Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, known sometimes as Robin, (born January 19, 1931) is currently a novelist and formerly was a television news anchor and journalist who had paired with Jim Lehrer to create The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1975.
Born in Montreal and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, MacNeil graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1955. He began working in the news field at ITV in London, then for Reuters and then for NBC as a correspondent in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Beginning in 1967, MacNeil also covered American and European politics for the BBC and has served as the host for the news discussion show Washington Week in Review.
On November 22, 1963, MacNeil was covering Kennedy's visit to Dallas. After shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, MacNeil followed crowds running onto the Grassy Knoll (he appears in a photo taken just moments after the assassination). He then headed towards the nearest building and encountered a man leaving the Texas School Book Depository. 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 at about 12:33 p.m. was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald, recounting the day's events to the Dallas police, described MacNeil as a Secret Service agent because of his suit, blond crew cut, and press badge (which Oswald apparently mistook for government identification). This conclusion was made by historian William Manchester in his book The Death of a President (1967). For his part, MacNeil says "it was possible, but I had no way of confirming that either of the young men I had spoken to was Oswald." On the phone, MacNeil relayed the first report of the shooting for NBC Radio. He then headed to Parkland Hospital where he arranged a phone connection with Frank McGee, who was anchoring the developments with Bill Ryan and Chet Huntley from NBC-TV in New York. At approximately 2:40 PM EST, MacNeil relayed to McGee that White House acting press secretary Malcolm Kilduff made the official announcement that President Kennedy had died at 1:00 CST. (Kilduff was press secretary because the main press secretary, Pierre Salinger, was traveling to Japan with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and five other Cabinet officers.)
MacNeil rose to fame during his coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings for PBS, which led to an Emmy Award. This helped lead to his most famous news role, where he worked with Jim Lehrer to create The Robert MacNeil Report in 1975. This was later renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer Report and then The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. MacNeil retired on October 20, 1995.
On September 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, he called PBS, asking if he could help them with their coverage of the attacks, as he recalled in his autobiography, Looking for My Country: Finding Myself in America. He helped PBS in its coverage of the attacks and the aftermath, interviewing reporters, and giving his thoughts on the attacks.
He is the host of the PBS television show America at a Crossroads, which premiered April 15-20, 2007.
In the late 1990s he discussed openly his son's homosexuality, saying it could help other fathers to know how he dealt with the fact in a positive way.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on PBS in the United States. Unlike most other evening newscasts in the country, each edition is an hour long. The program also runs longer segments than most other news outlets in the U.S., with in-depth coverage of the subjects involved. The NewsHour avoids the use of sound bites, playing back extended portions of news conferences and holding interviews that last several minutes.
The program was formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour until Robert MacNeil, who co-anchored with Jim Lehrer, retired from the show in 1995. The show continues to be produced by their joint production company, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, which is 65% owned by Liberty Media.
