Sam Donaldson

Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 8 p.m.

George Washington Hall, Dodd Auditorium

Sam Donaldson, a 40-year ABC News veteran, currently is appearing on ABC News Now, the ABC News digital network. His daily half-hour show, “Politics Live,” is an unscripted dialogue with numerous guests and commentators discussing the top political news stories of the day.
    
Donaldson served two appointments as chief White House correspondent for ABC News from January 1998 to August 1999 and from 1977-1989, covering Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He also co-anchored “PrimeTime Live”; the ABC News Sunday morning broadcast, “This Week With Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts”; and “The Sam Donaldson Show - Live in America,” a daily news/talk radio program broadcast on ABC News Radio affiliates that tackled the day’s top stories and important issues. Donaldson has covered every national political convention since 1964 with the exception of the 1992 Republican Convention in Houston. He reported on the presidential campaigns of Sen. Barry Goldwater, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, and Sen. Hubert Humphrey as well as Presidents Carter and Reagan and Gov. Michael Dukakis. He also reported as an eyewitness on Spiro Agnew's no contest plea in a Baltimore courtroom that forced Agnew's resignation from the vice presidency.

Donaldson has received numerous honors, including Broadcaster of the Year in 1998 from the National Press Foundation, the Best Television White House Correspondent in the Business in 1985 from The Washington Journalism Review, and the Best Television Correspondent in the Business in 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1999. He has received four Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards for excellence in radio and television reporting.