May 7, 2022. Happy 100th birthday, dad! Why in GD? Because this is about journalism. [View all]

[DFW]

My dad would have been 100 years old today. Why is this in GD? Because he was a journalist. The REAL kind. Not the poor imitation that the Chuck Todds of the world present, and far removed from the Fox "News" version, which has more in common with Göbbels' Propagandaministerium than journalism.

The Soviet "news" agency, TACC, had their Washington offices on the same floor of the National Press Building as my Dad's. Igor Ignatiev, the TACC station chief in Washington, and KGB agent as well, once asked my dad if he wouldn't want to augment his income by "helping out" the Soviet Union in his spare time. My dad told him, "Igor, you have got to be kidding." Ignatiev shrugged, and said, "I am required to try." They had a laugh, finished their coffee, and quickly dropped the subject.

He was friends with most presidents, regardless of party, from Nixon through Clinton. Curiously, though Fritz Mondale was a close friend of the family, he never had much to do with Jimmy Carter. Oh, hell, I could fill ten OPs with stories about him.

He rarely made TV appearances, sticking to his job as a Washington correspondent for a small town (Watertown) in Upstate New York. But he did make this one, when C-Span asked him to comment of the rejection of one of Reagan's nominees to the Supreme Court. The show starts about 00:50 in:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?205-1/douglas-ginsburg-withdrawal.

He knew Larry Spivak and Tim Russert well, but was never interested in a permanent TV gig. Too bad. A past president of Washington's Gridiron Club, he could easily have handled Meet The Press better than anyone who came after Spivak.