Sam Donaldson

Donaldson covered Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign and became the network's White House Correspondent in January 1977, a post he held until January 1989. One of his most widely remembered questions during his tenure at the White House came during the Reagan administration: "Mr. President, in talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed mistakes of the past, and you have blamed the congress. Does any of the blame belong to you?" To which Reagan retorted: "Yes, because for many years I was a Democrat!" In January 1998, Donaldson was once again assigned to the White House as the network's chief correspondent there and served until mid-1999. He covered the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment of President Clinton.

Donaldson appeared as a panelist on the Sunday morning television program This Week with David Brinkley from its inception in 1981 and after Brinkley's retirement in 1996 co-anchored the This Week program with Cokie Roberts until the two were replaced in September 2002 by George Stephanopoulos. He still occasionally serves as a panelist on This Week.

In August 1989, Donaldson became co-anchor of the network's new magazine program Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer. He and Sawyer co-anchored Primetime Live from 1989 to 1998 and its successor, 20/20 Wednesday, from 1998 to 2000. One of his reports featured a Nazi Gestapo officer named Erich Priebke who had escaped to Argentina after World War II. Donaldson's team located Priebke in 1994, and Donaldson interviewed him on a street in Bariloche, Argentina, about his role in the execution of 335 Italian civilians on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler in the caves outside Rome.[3] When the report aired, Italy demanded Priebke's extradition and Argentina eventually complied. Priebke was sentenced to life in prison in Italy for his crimes.[4]

Donaldson anchored the ABC Sunday Evening News from its inception in 1979 until August 1989.

In 1990–91, Donaldson covered the Gulf War (Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm) and co-anchored Primetime Live from Kuwait City two days after the Iraqi troops were forced out.

In 1991, he ended the ABC News Nightline broadcast to announce the dissolution of the Soviet Union with playing the Anthem of the Soviet Union and a video of the last Soviet Kremlin Flag lowered and the Raising of the Russian Tricolor, including the resignation of Gorbachev as President of the USSR.

In August 1992, Donaldson and his producer David Kaplan went to Sarajevo on assignment. On the way into town from the airport, Kaplan, riding in a second vehicle, was shot to death by a sniper. That night from Belgrade, Donaldson, co-anchoring the program Primetime Live, reported on Kaplan's death.

In 2002, Donaldson anchored the first regularly scheduled U.S. news broadcast on the Internet[5] and, in later years, hosted the ABC News Now "Politics Live" broadcast.

On August 2, 2006, during the last White House Press conference in the briefing room before undergoing major renovations, Donaldson shouted, "Mr. President, should Mel Gibson be forgiven?", referencing reports of the actor/producer's alleged anti-Semitic remarks. President George W. Bush laughed and looked up to see who had asked the question. Bush joked, "Is that Sam Donaldson? Forget it ... you're a 'has-been'! We don't have to answer has-beens' questions."[6] Donaldson replied, "Better to have been a has-been than a never-was."[7]

With the exception of the Republican convention in August 1992, Donaldson covered every major political party convention from 1964-2012, until he retired from ABC in 2009.

Donaldson was voted Best White House Correspondent in 1985 by readers of the Washington Journalism Review and Best Television Correspondent in 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989 by readers of the same magazine. Among his other awards are four Emmys, three Peabodys, the Edward R. Murrow award 1997 (WSU), the Paul White award (RTNDA 1998), and he and his wife Jan were among those named as "Washingtonians of the Year" by Washingtonian Magazine in 2002.

In 1995, the struggle in DC over whether to cut the growing deficit touched Donaldson directly. Bruce Ingersoll, award-winning journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times and The Wall Street Journal, published a column entitled "As Congress Considers Slashing Crop Subsidies, Affluent Urban Farmers Come Under Scrutiny", where he named Donaldson as one of the wealthy, absentee beneficiaries of Federal subsidies, the "third largest recipient" of federal funds in his area.

During the debate in Congress over whether to cut "pork", this article was read into the Congressional Record,[8] and Donaldson was chastised by Senator Al D'Amato to "Give the money back", a phrase repeated multiple times in his floor speech and elsewhere.

There were claims that Donaldson received as much as $1 million in subsidies.[9] The real number turned out to be around $188,000,[10] but the scandal of a millionaire receiving money for a farm on which he was "absentee" still got significant public coverage.[11]

The subsidy was held up as a sign of how meaningless much of the pork was, as the Federal government had stopped using mohair for uniforms in 1960, after only seven years of subsidies, but was still subsidizing its production over three decades later, and apparently giving out money to people other than "poor family farmers". Even the Department of Agriculture was on record as wanting the program ended.[12][13]

Donaldson initially refused to comment, but eventually defended himself by describing the mohair subsidy as "built into the price of sheep", and claimed he had "argued against subsidies for years" and was glad when the program was finally "killed", but in fact mohair subsidies continued all the way to 2012.[14][15]

Only a year later, Donaldson was embroiled in another Federal aid scandal. While still receiving Federal mohair subsidies, it was revealed that he was also using Federal resources to kill prairie dogs, bobcats, foxes, and coyotes on his ranch.[16][17] His farm was reported to have used the USDA's Animal Damage Control agents 412 times in only 5 years.[18] This sparked outrage among both deficit hawks and animal rights activists.[19]

This was actually brought to light by Donaldson's own demands for more Federal money. He claimed to have lost a number of sheep to predators despite the heavy use of Federal resources, and therefore wanted Federal money to pay for his losses: "The government helps ranchers and farmers and businesses of all kinds. If it's in existence and I am eligible to use it, I'll use it."[20]

In an interview, Donaldson said of the animal rights complaints:

What are we going to do about the coyotes, that are eating the lambs like there's no tomorrow? They're eating so many lambs, I thought the other day I'd put out some mint jelly, in case they want it with their mutton. Every time I say this, the conservationists and the people who love animals just jump all over me. "What? A coyote is a predator and has a right to live." Yeah, they have a right to live, I'm all for that, but they're eating my lambs, folks. I just put it to you, doesn't the lamb have a right to live? "Yeah, but you're going to sell the lamb and they're going to kill the lamb for the money." That's right. If you're going to be in the sheep ranching business, you have to try to get rid of the coyotes. Otherwise, you're not going to stay in the ranching business.[21]