Robert MacNeil, the co-anchor of 'The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour' and a pioneer in television journalism, passed away at the age of 93. Alongside his partner Jim Lehrer, MacNeil maintained a reputation for unbiased reporting and analysis amidst the changing landscape of news media.
By Harrison Smith, The Washington PostFILE - This Feb. 1978 photo shows Robert MacNeil, executive editor of"The MacNeil/Lehrer Report". MacNeil, who created the even-handed, no-frills PBS newscast “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” in the 1970s and co-anchored the show for with his late partner, Jim Lehrer, for two decades, died on Friday, April 12, 2024. He was 93. and served for two decades as its urbane, evenhanded co-anchor, died April 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 93.Mr.
In addition to Lehrer, who remained as the sole anchor after Mr. MacNeil’s retirement and who died in 2020, “NewsHour” has featured journalists including Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Gwen Ifill, Roger Mudd and Judy Woodruff. “I didn’t register his face because I was obsessed with finding a phone,” Mr. MacNeil told the Canadian Press in 2013. “Much later,” he added, “it occurred to me that I was going in just about the time Oswald had been going out.”
With their focus on informing rather than entertaining, the anchors joked that the show’s motto was, “We dare to be boring.” “NewsHour” left coverage of sensational stories such as the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial to the major networks, gravitating instead toward foreign conflicts, trade negotiations, nuclear arms deals and the like.
The oldest of three sons, Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil was born in Montreal on Jan. 19, 1931, and grew up in the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. His father served in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and commanded convoy escort ships during World War II, leaving his mother at home to raise Robin and his two brothers.
Mr. MacNeil did some early broadcasting work for Britain’s Independent Television and Canada’s CBC Television. But in a farewell tribute for “NewsHour,” he recalled that his on-air career got off to an inauspicious start: “The very first television interview I ever did, which was live in Canada, I forgot the names of both the people I was interviewing and had to say so to them.”
Robert Macneil Co-Anchor The Macneil-Lehrer Newshour Dies 93 Television Journalism Unbiased Reporting Analysis
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