Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

David Brinkley Dead
ABC Radio news ^

Posted on 06/12/2003 6:49:07 AM PDT by Atlas Sneezed

NTXT


TOPICS: Breaking News; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: davidbrinkley; obituary; turass
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 141-150 next last
To: Beelzebubba
Prayers and condolences to the family and friends of a great man. Didn't agree with him politically, but he always conducted himself with grace and dignity.
81 posted on 06/12/2003 8:08:18 AM PDT by commish (Freedom Tastes Sweetest to Those Who Have Fought to Preserve It)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beelzebubba
Memories are short, or most folks here are just too young to remember. Both Huntley and Brinkley were liberals, Huntley a little less so.

During the Goldwater days the pair were targets of huge conservative letter campaigns just as we freepers initiate today on emails with Rather, Brokaw & Company. We conservatives just loathed the pair for their pro-liberal spin.

Just because Brinkley made a few anti-Clinton remarks in his dotage doesn't rehabilitate him one iota in my mind. In fact, his decades of wry, low-key anti-conservatism on TV most certainly contributed to an eventual Bill Clinton-type being elected.

Sorry, I just don't bite on revisionist history when liberals shuffle off this mortal coil.

However, I'm sorry for his demise and sympathize with his family and friends.

Leni

82 posted on 06/12/2003 8:08:43 AM PDT by MinuteGal (Click Any Ship Icons to Link to Our "After-Cruise Report Buzz & Pics" Thread !)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beelzebubba
I remember watching the Huntley-Brinkley Report from its very first broadcast. It was unlike anything before, and very good for a long time. On NBC, then. Our family watched it every day (I don't think it was on weekends), as did most of my friends and their families. My condolences to his family.
83 posted on 06/12/2003 8:08:55 AM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo [Gallia][Germania][Arabia] Esse Delendam --- Select One or More as needed)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shadowman99
LOL! Reminds me of "Network."
84 posted on 06/12/2003 8:13:01 AM PDT by cgk (Rummy on WMD: We haven't found Saddam Hussein yet, but I don't see anyone saying HE didn't exist.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: DoctorMichael
I grew up with the Huntley/Brinkley Report as well. Loved that news program and especially David Brinkley.

I've always felt that Dan Rather tried to emulate him and failed miserably.

85 posted on 06/12/2003 8:17:47 AM PDT by arasina (When the truth comes out, Hillary will blame her ghostwriters!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]

To: Beelzebubba
1. Donald Regan
2. David Brinkley
3. ?
86 posted on 06/12/2003 8:19:51 AM PDT by Hatteras (The Thundering Herd Of Turtles ROCK!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
Actually, during his last year on "This Week" he made it very clear on several occasions he was a liberal. He also made it clear he felt he could say that because at his age, what can they do to you.

However, for almost all his career, you are right, and that's where journalists today are failing.

When I got the "Thursday Night Body Count" from Chet and David in the 60's, I had no idea what their politics were.
87 posted on 06/12/2003 8:20:22 AM PDT by Farnham (In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: Old Professer
I truly enjoyed watching his show, stopped cold when he left, never been back.

You and a lot of other people. Meet the Press has displaced it , because its host conveys some of Brinkley's decency.

88 posted on 06/12/2003 8:20:26 AM PDT by RobbyS
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: Beelzebubba
From the Houston Chronic:
June 12, 2003, 10:14AM

Veteran newscaster David Brinkley dies

From staff and wire reports

Famed TV newsman David Brinkley died late Wednesday in his Houston home. ABC News reported he died of complications from a fall. He was 82.

Brinkley, who had been in failing health for some time, retired after a 54-year career in broadcasting that kept him at the pinnacle of television journalism for three decades. Brinkley and his wife, Susan, moved from Florida to Houston in 2000.

Former President Bush called Brinkley "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism," but Brinkley spoke of himself in less grandiose terms.

"Most of my life," he said in a 1992 interview, "I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it."

From 1956-1971, he co-hosted The Huntley-Brinkley Report, the NBC evening news program, with Chet Huntley. The program, at first only 15 minutes in length, switched back and forth between them.

