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Jim Lehrer (1934-2020), co-founder, The NewsHour, PBS<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Thursday, January 23, Jim Lehrer, the co-founder of The NewsHour<\/em> on PBS, died. He was one of the great and legendary broadcast journalists of all times, unique in his bringing to the US and the world, along with Robert MacNeil, a new concept in broadcast news starting in 1975, focusing in-depth and in-breadth on one select issue on the nightly news for 30 minutes, and then expanded to an hour focusing on a few select issues, after a few minutes giving basic information on headlines of the day.<\/p>\n The NewsHour<\/em> was and is unlike any other nightly news program on US television. It was, and is, a revolutionary idea rooted in a traditional concept: News should inform as fully as possible, focused on facts as objectively as possible. It was and is revolutionary because it flew in the face of the short attention span of Americans when it started, shorter by a factor mathematically impossible to factor since.<\/p>\n It also appealed, and appeals, to moderates, liberals and conservatives alike. That PBS is watched at least as often by conservatives as liberals, if not more, seems a little-known fact. That The NewsHour<\/em>, much like its sister documentary series on PBS, Frontline<\/em>, brings factual balance in both presentation and in reception across the political spectrum in audience is more critical than ever in an age of increasing fact-deprivation and polarization.<\/p>\n What morphed into The NewsHour<\/em> was first called\u00a0The MacNeil\/Lehrer NewsHour<\/em>. One of the writers here, Keith Blume, \u00a0in his book,\u00a0The Presidential Election Show<\/em>, the first to follow the nightly news coverage on NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS through taping and reporting on every night of a presidential campaign in 1984, reported on the traditional Labor Day launch of the campaign:<\/p>\n By far the best coverage of the day was to be found on The MacNeil\/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS.<\/em><\/p>\n The reasons were then detailed at length. And so it went throughout the campaign. The commercial networks were primarily a delivery system for entertainment values of image over substance. The NewsHour<\/em> was focused on substance. As Elliott Roosevelt, son of President Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, put it in the Forward to the book after decrying the negative impact of nightly television network news:<\/p>\n The record does show that public\u00a0television\u00a0did a much more credible job.<\/i><\/p>\n While started by two white males, as was the norm at the time, The NewsHour<\/em> has for sometime been led and dominated in reporting by women, including women of color, all of whom we have had great respect and admiration for through their careers.<\/p>\n No other nightly news broadcast has achieved this with such breadth and consistency for so long.<\/p>\n The anchor for many years now at The NewsHour<\/em>, Judy Woodruff, showed her deeply felt emotion in reporting about Jim Lehrer’s death, as was called for. The reflections from her and many colleagues were extraordinarily moving.<\/p>\n Jim Lehrer moderated more broadcast presidential election debates than any other journalist in history. He holds that record for a reason. No one embodied the past half century of broadcast journalism and the attendant history itself more than he did.<\/p>\n Jim Lehrer had nine rules for journalism. They embody important values and practices for journalism and for life:<\/p>\n