donaldson was honored with RTNDA’s prestigious Paul White Award Monday night for his 50 years of journalistic excellence, which, as millions of viewers can attest, has included covering several administrations on his former White House beat — and often asking the hard and pointed questions without hesitation.
The newsman was praised by ABC News Washington Bureau Chief Robin Sproul for setting the original hard-edged tone of the then-fledgling television network 40 years ago. These days Donaldson devotes most of his professional energies to anchoring politics and other news on the network’s fulltime online venue, ABC Now.
“Sam has never met a platform he didn’t like,” Sproul said with a smile to the several hundred local news directors and journalism interns in attendance at the reception, sponsored by ABC News. “When he first arrived at ABC all those years ago, he simply energized everyone,” Sproul said. He still does, she added.
ESTEEMED COMPANY
Donaldson said when he was first informed of RTNDA’s plans to bestow the Paul White Award on him in a phone call from association President Barbara Cochran, he was shocked.
And then when he thought back on some of the award’s past recipients, who he highly praised for their unique talents — including Ted Koppel, Howard K. Smith, Charles Gibson, Christiane Amanpour and Charles Osgood (this year’s NAB Distinguished Service Award recipient) — he was in awe. “Shock and awe. There’s something we can use as a PR slogan!” he quipped.
Donaldson mused that while ABC Now has its “dozens and dozens” of viewers, new news venues and production options made possible by emerging technology have changed the news business forever, not all of it for the better.
While he applauds the fact that more Americans have more types of information open to them from a greater variety of sources such as YouTube and online blogs, he regrets the lack of editorial vetting that has been the hallmark of good journalism since the print media was the only game in town.
“With a backpack and a dish, anyone can now bring you instant news from anywhere,” he said. Donaldson said he makes no secret of the fact that he always got most of his news ideas from the print medium. “Matt Drudge [of The Drudge Report online Web] once said he never let facts get in the way of a good story. Well, that’s all fine and good, but that’s not the way we do things at [the broadcast networks].”
Although he said he was not going to deliver another gloom-and-doom speech at an awards ceremony because he thinks the majority of journalistic activities in 2008 are worthwhile, he laments the notion that some reporters seem to hesitate to ask the tough questions — especially of government leaders, citing as a prime example the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “We have the books now telling us [how things] went wrong, and I’m glad we have the books. But I wish we had that information before it all happened.”
The rush to air (or to publish online) hinders journalistic excellence, Donaldson maintains. “We used to always try to be right, and then to be first. Today we don’t have a choice. We have to put it on first and hope we got it right!”
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