Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw
Thomas John "Tom" Brokaw is an American television journalist and author, best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generationand other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He is the only person to host all three major NBC News programs: The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and, briefly, Meet the Press. He now serves as a Special Correspondent for NBC News and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth6 February 1940
CityWebster, SD
CountryUnited States of America
We were competitive, but we were always bound by a shared devotion to being reporters first.
My hope is that we would begin to have a dialogue in this country about the importance of civility. We can have strong differences, but it does seem to me that most of the country believes it's gone to critical mass in what I would call the professional class across the political spectrum - left and right.
One of our daughters is now a physician; another is a vice president of a major entertainment company; and the third is a clinical therapist. They place no limits on their ambitions, but for them, those ambitions also have had to fit within the context of having children.
I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.
I started writing a journal, and I was learning so much along the way. How to deal with your family, how to deal with your friends.
Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high.
The doctor didn't want me to play golf anymore and was worried about me fly-fishing. Golf is something I enjoy, but fly-fishing is a different thing: That's religion. Hunting is religion for me. I didn't want to give those up.
The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression. They shared everything - meals, jobs, clothing.
During World War II, law-abiding Japanese-American citizens were herded into remote internment camps, losing their jobs, businesses and social standing, while an all-Japanese-American division fought heroically in Europe.
When he entered the Oval Office - by fate, not by design - Citizen Ford knew that he was not perfect, just as he knew he was not perfect when he left. But what president ever was?
I was at MSNBC; I was constantly saying to them during Bridgegate, 'You've convicted Governor Christie without one iota of fact attaching him to the decision to stall the traffic on the bridge. Why don't we wait until the federal government or the state government... completes its investigation.'
I had this unusual mix of curiosity, the ability to write in ways people understood, and when I appeared, viewers seemed to trust me to get them through some cataclysmic changes.