David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.

He began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School.

Instead, Brinkley took a job at NBC News, became its White House correspondent, and in time began appearing on television.

In 1956, NBC News executives considered various possibilities to anchor the network's coverage of the Democratic and Republican political conventions, and when executive J. Davidson Taylor suggested pairing two reporters (he had in mind Bill Henry and Ray Scherer), producer Reuven Frank, who favored Brinkley for the job, and NBC's director of news, Joseph Meyers, who favored Chet Huntley, proposed combining Huntley and Brinkley.

The pairing worked so well that on October 29, 1956, the two took over NBC's flagship nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York City and Brinkley in Washington, D.C., for the newly christened Huntley–Brinkley Report.

After continuous abuses of NBC correspondents made on the floor of the convention — namely, interference and shadowing of the media staff by supporters of Hubert Humphrey, presumably with connections to political boss Richard J. Daley — Brinkley criticized Daley's alleged interference with freedom of the press following Senator Abraham Ribicoff's stormy nomination of George McGovern.

The Huntley–Brinkley Report was America's most popular television newscast until it was overtaken, at the end of the 1960s, by the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite.

[6] On November, 22 1963, Brinkley helped cover the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy for NBC News from Washington.

By 1976, though, NBC had decided to revive the dual-anchor format, and Brinkley once again anchored the Washington desk for the network until October 1979.

This Week revolutionized the Sunday morning news program format, featuring not only several correspondents interviewing guest newsmakers, but concluding with a roundtable discussion.

The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated by ABC's NBC and CBS rivals as well as engendering new programs originating both nationally and from local stations.

This arrangement lasted until July 4; when Reynolds' eventual successor as the network anchor, Peter Jennings, was brought in from his post in London.

Brinkley's last broadcast as host of This Week was November 10, 1996, but he continued to provide short pieces of commentary for the show until September 28, 1997.

[13] In 1982, he received the Paul White Award for lifetime achievement from the Radio Television Digital News Association.

[15] In 1992, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.