David Brinkley Biography

David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.

From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, The Huntley"Brinkley Report, with Chet Huntley and thereafter appeared as co-anchor or commentator on its successor, NBC Nightly News, through the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Brinkley was host of the popular Sunday This Week with David Brinkley program and a top commentator on election-night coverage for ABC News. Over the course of his career, Brinkley received ten Emmy Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He wrote three books, including the critically acclaimed 1988 bestseller Washington Goes to War, about how World War II transformed the nation's capital. This social history was largely based on his own observations as a young reporter in the city.

Early life

Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the youngest of five children born to William Graham Brinkley and Mary MacDonald (née West) Brinkley. He began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University, before entering service in the United States Army in 1941. Following his 1943 discharge, he moved to Washington, D.C., looking for a radio job at CBS News. Instead, he took a job at NBC News, became its White House correspondent, and in time began appearing on television.

Career

In 1952, Brinkley began providing Washington reporting on NBC Television's evening news program, The Camel News Caravan (the name changed over time), hosted by John Cameron Swayze. In 1956, NBC News executives considered various possibilities to anchor the network's coverage of the Democratic and Republican political conventions, and when executive J. Davidson Taylor suggested pairing two reporters (he had in mind Bill Henry and Ray Scherer), producer Reuven Frank, who favored Brinkley for the job, and NBC's director of news, Joseph Meyers, who favored Chet Huntley, proposed combining Huntley and Brinkley. NBC's top brass consented, but they had so little confidence in the team that they withheld announcing it for two months. Their concern proved unfounded.

The pairing worked so well that on October 29, 1956, the two took over NBC's flagship nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York City and Brinkley in Washington, D.C., for the newly christened Huntley"Brinkley Report. Brinkley's dry wit offset the serious tone set by Huntley, and the program proved popular with audiences turned off by the incessantly serious tone of CBS's news broadcasts of that era. Brinkley's ability to write for the ear with simple, declarative sentences gained him a reputation as one of the medium's most talented writers, and his connections in Washington led CBS's Roger Mudd to observe, "Brinkley, of all the TV guys here, probably has the best sense of the city--best understands its moods and mentality. He knows Washington and he knows the people." Most often described as "wry," Brinkley once suggested on the air that the best way to resolve the controversy over whether to change the name of Boulder Dam to "Hoover Dam" was to have former president Herbert Hoover change his name to "Herbert Boulder".

Another example of Brinkley's seething wryness was evinced on the third night of Chicago's infamous Democratic Convention of 1968. After continuous abuses made on the floor of the convention of NBC correspondents – namely, interference and shadowing of the media staff by supporters of Hubert Humphrey, presumably with connections to political boss Richard J. Daley – voiced a protest of Daley's behavior and his alleged interference with freedoms of the press following Senator Abraham Ribicoff's stormy nomination of George McGovern. Perhaps in reply to a control room for objectivity, referencing Daley's refusal to be interviewed by John Chancellor earlier in the evening, Brinkley can be heard over the McGovern demonstration to have scolded "Mayor Daley had his chance!"

The catchphrase conclusion to each evening's broadcast, "Good night, Chet; Good night, David," entered the language, and it was followed by the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, played as the program credits rolled. The Huntley"Brinkley Report was America's most popular television newscast until it was overtaken, at the end of the 1960s, by the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite. Brinkley and his co-anchor gained such celebrity that Brinkley was forced to cut short his reporting on Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 West Virginia primary because West Virginians were more interested in meeting Brinkley than the candidate. From 1961 to 1963, Brinkley anchored a prime time news magazine, David Brinkley's Journal. Produced by Ted Yates, the program won a George Foster Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards.

When Huntley retired from the anchor chair in 1970, the evening news program was renamed NBC Nightly News, and Brinkley co-anchored the broadcast with John Chancellor and Frank McGee. In 1971, Chancellor was named sole anchor and Brinkley became the program's commentator, delivering three-minute perspectives several times a week under the title David Brinkley's Journal. By 1976, though, NBC decided to revive the dual-anchor format, and Brinkley once again anchored the Washington desk for the network, until October 1979. However, the early years of Nightly News never achieved the popularity Huntley-Brinkley Report had enjoyed. For its part, NBC attempted to launch several news magazine shows during the 1970s with Brinkley as anchor; none of them succeeded. An unhappy Brinkley left NBC in 1981; NBC Magazine was his last show for that network.

