Donald E. McGaffin Scholarship Fund

The Donald E. McGaffin Scholarship Fund
Help inspire a new generation of investigative journalists.

Since a Blanchard, Wash., lad then named Egbert R. Murrow went off to what was then Washington State College, the Pacific Northwest has turned out journalists who questioned authority and refused to stay inside any box.

Don McGaffin, of KOMO-TV and KING-TV in Seattle, exemplified the tradition. Don received the Edward R. Murrow Annual Award, in 1975. He also won 14 Emmy Awards during his reporting career. Awards did not drive Don, however. Journalism did.

We are writing to tell you about an effort to honor that tradition and to help inspire a new generation of investigative journalists.

Don knew no fear and recognized no barriers. McGaffin was captured by Maoist rebels in El Salvador. He exercised such powers of persuasion that a teenage guerilla asked McGaffin to hold his rifle while he preformed a chore.

McGaffin lived to report the story, and film urchins playing war games in the midst of a war zone.

By filming horribly burned victims at Seattle's Children’s' Hospital, McGaffin pushed Congress to enact the Flammable Fabrics Act.

The pioneering piece of consumer legislation, sponsored by Sen. Warren Magnuson, D-Wash., required that all children’s' nightclothes be flame resistant.

McGaffin spent nearly 15 years crusading against the capture of Orcas (killer whales) in Puget Sound by aquariums intent on turning the great marine mammals into performers. An unforgettable piece of footage shows McGaffin in an open motorboat being buzzed by angry would-be captors. He encountered one in a bar that night, and decked the guy.

In their book on the 1968 presidential campaign, An American Melodrama, London Sunday Times editors wrote of Richard Nixon's manipulation of the media. The main Nixon gambit was to ignore the traveling press and give interviews in which local TV reporters asked softball questions. The exception, reported the authors, came in Seattle where Don McGaffin of KOMO-TV sharply questioned Nixon on the U.S. record of supporting military dictatorships in foreign lands.

What An American Melodrama did not report was Nixon's furious, tire-kicking reaction to the tough questions posed of him.

McGaffin exposed corruption, notably payoffs from gamblers to the Seattle Police Department and money funneled from major corporations into the law firm of the majority leader in the Washington State Senate.

Seattle police in turn, spied upon him. McGaffin was on the air, reading a list of police targets, when he came upon his own name.

We are starting up a scholarship in memory of McGaffin, at the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Don was universally known by his last name at his alma mater -- the Columbia School of Journalism. He worked a good part of his career on the West Coast and most of that time in Seattle.

The goal is to raise $100,000, but also to raise the quality of broadcast journalism in America. We need McGaffins, people who mentor and inspire and challenge themselves and those around them.

Please give, and help find other donors.

Sincerely,
Dr. Abe Bergman, Chief of Pediatrics at Harborview
David Brewster, Publisher, Executive Dir. Town Hall
Dorothy Bullitt
Joel Connelly, Columnist, Seattle Post-Intellegencer
Norm Maleng, King County Prosecutor
Ralph Munro, former Secretary of State
Eric Nalder, Pulitzer Prize winning Investigative Journalist, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wes Uhlman, Former Mayor of Seattle

The Donald E. McGaffin Scholarship Fund Committee

Sam Sperry ~ James Lalonde ~ Stacey Walters ~ John Arthur Wilson ~ Julie Blacklow Linda Brill ~ Mimi Sheridan

Pledge materials are available. If you just have questions about the process of making a gift or pledge, the WSU College of Liberal Arts’ Office of Development is ready to assist. In Seattle at WSU West please contact Carol Kowalski at 206-448-1332 or
ckowalski@wsu.edu