Reporters and readers both are responsible for searching out truth in politics, veteran news broadcaster Sam Donaldson told a standing-room-only crowd of 575 Wednesday night in Carroll Hall auditorium.
Donaldson, who has served as the ABC White House correspondent under the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations, said journalists covering Washington, D.C., sometimes have to pry honest answers from unwilling lips.
"The bureaucracy is really designed so that you don't find out what's going on if what's going on is bad."
He recalled Ronald Reagan's way of eagerly answering easy questions but sometimes cupping his hand around his ear to signal that he had missed the tougher ones.
"He heard me," said Donaldson, who opened the journalism school's Nelson Benton Lecture with President Nixon's victory pose. Known for his liveliness, Donaldson slapped the podium and drew laughs throughout the talk.
Investigating statements that don't seem right is key in journalism, he said. Reporters become press secretaries when they don't.
"The job is not to tear down the president," Donaldson said to an audience featuring some prominent locals in the newspaper industry. "Nor is it to artificially build him up."
When straight questions don't elicit direct responses from interviewees, something's fishy, he said.
"You may not be able to (report) it yet, but now you know where the trail is, and you're going to stay on the trail." Donaldson said he used this technique in the early days of the Clinton sex scandal.