Almost immediately after leaving NBC, Brinkley was offered a job at ABC. ABC News President Roone Arledge was anxious to replace ABC's Sunday morning news program, Issues and Answers, which had always lagged far behind CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press. Brinkley was tapped for the job, and in 1981 began hosting This Week with David Brinkley. This Week revolutionized the Sunday morning news program format, featuring not only several correspondents interviewing guest newsmakers, but also following up with an opinionated roundtable of discussion. The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated by Brinkley's NBC and CBS rivals, as well as new programs which later came into existence.

As part of the remembrance of World War II, Brinkley and ABC News produced the special The Battle of the Bulge; 50 years On, with Brinkley hosting and interviewing survivors of the battle from both sides. The special, which aired during the Christmas 1994 period was well received, both critically and in viewership.

Retirement

Days before his announced retirement from regular news coverage, Brinkley made a rare on-air mistake during evening coverage of the 1996 presidential election, at a moment when he thought they were on commercial break. One of his colleagues asked him what he thought of Bill Clinton's re-election. He called Clinton "a boor" and added, "The next four years will be filled with pretty words, and pretty music, and a lot of goddamn nonsense!" One of his team pointed out that they were still on the air. Brinkley said, "Really? Well, I'm leaving anyway!" Brinkley worked this mistake into a chance for an apology as part of a one-on-one interview with Clinton that followed a week or so later.

Brinkley stepped down from hosting This Week on November 10, 1996, but continued to provide small commentary pieces for the show until 1997. He then fully retired from television. He had been an electronic journalist for over fifty years and had been anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program for just over forty years. His career lasted from the beginning of broadcast news to the information age.

During his career, he won ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards. In 1958 Brinkley received the Alfred I. duPont Award. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Bush called him "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism"; but Brinkley was much more humble. In an interview in 1992, he said "Most of my life, I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it".

Brinkley is the father of historian and former Columbia University Provost, Alan Brinkley, and of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Stanford professor, Joel Brinkley.

Death

Brinkley died in 2003 at his home in Houston, Texas, from complications after a fall. His body is interred at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Television career

• 1951–56 Camel News Caravan (correspondent)
• 1956–70 NBC News/The Huntley-Brinkley Report
• 1961–63 David Brinkley's Journal, produced by Ted Yates, aired on Wednesday nights 10.30-11.00 pm.
• 1971–76 NBC Nightly News (commentator only)
• 1976–79 NBC Nightly News (co-anchor)
• 1980–81 NBC Magazine with David Brinkley
• 1981–96 This Week with David Brinkley
• 1981–98 ABC World News Tonight (commentator)
• 1994 David Brinkley Reports: The Battle of the Bulge; 50 Years On

Pop culture references

The main character of the Robert Mayer novel Superfolks is a superhero whose secret identity is as a journalist named David Brinkley, after Brinkley.

David Brinkley was mentioned in the Scrubs episode, #4.23, "My Faith in Humanity". There's a patient named Betty talking to her neighbor, Jake, and J.D. walks in. Jake says, "Betty even let me in on a few of her romantic trysts from her younger days. You familiar with Mr. David Brinkley?" J.D. replies with a disbelieving "No way."

David Brinkley was mentioned in the 2001 Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical-episode "Once More, with Feeling" in the song "I'll Never Tell". Anya sings "When I get so worn and wrinkly / That I look like David Brinkley".

In the episode of the cartoon show Johnny Bravo, "The Sensitive Man", Johnny asks a park go-er he if he's "...as studly as the statue of David..." to which she responds that he's "...as studly as David... Brinkley."

The Tom Lehrer song "So Long Mom (I'm Off to Drop the Bomb)" includes the verse:

While we're attacking frontally

Watch Brinkally and Huntally

Describing contrapuntally

The cities we have lost.

No need for you to miss a minute of the agonizing holocaust.