But Donaldson's life as an on-the-go, aggressive reporter was nearly sidelined in 1995 when he was diagnosed as having melanoma — one of the deadliest forms of cancer. His bout with and ongoing recovery from this disease dramatically affected his outlook on life and has become an important part of his work.

APICS—The Performance Advantage editor David Greenfield recently spoke with Donaldson about his view of the press and his role in it over the past three decades, and how he faced a potentially terminal illness.

You say you choose to give speeches to organizations you would like to address. What is it about APICS that made you want to address its members?

This country is based on business. It's a capitalistic, free enterprise system and I like it that way. I couldn't figure out why, back in the '70s and '80s, a lot of people thought reporters here in Washington were a bunch of communist sympathizers. I'm proud to work for a money-making organization like ABC News and the Walt Disney Company.

For some reason, certain reporters have an anti-business attitude. I think that's wrong.

So when I see a trade organization that has a good record of serving its members, I have no problem with that.

Much has been made recently about the attitude of the public toward the press. How do you feel about that? And do you feel that the perception of the media has changed over your time in the industry?

I must tell you I think attitudes about the press have been fairly stable on the part of the general public. On the one hand, they don't like a lot of the things reporters and editors and photographers do, particularly when they do them to someone the individual likes and supports. On the other hand, I think the general public wants a free press and they want a press that will report the news as they find it.

I lived through the period when Spiro Agnew was attacking the press as a political device. And during the early part of the '60s when the civil rights struggle was beginning in the South, large segments of the American public did not approve of the coverage of the demonstrators, which they thought was too sympathetic. Other large segments thought it was just right.

The press does lots of things wrong in the sense of making errors. I have no quarrel with that at all. As a matter of fact, I have no quarrel with the general criticisms of our work. All institutions are constantly under review, some would say attack, in this country — the government, the judiciary, the police. So why not the press? We are not immune from the same sort of inspection, the same sort of unofficial review people make when they're sitting around the dining room table or talking in taxi cabs.

My bottom line is that I'm not overly upset or even concerned about the complaints about the press. As long as we try to do the job of finding the facts on a story and bringing those facts to the public, I think we're going to be fine. And I think, in the long run, the public will think that we're necessary and desirable.

You've been seen as being close to the presidents you've covered over the past couple of decades. Reagan has joked with you as an aside during press conferences, and you even played softball with Carter. How do you handle such a relationship when you have to turn around and then ask the hard questions. Do you feel that your relationships with the presidents in any way colored your coverage of them?

Those instances referred to in your question have been rare. I have never been social friends, in any real sense of the word, with any presidents I have covered, or for that matter, any of the politicians currently in office.

Now, you can joke, as long as you remember who's the president and who is not. And I always did know that, contrary to some of what Reagan's partisans felt. But that doesn't interfere at all with a reporter's ability to question them properly.

I think the proper approach, particularly for White House reporters, is to go down there every day and find out what is really going on. And of course, lots of mechanisms in the White House are designed to make sure people like me don't find out what is really going on. Our job is to find out what is really going on and bring those facts to our viewers or readers.

I think the President ought to be challenged — always — no matter who he, or eventually she, might be, to explain their policies, to reveal what plans they have for the future, to answer their critics, and to generally be responsible for answering questions about the conduct of their office.

I've often said that questions don't hurt anyone; it's only the answers that sometimes hurt.

During your contract disputes with Capital Cities/ABC in 1992, you said that it became obvious at that time that hard news reporters like yourself are not the wave of the future. Do you still feel that way?

There's always going to be a necessity for hard news reporters. But I was speaking mainly about TV and the networks. The networks, after all, began and are engines for entertainment and dissemination of information. But dissemination of information plays a small part, because it has always drawn a small audience. So in the early days, networks could lose money on the news department and it didn't matter because they had a lock on the viewing audience. If you wanted to watch TV, you had to watch one of the three commercial networks. Now you can watch hundreds of channels. You don't have to watch ABC, CBS or NBC. And the fragmentation of the audience is seen in the percentage of people that watch the networks and the ratings for various programs.

Our evening news broadcast with Peter Jennings, which is number one at present, is drawing a seven or seven-and-a-half share rating. Just two or three years ago, it drew an 11, and a few years before that the evening news broadcast drew a 12, 13 or 14 share rating. So what I'm saying is that to prosper, news departments and individuals in news departments somehow have to adapt to the fact that here is this fragmentation and that people don't have to watch you. So how do you get them to watch you?

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but we have to appeal to a more diversified audience. We have to find ways to make hard news — important news — more interesting. We can't just say: "Well, here it is, take it or leave it. If you want to watch it, fine. If not, then it doesn't matter." Well it does matter to us, and we're fools if we think it doesn't.

Earlier in your life you admit that you had trouble acknowledging illness. How did being diagnosed with cancer affect that?

Well, it wasn't so much that I had trouble acknowledging illness, but I led a pretty charmed life. My aches and pains and illnesses had been the minor and customary ones that people have. And I think I didn't appreciate, until I was diagnosed with cancer, the emotions that people who have large-scale diseases go through. So I think I now have more sympathy toward other people who have these kinds of problems.

You've spoken before about Frank Reynolds (former ABC anchor) hiding his cancer diagnosis from his co-workers. You say, "It's a tough call" whether his approach was right or wrong. Did his action in any way affect your complete openness to your staff and employer about your diagnosis?

Oh, maybe a little bit. But the two situations weren't analogous. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I did not and do not think of cancer as some evil or unclean disease — something that ought to be hidden for shame or embarrassment. It is a disease like any other that afflicts us. It never occurred to me that I ought to keep it quiet. Also, as far my career was concerned, I don't think you can successfully hide this. It never even occurred to me to try. Besides, what would I have said to my staff, something like, "I'm going to go off for a week to 10 days to have a little minor operation or something and I'm going to have it done at the National Cancer Institute?" Boy, I would really have hidden that, wouldn't I?

Finally, I think one of the ways that we're going to make progress in the war on cancer is to get people to publicly discuss this problem and to discuss solutions for this problem. We can conquer this disease. The scientists are telling us that now. Ten years ago, they couldn't say that. It's going to take more research and more work, but if we get behind it by putting our money where our mouths are, we're going to conquer it quicker. And I want to be a part of that also.

You've run specials on "PrimeTime Live" about cancer and your bout with it. Will there be more of these specials as your part of furthering the War on Cancer?

We did an hour last October, and we're going to do another hour next October. Not only to bring people up to date on my and Judd Rose's (ABC News correspondent diagnosed with a brain tumor and featured on the "PrimeTime Live" program discussed here) circumstance, but we're going to do more on cancer — its effects, the cutting edge in the laboratory and where we are today, and the human emotion and drain this disease causes.

Let's take heart disease. It's still the number-one killer, and often people suffer from heart disease for years. But often, people have a fatal heart attack from out of the blue. That's terrible, but it's done with. Cancer, almost always, is a disease that you have the warning of death for some time. It may be a short time — three months; it may be a long time — years. But you live with this sword of Damocles hanging over you. And the emotional toll that takes on individuals, their families and friends is terrific and tragic. It's just not something people who aren't in the cancer club can really comprehend.

Can you update us as to what's been going in regard to your own cancer prognosis?

So far I'm clean. I had scans done in late June which said there is no recurrence. But statistics say it could recur. And odds are that it will. But each year that goes by that it doesn't recur, then the odds get better for me.

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