Press: Just Bray It Again, Sam

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Donaldson is more than just aggressive. He is perhaps the leading practitioner of a style of broadcast journalism that treats news like sports, emphasizing vivid snippets of videotaped reality rather than a reporter's measured conclusions. Indeed, some critics claim that Donaldson is scarcely a reporter. He makes little effort to compete with print journalists in developing sources and background knowledge, or uncovering major news. As he sees it, his job is to get people, especially the President, to react on the record, on camera. Says he: "My specialty is asking a pointed question to draw the newsworthy response that everyone else uses."

Most people in the press corps, whether reporting for print or broadcast, do in fact use the replies to Donaldson's queries. Says a rival from another network: "Sam is the first one out of the block, and the rest of us need him in a White House as tough to crack as this one." Howell Raines, former White House correspondent for the New York Times, agrees. Says he: "Donaldson plays an important role, asking the obvious question that everyone wants the answer to."

Donaldson's questions rarely advance public understanding of issues. His skill is in capturing, in a few words, the chief concern of the day. When President Carter was deep in Mideast negotiations in Cairo, Donaldson called out: "Is it peace?" (Carter hesitated, then answered, "Yes.") When President Reagan was facing a mounting series of allegations of misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency, Donaldson demanded: "Is there a scandal brewing at the EPA?" (Reagan replied that the scandal was not in the agency but among the press.)

In effect, Donaldson is the television equivalent of the hard-sell tabloid newspaper. He appears more interested in emotion, in the fates of careers and in the flow of power than in the substance of Government. He gives an apocalyptic tone to even humdrum stories: after two of Reagan's Cabinet aides resigned in January to take lucrative jobs in industry, Donaldson intoned that Reagan was "the only President in modern times to lose four Cabinet members in less than two years." He ended a report about a less than climactic presidential press conference with the hyperbolic warning that Reagan must shape up "if in the end he is to keep his job." Donaldson admits that after six years on the White House beat he is often bored, except when a crisis erupts. Says he: "There are days when we just sit around vegetating."