He started as a local reporter in Ohio, was a trailblazer in bringing social issues to a national audience as a daytime broadcast TV host, and then he was pretty-much banished from TV by MSNBC because he—accurately, correctly, and morally—questioned the horrific U.S. invasion of Iraq. …
Ultimately, Phil was fired because—as the leaked internal memo said—Donahue represented “a difficult public face for NBC at a time of war.” …
No one on American television cross-examined Israeli leaders like Phil did when he interviewed then-Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and later, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. They seemed stunned—never having faced such questioning from a U.S. journalist.
But “the suits” ruined our show when they took control and actually mandated a quota system favoring the right wing: If we had booked one guest who was antiwar, we needed to book two that were pro-war. If we had one guest on the left, we needed two on the right. When a producer suggested booking Michael Moore—known to oppose the pending Iraq war—she was told she’d need to book three rightwingers for political balance.
Three weeks before the Iraq war started, and after some of the biggest antiwar mobilizations the world had ever seen (which were barely covered on mainstream TV), the suits at NBC/MSNBC terminated our show.