Phil Donahue (Posthumous Induction)

The Paley Media Center said it best: “If you want to know what the 20th Century looked like, just watch Donahue.” 

Born in the Midwest and schooled among the fighting Irish of Notre Dame, cub city hall reporter, Phil Donahue, burst onto daytime television and turned the medium upside down. He introduced American audiences to a daily line-up of explosive issues and groundbreaking guests. 

Nelson Mandela railed against apartheid. Gloria Steinem took on the Patriarchy. Muhammad Ali expounded on race and religion. Donahue stood up to David Duke and the KKK–and pushed back against Skinheads espousing Neo-Nazism.

Donahue was the first western journalist to visit Chernobyl after the nuclear incident and the first TV host to call attention to the mysterious disease called AIDS, when there were only 200 cases.

Every living American President turned to Donahue to connect with citizens of the nation.

Phil Donahue’s rare combination of intelligence, humanity and unquenchable curiosity, catapulted him to a record 29-year run, 7000 episodes, 20 Emmys, the Prestigious Peabody Award and induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Most recently, Phil was awarded our nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Joe Biden, in a White House ceremony on May 2, 2024.

But for all those achievements, he will always be remembered as that handsome, white-haired figure bounding into the crowd, microphone in hand, giving America its first glimpse of a studio audience, while speaking words that soon became a national catchphrase: “Is the caller there?”