THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9410270463
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
His finest moment was one of the country's darkest.
President Kennedy had just been killed. Rumors were swirling: The government would dissolve, other politicians were next on the hit list.
``We told them the truth . . . to contradict the nutty lies,'' television anchor David Brinkley remembered Wednesday. ``They knew us - they had known us for years - and so they believed us.
``And the country got through a horrible, frightening, shocking event calmly and peacefully, and we did much the same thing at the death of Martin Luther King. All of us on the air thought, rightly I believe now, that we had made a contribution to our country.''
Brinkley spoke at a luncheon to help kick off Norfolk State University's 10th annual communications conference. Brinkley, who recently celebrated his 50th year in TV news, anchors the Sunday show ``This Week With David Brinkley.''
He said he couldn't offer students many job-hunting tips because he got his first broadcast job, at NBC News in Washington, on a fluke.
He had no TV experience, but ``they hired me because there were so few males available to hire for anything,'' he said. ``Almost every male my age who wasn't crippled or old or blind was drafted.''
After Brinkley's 15-minute speech, he asked for ``nasty questions'' - and got some hardballs.
Was his show - and the media - doing enough to cover Africa?
``Like anything else, you can say we could have done it better,'' he said. ``But we have made changes in South Africa familiar to everyone in the world. We have made Nelson Mandela a great hero in this country. When he walks in the streets, people know him.''
And just how aggressive is ABC News in hiring African-Americans?
``We have a great number of minorities working in our building. They are very good, they are very nice, we get along great. . . . I haven't bothered to count, but I do know we have many.''
Brinkley acknowledged that the media have gone overboard in covering the O.J. Simpson murder case: ``We can't run a television operation and refuse to give people what they want. . . . I think we have overdone it, but I don't know how we could have avoided it.''
He belittled non-network news shows, saying they have little influence on shows like his. `` `Crossfire' has so little audience,'' he said, ``we don't even pay any attention to it. That is also true of CNN.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
David Brinkley, at NSU's communications conference Wednesday, said
broadcasters thought their reporting on the deaths of JFK and Martin
Luther King Jr. had helped keep the country calm.
by CNB