Word: abc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Jimmy Carter left the White House, he wished two enduring headaches on his successor: Israel's combative Prime Minister Menachem Begin and ABC News' abrasive White House correspondent Sam Donaldson. Last month, when Ronald Reagan spoke at a ceremony extolling the achievements of ABC News President Roone Arledge, Reagan added: "Sam Donaldson is a small price to pay." Not many people would cherish having provoked Chief Executives as diverse as Carter and Reagan. But Donaldson, 49, has gleefully made himself perhaps the best-known TV reporter in America by asking pertinent questions of Presidents in the most...
...camera, Donaldson titillates and embarrasses the press corps by shouting out, often within earshot of public figures, the sort of tasteless jokes that other reporters only murmur. Says a former ABC colleague: "People often find him boorish and obnoxious." Admits Donaldson: "I cause myself a lot of trouble with my deportment, and I am less than thrilled about that." Yet Donaldson seems a mascot rather than an outcast among the White House-beat regulars. They are used to his Peck's Bad Boy manner and enjoy his outbursts against the White House staff for manipulating access to the President...
...Army, he came back to Texas. In 1959 he got a job with KRLD, the Dallas radio affiliate of CBS. All three TV networks initially rejected him for lack of newspaper experience; but after he reported from 1961 to 1967 for the respected WTOP in Washington, he joined ABC, which lagged far behind in news, and soon began to cover Congress. Donaldson rose steadily and was assigned to follow Candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976. When Carter won, Donaldson drew the White House beat and stayed, as ABC's ratings and prestige slowly climbed under Arledge's leadership...
...father of four children, Donaldson lives in a McLean, Va., condominium and admits, "I do not do anything but work." Though he blames his job for destroying his second marriage, he plans to wed again on April 19, to Kansas City TV Reporter Jan Smith, whom he met at ABC...
Donaldson is the most controversial White House correspondent since CBS's Dan Rather left that post in 1974. Moreover, in contrast to Rather and most other reporters and anchors, Donaldson voices his political opinions freely. On the Sunday-morning ABC roundtable led by David Brinkley, where Donaldson is a regular, he lambasted the Reagan Administration's so-called squeal rule, which would compel health agencies to inform parents when dispensing birth control devices to women under 18. Said Donaldson: "It is an awful idea. That is the problem with this Administration. Too often it wants to dictate morals...