Posted on 04/12/2024 10:47:16 AM PDT by Borges
Robert 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. He was 93.
MacNeil died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, according to his daughter, Alison MacNeil.
MacNeil first gained prominence for his coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings for the public broadcasting service and began his half-hour “Robert MacNeil Report” on PBS in 1975 with his friend Lehrer as Washington correspondent.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc27.com ...
I enjoyed watching the News Hour.
They seemed reasonable.
"Hello Robert. Take a seat next to OJ, I'll be with you in a minute."
IIRC he was in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot.
The last of the true journalists are dying off.
The new hack guys will eventually have no one to learn from.
rip.he was an actual journalist.
there are still Catherine Herridge and Sharyl Atkisson (sp?)
Had to look it up, but the combination of MacNeil and Lehrer ran for 20 years (1975-95). And Jim Lehrer went on till 2009. When PBS seemed pretty balanced. The place where Bill Buckley would debate leftists, often sending you running for the dictionary.
They were supposedly evenhanded and they were. My problem is how the kept going to Jesse Jackson on subjects ranging from South Africa to starvation in Ethiopia. Now where do you think he’s coming from on all those issues where blacks are involved?
I liked Robert McNeil and watched him for years in his partnership with Lehrer back when the news was more reasonable. Now everyone is pushing an agenda.
Robert was covering the JFK motorcade in Dallas when he was shot. Some trivia ...
From wikipedia —
“On November 22, 1963, MacNeil was covering President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Dallas for NBC News. After shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, MacNeil, who was with the presidential motorcade, followed crowds running onto the Grassy Knoll (he appears in a photo taken just moments after the assassination).
He then headed toward the nearest building and encountered a young man leaving the Texas School Book Depository at around 12:33PM CST. He asked the man where the nearest telephone was and the man pointed and went on his way.
MacNeil later learned the man he encountered might have been Lee Harvey Oswald. Historian William Manchester reached this conclusion in his book The Death of a President (1967). Recounting the day’s events to the Dallas Police, Oswald may have mistaken MacNeil for a Secret Service agent because of his suit, blond crew cut, and press badge. MacNeil has said, “it was possible, but I had no way of confirming that either of the young men I had spoken to was Oswald.”
MacNeil sprinted to the phone and dialed the NBC newsroom in New York before telephone lines became overloaded. But to his horror, an NBC employee who answered his call immediately put down the phone and never returned to the call (NBC tracked down the employee the next day and fired him).
By a matter of mere seconds, the first news bulletins about the assassination were delivered by Merriman Smith of United Press International, as Smith had been riding in the front row of the White House pool car, which was equipped with an AT&T radiotelephone (Smith won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the assassination).
MacNeil relayed by phone his report of the shooting to Jim Holton of NBC Radio, who recorded MacNeil’s account of what had happened. He then headed to Parkland Hospital ...”
often sending you running for the dictionary.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one lol.
Back when the media was naively Liberal, rather then demonically Marxist.
Well its a good day for propoganda.
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