Beyond that regular report, Huntley and Brinkley led NBC as it interrupted regular programming to cover space shots, assassinations, riots and other breaking news with a thoroughness summed up by the unofficial byword "CBS plus 30 (minutes)."

With Huntley and Brinkley at the helm, NBC News enjoyed ratings dominance throughout the 1960s. During the 1964 Democratic convention, NBC, up against CBS and its anchor Walter Cronkite, won an astonishing 84 percent of the viewership.

But their fame extended far beyond the realm of journalism. A consumer-research company found in 1965 that these co-anchors were recognized by more adult Americans than were John Wayne or the Beatles. Despite their mutual disdain for it, their Huntley-Brinkley Report signoff -- "Goodnight, Chet"; "Goodnight, David" -- became part of pop culture.

Then in 1970, Huntley retired. He died four years later.

Brinkley co-anchored the renamed NBC Nightly News with John Chancellor, then became the program's commentator. But the spell was broken. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite had taken the ratings lead, and NBC News had stumbled.

In 1981, however, Brinkley joined ABC as the host of This Week With David Brinkley, making it the No. 1 Sunday morning news program.

He made his final appearance on the show in 1997 amid a rare controversy, and an apology: Late on election night, after a long evening, he had said unkind things about President Clinton on the air, including calling him a "bore."

Clinton sat for an interview for Brinkley's last show anyway, and after Brinkley apologized, told him: "I always believe you have to judge people on their whole work, and if you get judged based on your whole work, you come out way ahead."

The journalist won numerous broadcast awards include 10 Emmys and three Peabodys, and he has also won acclaim as a writer. His titles include Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion and Washington Goes to War.

Brinkley aptly summed up his career and life in the subtitle of his 1995 memoir: "11 Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political Conventions, 1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks of News and Other Stuff on Television, and 18 Years of Growing Up in North Carolina."

Born in Wilmington, N.C., on July 20, 1920, Brinkley was still in high school when he began writing for his hometown newspaper. He was educated at the University of North Carolina and Vanderbilt University, and after Army service he worked in Southern bureaus for the United Press syndicate.

He moved to Washington, D.C., thinking a radio job awaited him at CBS News. Instead, he had landed a job four blocks away at NBC News. He became White House correspondent -- NBC's first.

Not long after that, as Brinkley recounted in his 1995 memoir, "a large, odd-looking object arrived at the Washington studio ..., so big it could barely be rolled through the door. It was our first television camera."

Focusing on politics, Brinkley was known for his gentlemanly manner, wry wit and, as the Clinton incident illustrated, occasional suffer-no-fools bluntness. Playing against such refinement were a boyish appearance and a jerky style of delivery that suggested a mild case of hiccups.

"If I was to start today I probably couldn't get a job," Brinkley once said, "because I don't look like what people think an anchorperson should look like."

Brinkley was divorced from his first wife, Ann, in the 1960s and married Susan Benfer in 1972.

Among his four children, Alan is an American Book Award-winning historian and Joel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

In addition to their Houson home, the Brinkleys kept a summer home in Wyoming, and earlier this year a bedridden Brinkley was rescued there during a fire by a persistent sheriff's deputy who broke into the home through a window.

Geo. H. Lewis & Sons in Houston is in charge of funeral arrangements.

Chronicle staffer Lynwood Abram and Associated Press contributed to this report.

89 posted on 06/12/2003 8:21:34 AM PDT by wysiwyg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Beelzebubba
And so passes a great journalist, a great man and a special era in the history of broadcast journalism. I never knew him to lack candor on any subject, and in many ways, he symbolizes for me what a good, principled broadcast journalist could be.

Did I always agree with him? Hell no! But do I respect him and what he stood for? Hell yes!

He will be missed.

90 posted on 06/12/2003 8:27:37 AM PDT by Imal (If I had a dime for every time Bush's critics were right about him, I'd need to borrow a dime.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sam_paine; .45MAN
Thank you for the dialog and background. Definitely a keeper.

May he rest in peace ping.
91 posted on 06/12/2003 8:30:01 AM PDT by dansangel (America - love it, support it or LEAVE it!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: wysiwyg
Washington Post coverage (excerpts):

.... As a broadcaster, he was known for a wry sense of humor, pithy observations and a low-key, matter-of-fact style of newscasting and commentary that lacked pretense and pomposity. He was supremely self-confident, not easily impressed, and he came across as less enamored of himself than many of his colleagues. “I don’t try to put a show on the air, be bright and vivacious, because it’s just not my nature,” he said.

