Why Sam Donaldson Is No Edward R. Murrow

Sam Donaldson, the in-your-face co-anchor of “PrimeTime Live” is articulate and funny.

He is also wrong when he says today’s TV journalism is really no different from the broadcast journalism of 50 years ago.

A few nights ago Donaldson visited Pullman to deliver the keynote speech for the Edward R. Murrow Symposium.

The symposium is named for the Washington State University graduate now forgotten by TV viewers.

Murrow rose to fame on radio in the 1940s for his broadcasts from London during World War II and then on his own interview show on CBS television in the 1950s.

Upon his death in 1965, thenPresident Lyndon Johnson led the nation in mourning when he said of Murrow,”We knew him as a gallant fighter, a man who dedicated his life both as a newsman and as a public official to an unrelenting search for the truth. He subscribed to the proposition that free men and free inquiry are inseparable.”

Will some future president be saying that about Donaldson?

In Pullman, Donaldson made an entertaining case that journalists have never been loved, that their work always has been controversial, and therefore there isn’t much difference between Ed Murrow’s day and today’s TV news.

Donaldson only drew one distinction between then and now - today’s broadcast journalists must make the news more interesting because people are distracted and the media are far more competitive than before.

To make news interesting, Donaldson explained, sometimes requires a journalist to spruce up the story a bit, maybe use a hidden camera, maybe even lie.

These practices certainly have made Donaldson a topic of conversation.

People wonder if his hair is real. Women in Pullman shamelessly posed with him at the reception following his speech. After all, he is a celebrity.

But the fame of Donaldson really doesn’t matter much in terms of what is or isn’t news.

It’s the story, stupid, not Sam’s hair, or his pointed questions, or even the shock value of what he and his cohorts find out.

News involves facts, implications, complicated pros and cons. These don’t always bring high ratings. And that’s the problem with Donaldson’s argument.

To make the news interesting and to build ratings often results in a type of news gathering and news presentation that does a disservice to both journalism and the public interest.

Donaldson said he thought Ed Murrow would probably be using hidden cameras and dramatization to fill his broadcasts if Murrow were alive today.

If the hidden camera would have ended the bombing of London, perhaps so. But would Ed Murrow have used a hidden camera and deceptive reporting practices to catch a grocery store rewrapping a few fish?

That’s what Donaldson’s cohorts at “PrimeTime Live” did in the now infamous Food Lion case.

When Food Lion sued, a jury awarded them $5.5 million in punitive damages. The damages were awarded not because the story was false. The facts broadcast were never in dispute. The verdict came because the jury didn’t agree with Donaldson’s logic that it’s OK to lie, deceive and use hidden cameras to find a few rewrapped fish.

Good journalists don’t lie to get a story. They don’t secretly film them or cast them in a false light.

The best journalists make judgments on the importance of stories and try to give a complete picture.

In this month’s American Journalism Review, reporter Marc Gunther notes that the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper dug out the records to show Food Lion had the third-best cleanliness ratings among eight national chains. The TV broadcast didn’t report this.

The AJR story also noted ABC’s own crews had recorded, but not broadcast, conversations with unsuspecting Food Lion workers who said their boss urged them to be on the lookout for spoiled food and throw it out.

“PrimeTime Live” found some problems. They raised valid questions. But the story wasn’t whole. It wasn’t complete and it was built on a foundation of deception.

Murrow developed the genre known as eyewitness accounts. Murrow perfected what we now call the in-depth interview.

Murrow wasn’t afraid to stand up to demagogues. Fifty years ago when Sen. Joseph McCarthy tried to put a communist label on everyone in Hollywood, Murrow simply asked for the proof.

The substance of what Murrow did then and what the best journalists try to do today isn’t much changed.

But the style and tone of Ed Murrow then and Sam Donaldson now couldn’t be more different.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on Perspective.