It was 1967 when the national media was covering our auto safety initiatives. A call came on the hallway phone outside my $90-a-month boarding room. “Hello, I’m Phil Donahue. I want to invite you on my new syndicated television talk show in Dayton, Ohio. You’ve come a long way without my help, but can you please come here? You’ll make me into a Big Act. You can talk about and say anything you want for an hour.” He then described some of his controversial guests. I remember thinking, “This is a General Motors factory town and he wants me there!!!” Clearly, he stood out with his polite insistence from the numerous invitations I was receiving from media shows outside Washington.
I flew to Dayton, landing just before midnight. Surprise. Who was there as I was getting off the plane? A gracious Phil Donahue. He drove me to the hotel.
Crime Inc.: How Democr...
Best Price: $7.47
Buy New $15.32
(as of 03:07 UTC - Details)
That was the kind of earnestness, authentic courtesy and persistence in giving voice to the underdogs in our society that propelled him for nearly 30 years to become America’s leading daytime national TV talk show host.
Of course, he was much more than that during his over 6000 shows. In between his shows with flamboyant entertainers (to keep a large audience) he offered hundreds of hours to compelling and controversial leaders of emerging social justice movements and the people who were harmed by wrongdoers.
“Hot topics,” he called them. When necessary, he would take a Donahue Show to “hot spots” such as to Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of a disastrous partial meltdown in 1986 of a giant nuclear power plant whose radioactivity forced the permanent abandonment of nearby villages. I can still see him, with his ever-present microphone, standing by the eerily swinging doors of the empty houses.
Other talk show hosts are cowed by their paying advertisers. Not Phil. He took using the people’s public airwaves seriously. One show on cheating auto dealers led the Dayton auto dealers to boycott the show. This didn’t faze Phil. His show’s audience grew so that by 1974 he felt he could move to Chicago and then to New York City in 1985.
Daring but self-effacing, Donahue knew his guests, though outspoken and challenging to power structures, represented large numbers of silenced Americans. Prominent leaders of women’s equality (then called the Women’s Liberation Movement) were invited regularly to engage in his provocative give-and-take.
He pioneered a live daily show before a live studio audience and television audience in 200 cities around the country. He would take questions from his audience and from call-in viewers.
Being so spontaneous carried obvious risks during such instant feedback. Consider that he interviewed fierce poverty fighters, war resisters, student rebels, aggrieved community leaders and heart-breaking, innocent victims of various assaults. Before his TV audience of some 10 million viewers, he would introduce to the nation first the pioneers of civil rights, consumer justice, prosecutors of corporate crimes, safer environments, workplace safety, and gay rights. He responded early to the oncoming AIDS epidemic and featured advocates and specialists on that human devastation.
Though outwardly calm, he once told me that his show was “a one-hour nightmare to get through.”
I’ve called Phil Donahue the greatest DEFENDER and ENABLER of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, petition and assembly in the 20TH CENTURY. Hands down. There has been no one remotely close then or since, given the frequency of his shows and his audience size. He helped citizens put forces in motion for a more just America and world that continue to this day.
His guests often became civic celebrities because he had them on when nobody else would, and enabled them to reach large audiences and get the attention of decision-makers. His groundbreaking revelations sometimes led to Congressional hearings. He encouraged the sales of publications and books that helped sustain many nonprofit advocacy groups.
One of his favorite guests was Dr. Sidney Wolfe, head of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group. Phil showcased Dr. Wolfe announcing the publication of the life-saving book “Worst Pills, Best Pills” which sold over 500,000 copies. Viewers wanted the scientific truth about their prescribed medicines which the FDA did not supply in a user-friendly form. He featured Joan Claybrook, then head of NHTSA, Jimmy Carter’s auto safety regulator, to feature THE CAR BOOK, full of hitherto taboo “make and model” information about defects and other critical data. Offered free, half a million motorists immediately ordered print copies of this first-of-its-kind government consumer guide.
Not surprisingly, Phil had severe critics from the powers-that-be. His pleasant, ordinary-guy personality carried no grudges. Instead, he would invite those with views contrasting to his own to make their case for more intriguing interactions with the audience. Those guests often included people whose positions he found abhorrent. That is how deep his defense was of the First Amendment – to protect that speech with which you strongly disagree. One of these guests, Jerry Falwell (who started the ‘Moral Majority’) was on over two dozen times.
The Donahue Show closed in 1996. Six years later, MSNBC invited Phil to host a public affairs show. At this time the Bush/Cheney drums for invading Iraq were sounding. Phil was told by NBC “suits” (as he called them) to have two proponents of this criminal war for every opponent on his show. Even that was not enough censorious interference. Six months later, just before Bush’s imperial “shock and awe” sociocide of Iraq and millions of innocent casualties, NBC and its owner, large defense contractor General Electric, recovered their cowardliness (then displayed by their competitors like Fox) and abused the public trust and told Donahue and his staff to clear out immediately. Then MSNBC’s top-rated show, GE didn’t give the real reasons for cancellation – namely airing criticism of President George W. Bush – which later leaked internal memos revealed. (See, the August 19, 2024, Common Dreams piece by Jeff Cohen titled, “Fired by MSNBC for Giving Voice to Iraq War Opposition, Phil Donahue (1935-2024) Was Courage Personified”).
Here is Phil Donahue speaking for himself:
The Think Tank Racket:...
Best Price: $22.13
Buy New $20.07
(as of 03:07 UTC - Details)
“We’re supposed to be the dog that keeps nipping at the heels of the powerful. We are supposed to be the people who engage in inelegant behavior, like sticking our nose under the tent to see what the Grand Pubahs are planning for us. It’s an indignity. It’s hard to do. And it becomes very difficult to do that when you’re sucking up to the people you’re supposed to be covering.” (See, Ralph Nader Radio Hour interview of June 18, 2016).
“Dissent is very difficult in this country. We have a media which is rewarded by telling people what they want to hear. And that’s not our job. We’re not supposed to be popular. We’re not supposed to be extolled as wonderful people who make us happy. We have to show the pain. And we are obliged to say what we feel about the decisions of powerful people.” (See, Ralph Nader Radio Hour interview of June 18, 2016).
“Corporate ownership is, I think, the biggest challenge to a robust media featuring all kinds of views. It lives and I ought to know. I lost my job because I opposed the invasion of Iraq.” (See, Episode 236, September 22, 2018, of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour).
Starting with his spouse, the actress, author and woman’s rights advocate Marlo Thomas, and the many people who worked with Phil to make the show possible and loved the way he respected them, the legions of Phil’s admirers would surely welcome multiple living legacies to honor his life’s work. Activities that carry on his resolute promotion of free speech, public justice for all, and fostering a media which stands tall for reality, truth, facts, the voices of the excluded and those who champion justice – called the “great work of humans on Earth” by Senator Daniel Webster – would bring home to future generations the remarkable Phil Donahue.
This originally appeared on Nader.org.