....In his career with ABC, Mr. Brinkley also was on-call for special events, like elections and national conventions. His years in the business did not diminish his zeal for news. He liked politicians, he said, although he thought many of them were egocentric braggarts. He made headlines on election night 1996 when he called President Clinton a “bore” on national television and advised viewers to expect four more years of “nonsense” from the president. He later apologized. He didn’t know the microphone was still on, he said. There was a zaniness about political conventions that he always found irresistible. “They’re so crazy, nonsensical, idiotic. I love ’em,” he told Shales.

rest of article

92 posted on 06/12/2003 8:30:31 AM PDT by mountaineer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]

To: Old Professer
Once during the 1976 Republican Convention in Kansas City I was sitting in the breakroom having some coffee and reading a newspaper...Mr. Brinkley and William F. Buckley entered. Mr. Brinkley gestured at me and told Mr. Buckley that I was a 'local' and knew of some good places they could go and have a bit of dinner and talk and that I could be trusted to not talk about it to others. He approached me and asked if I was busy. Mr. Buckley then said, "Well, of course he's busy David...he's reading the newspaper and having coffee." Mr. Brinkley laughed and told me to finish the article. To be sure, I did rather quickly...Then I took them both to an ancient downtown jazz establishment where they both asked that I join them at their table and have a bite to eat. I sat and listened to those two discuss everything from family, politics, fishing and their hotel acommodations for over an hour. Mr. Brinkley was not like a hard-core liberal of today in any sense. He was a very kind and thoughtful man who knew the world, told a good joke and believed in the 'Golden Rule'. I count myself very fortunate to have had a brief crossing of paths with him.
93 posted on 06/12/2003 8:30:41 AM PDT by Lee Heggy (Jealousy-The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: shadowman99
Thank you for posting that! I recall it vividly--and laughing until I had tears in my eyes. IIRC, it was rather late in the evening. A true treasure--David Brinkley.
94 posted on 06/12/2003 8:31:57 AM PDT by NautiNurse (If Lawton Chiles runs for the Senate seat in 2004, we will **really** have Jurassic Park in Florida)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Lee Heggy
I hope you took Buckley and Brinkely to Gates or Arthur Bryants Barbeque!
95 posted on 06/12/2003 8:34:17 AM PDT by ewing
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 93 | View Replies]

To: MinuteGal
Brinkley was actually more conservative than Huntley. He was a liberal southern Democrat. You have to understand what that meant in an age of segregation. Goldwater had no real concept of what it was really like, so he could deal in abstractions like states' rights. Revolutions--and the civil rights movment was a revolution-- are sometimes -necessary. The aftermath is always messy. Blacks have never gotten over their disrespect for the law. In this they are like the Irish and Italian immigrants who flocked to the big cities of America and organized [political gangs and criminal gangs, because the law in their own country had been so oppressive. None has any real belief in ordered liberty. To them it is a game to be played and cheating is encouraged.
96 posted on 06/12/2003 8:34:29 AM PDT by RobbyS
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: MinuteGal
Brinkely was tough to figure his political positions on 'This Week' although you figured he was a Democrat, Sam Donaldson was actually the most partisan of the bunch playing the bufoon and Cokie would chime in with some liberal conventional wisdom now and then. (leaving the right to be defended by George Will)
97 posted on 06/12/2003 8:36:36 AM PDT by ewing
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: wysiwyg
Among his four children, Alan is an American Book Award-winning historian and Joel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

Gee, I wonder if any of the other kids made a name for themself. :-)

98 posted on 06/12/2003 8:38:29 AM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]

To: ewing
I took them to The Savoy Bar & Grill, (much more private and discrete). Arthur Byrant's was another time.
99 posted on 06/12/2003 8:39:56 AM PDT by Lee Heggy (Jealousy-The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 95 | View Replies]

To: wysiwyg
lol, 'The Houston Chronic..'
100 posted on 06/12/2003 8:40:16 AM PDT by ewing
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 141-150 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson