Just Bray It Again, Sam

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

For ABC's Donaldson, the White House beat is a volume business

When Jimmy Carter left the White House, he wished two enduring headaches on his successor: Israel's combative Prime Minister Menachem Begin and ABC News' abrasive White House correspondent Sam Donaldson. Last month, when Ronald Reagan spoke at a ceremony extolling the achievements of ABC News President Roone Arledge, Reagan added: "Sam Donaldson is a small price to pay." Not many people would cherish having provoked Chief Executives as diverse as Carter and Reagan. But Donaldson, 49, has gleefully made himself perhaps the best-known TV reporter in America by asking pertinent questions of Presidents in the most impertinent possible way. He gets the news by shouting.

To a public that often regards the White House press corps as a pack of hounds baying at whatever misfortunate occupies the Oval Office, Donaldson can seem the loudest and meanest coon dog of all. He asked Carter whether he was competent to be President. (Donaldson's judgment: no.) He suggested to Reagan that his presidency was "failing" and asked if it was true that he had to be "dragged back to making realistic decisions" by aides. To lesser officials Donaldson can be, if anything, ruder: at a press conference preceding an international economic summit, when Secretary of State George Shultz was brought in by White House officials for no apparent purpose, Donaldson demanded, "Mr. Secretary, why have you come here?"

Off-camera, Donaldson titillates and embarrasses the press corps by shouting out, often within earshot of public figures, the sort of tasteless jokes that other reporters only murmur. Says a former ABC colleague: "People often find him boorish and obnoxious." Admits Donaldson: "I cause myself a lot of trouble with my deportment, and I am less than thrilled about that." Yet Donaldson seems a mascot rather than an outcast among the White House-beat regulars. They are used to his Peck's Bad Boy manner and enjoy his outbursts against the White House staff for manipulating access to the President, though some reporters blame his antics for the recent ban on asking questions during "photo opportunities." With few exceptions, colleagues praise Donaldson for his nerve and enterprise. Says an NBC competitor: "There are so few opportunities to talk to the President that there is something to be said for leading the charge." Jody Powell, the Carter Administration press secretary who is now an ABC colleague of Donaldson, recalls, "When I got to the White House in the morning, there were usually two reporters there to greet me: Helen Thomas of U.P.I, and Sam." President Reagan's deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes, says, "I think he sets the agenda for other reporters. He can spot a story and get to the bottom of it quickly, and 99 times out of 100 he is right."

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."

Donaldson's demeanor of adolescent rebellion--as the kind of kid who got A's on tests and F's in behavior and took equal pride in both--can make him appear undisciplined. In reality, he brings to his work the same dogged determination that carried him from a "sad rat" freshman to a "sharp sergeant" at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell. Raised by a strict Baptist mother in El Paso, Donaldson returned to attend Western Texas College. After graduate school at the University of Southern California and a stint in the Army, he came back to Texas. In 1959 he got a job with KRLD, the Dallas radio affiliate of CBS. All three TV networks initially rejected him for lack of newspaper experience; but after he reported from 1961 to 1967 for the respected WTOP in Washington, he joined ABC, which lagged far behind in news, and soon began to cover Congress. Donaldson rose steadily and was assigned to follow Candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976. When Carter won, Donaldson drew the White House beat and stayed, as ABC's ratings and prestige slowly climbed under Arledge's leadership.

Twice divorced and the father of four children, Donaldson lives in a McLean, Va., condominium and admits, "I do not do anything but work." Though he blames his job for destroying his second marriage, he plans to wed again on April 19, to Kansas City TV Reporter Jan Smith, whom he met at ABC.

Donaldson is the most controversial White House correspondent since CBS's Dan Rather left that post in 1974. Moreover, in contrast to Rather and most other reporters and anchors, Donaldson voices his political opinions freely. On the Sunday-morning ABC roundtable led by David Brinkley, where Donaldson is a regular, he lambasted the Reagan Administration's so-called squeal rule, which would compel health agencies to inform parents when dispensing birth control devices to women under 18. Said Donaldson: "It is an awful idea. That is the problem with this Administration. Too often it wants to dictate morals to the American people."

Donaldson wins no popularity contests with the Reagan team. In fact, he says he was told that an Administration official once warned ABC executives that the White House might revoke Donaldson's press pass. One reason Donaldson has since been able to achieve peace with the Administration, suggests former longtime CBS White House Correspondent Robert Pierpoint, is that the confrontational style, far from putting the President on the spot, "has played right into Reagan's hands. Donaldson and others intrude with a simple shot, and Reagan bounces it back with a shallow quip that plays beautifully onscreen. The exchange gives the appearance that he has answered the question when he has not." Says Donaldson: "Sometimes what comes out of my mouth is not carefully formed, and that can let Reagan off the hook."

Donaldson savors the "terribly good exposure" and high pay (about $450,000) on the White House beat. He has already held the post longer than any of his first-string network rivals and almost twice as long as one of his most celebrated predecessors, NBC Anchor Tom Brokaw. Says Donaldson: "It takes a certain resiliency to persevere in covering the White House--or, a critic might say, a dullness of wit." He has tried out as anchor on ABC's Sunday-night newscast and on Nightline when Ted Koppel is away. But whatever else he may do in his career, he is unlikely to find a job that better suits his talents and temperament than jousting with Presidents. "I love this business," he says. "Every day it is victory or defeat, and you do not have to wait to see which."

--By William A. Henry III. Reported by Anne Constable/Washington

With reporting by Anne Constable/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.