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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient David Brinkley
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient David Brinkley
Celebrate the life of David Brinkley
July 20, 1920 – June 11, 2003
"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her." -David Brinkley
DAVID BRINKLEY
Awarded by
President George Bush
December 11, 1992
The name David Brinkley is synonymous with television news. From his days as NBC's White House correspondent to his time as co-anchor of the Huntley-Brinkley Report to his Sunday morning show on ABC, David Brinkley has explained the complexities of current events to generations of Americans. With the wisdom of experience and a wry wit, he has informed the Nation's citizens and helped hold its leaders accountable. The United States recognizes his contributions to broadcast journalism.
Passage: David Brinkley, 82 - June 12th 2003
David Brinkley, a dominant face in American broadcast news for almost half a century, has died. Best known as half of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley anchor team and as host of ABC's This Week with David Brinkley, Brinkley won 10 Emmy awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Brinkley was known for his gentlemanly manner, wry wit and jerky style of delivery. He summed up his life in the subtitle of his 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." Interviewed in February 1997 for The New York Times by his son Joel, he said: "I have no regrets. None at all."
President's Statement on Death of David Brinkley
President Bush offers his condolences on the death of David Brinkley, who was a pioneer in broadcast journalism and distinguished by an exceptional career that spanned more than a half century.
Biography
Chet Huntley
When you have a trusted newsman anchoring your Nightly News, it can be devastating when he retires. CBS's Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in the nation according to opinion polls of the Sixties and Seventies - but NBC's Huntley - Brinkley Report was the top-rated newscast.
When Chet Huntley retired in 1970, a trusted voice in broadcasting was seldom heard again - and never again would the nation hear that duo's famous signature:
"Good night, Chet - Good night, David. And good night for NBC News".
David Brinkley anchored the re-titled 'NBC Nightly News' for only another year before being replaced by John Chancellor. The 'CBS Evening News' quickly became the top-rated newscast for the next two decades and Brinkley moved to ABC where he started his phenomenally successful Sunday morning talk show 'This Week with David Brinkley' that continues today without him. Brinkley retired in 1997.
David Brinkley, legendary NBC newsman, dies at 82
Posted 6/12/2003 10:54 AM NEW YORK (AP) -- David Brinkley, who first gained fame as one-half of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley anchor team and for more than a half-century loomed large in the newscasting world he helped chart, died at the age of 82. Brinkley died Wednesday night at his home in Houston of complications from a fall, ABC News said.
David Brinkley, for decades half of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley team, died Wednesday in Houston after complications from a fall. NBC
During his career, which in recent years took him to ABC, Brinkley won 10 Emmy awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards and, in 1992, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. (Hear audio obit.) Former President Bush called him "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." He stepped down as host of ABC's This Week with David Brinkley in November 1996 but continued to do commentaries. He left 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, 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." Based in Washington and focusing on politics, Brinkley was known for his gentlemanly manner, wry wit and, as the Clinton incident illustrated, an 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." Perhaps not. But in 1956 his distinctive presence was paired with craggy, leading-man-handsome Chet Huntley for NBC News' coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. It was a perfect fit. Following that success, the two took over NBC's nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York and Brinkley in Washington. 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 Chet and David 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% 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. Entering his 60s, Brinkley in 1981 began the second act of his career by exiting the organization he had joined 38 years earlier. He lent his heavyweight status to ABC News, a late bloomer then on the way up. There he flourished, particularly on This Week with David Brinkley , a Sunday morning interview and discussion program. Despite having been present for the creation of TV news, Brinkley insisted "I didn't create anything. I just got here early." 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." 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. The author of three books, Brinkley aptly summed up his career and life in the subtitle of his 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. "If I were 20 years old, I would try to do the same thing again, all of it," he told a New York Times interviewer -- his son Joel -- in a February 1997 profile. "I have no regrets. None at all."
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Medal History
