Robert McNeil, who created the unbiased, no-frills PBS news show “The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour” in the 1970s and co-anchored it for 20 years with his late partner Jim Lehrer, died Friday. . He was 93 years old.
McNeil died of natural causes at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, said his daughter, Alison McNeil.
McNeil first made a name for himself with public broadcasting’s coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings, and in 1975 he and his friend Lehrer launched the half-hour “Robert McNeil Report” on PBS as Washington correspondents.
The broadcast became the “McNeil-Lehrer Report” and was expanded to one hour in 1983 and renamed the “McNeil-Lehrer News Hour.”
America’s first one-hour evening newscast, winner of several Emmy and Peabody Awards, continues to air today with Jeff Bennett and Amna Nawaz as anchors.
The program was created after McNeil and Lehrer became disillusioned with the style and content of rival news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC.
“There’s no need to sell the news,” McNeil told the Chicago Tribune in 1983. What is missing (at 22 minutes) is context, sometimes balance, and consideration of the questions raised by specific events. ”
In 1995, McNeil quit her job as NewsHour anchor of 20 years to write full-time. Mr. Lehrer took over the newscast alone and remained there until 2009. Mr. Lehrer passed away in 2020.
When McNeil visited the show in October 2005 to celebrate its 30th anniversary, he recalled how the news program started in the pre-cable era.
“It was a way to do something that seemed journalistically necessary but different from what commercial news (programs) were doing,” he said.
McNeil has written several books, including two memoirs, “The Right Place at the Right Time,” the bestseller “Wordstruck,” and the novels “Burden of Desire” and “The Voyage.”
“Writing is more personal. Television is not as collaborative as it should be,” McNeil told The Associated Press in 1995. And that’s me. ”
McNeil also worked with the McNeil-Lehrer production company to create the Emmy Award-winning 1986 series “The Story of English,” and was a co-author of a sister book of the same name.
Another book on language he co-authored, “Do You Speak American?”, was adapted into a PBS documentary in 2005.
In 2007, he hosted “America at a Crossroads,” a six-night PBS package that explored the challenges facing the United States in a post-9/11 world.
Six years before the 9/11 attacks, discussing sensationalism and frivolity in the news industry, he said: Isn’t the news getting more serious again? Will people run away from “hard copies” and stimulation? ”
“Of course I will. I’ll need to know what’s going on.”
It was like that for a while.
McNeil was born in Montreal in 1931, grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1955, then moved to London and began a career in journalism at Reuters.
He turned to television news in 1960, taking a job as a foreign correspondent at NBC in London.
In 1963, McNeil moved to NBC’s Washington bureau, where he reported on civil rights and the White House.
He covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas and spent most of 1964 following the presidential campaign between Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, and Republican Barry Goldwater.
In 1965, McNeil became the New York anchor for NBC’s first half-hour weekend network newscast, “The Sherrer McNeil Report.”
While in New York, he also anchored local news programs and several NBC News documentaries, including “The Big Ear” and “The Right to Bear Arms.”
