The Newshour With Jim Lehrer

Information about The Newshour With Jim Lehrer

For other uses, see News Hour.

The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer
Created by	Robert MacNeil Jim Lehrer
Starring	Jim Lehrer Elizabeth Farnsworth Gwen Ifill Judy Woodruff Margaret Warner Ray Suarez Mark Shields David Brooks
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	N/A (airs daily)
Production
Running time	60 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	PBS
Original run	October 20, 1975 – present

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is an evening television news program broadcast s 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.

History

MacNeil and Lehrer first teamed up to cover the United States Senate Watergate hearings for PBS in 1973, which led to an Emmy Award. This recognition helped them as they worked to create The Robert MacNeil Report as a half-hour local news program for WNET in 1975 that covered a single issue in-depth. A few months later, the program was renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer Report and began to be broadcast nationwide on PBS stations. The program changed formats and extended to an hour in length on September 5, 1983, becoming known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour until MacNeil left the program.

On May 17, 2006, the program underwent its first major change in presentation in years, adopting new broadcast graphics and a new version of the show's trademark theme song.

Production and ratings

The NewsHour has a more deliberate pace than the news broadcasts of the commercial networks it competes against. At the start of the program, a news summary that lasts a few minutes is given, briefly explaining many of the headlines around the world. International stories often include excerpts of reports filed by Independent Television News correspondents. This is typically followed by three or four longer news segments running 10-15 minutes that explore a few of the headline events in much greater depth than its competitors. The segments include discussions with experts, newsmakers, and/or commentators. The program often wraps up with a reflective essay, but on Fridays it ends with a discussion between two regular columnists. As of 2004, the two people who usually participate are Mark Shields and David Brooks (Paul Gigot, whom Brooks replaced, occasionally fills in for Brooks). Others who sometimes fill in or who have in the past include David Gergen, Thomas Oliphant, Rich Lowry, William Kristol, Ramesh Ponnuru, and William Safire. After the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, The NewsHour began what it calls its Honor Roll, which honors the US military personnel killed in Iraq by displaying the deceased's picture, name, rank, and hometown in complete silence. As of January 4, 2006, The NewsHour also honors the U.S. military personnel killed in Afghanistan in its Honor Roll. The NewsHour is also notable for being run on public television; hence, there are no interruptions for advertisements (though there are "corporate-image" advertisements at the beginning of the show and interruptions to call for pledges during public television pledge drives).

The Newshour has always striven to achieve objectivity. Although the FCC no longer stiffly enforces regulations that once required news programs to air "both" sides of an issue—as if there can only be two points of view—the Newshour generally has people representing conflicting viewpoints; often it announces that one party declined to speak on the air.

The Newshour has often been accused of a "liberal" bias, at least by conservative pundits.

The newshour is careful to issue disclaimers to warn of possible bias. For example when reviewing a new art museum in Texas, Lehrer pointed out that the museum's founder was a personal friend. Reports from the Newshour's Health Unit are preceded by a mention of the sponsors of the report. However, reports about ethanol as a motor fuel are not accompanied by a statement that ADM, a key Newshour sponsor, is heavily invested in ethanol production.

According to Nielsen ratings at the program's website, 2.7 million people watch the program each night, and 8 million individuals watch in the course of a week. It is broadcast on more than 300 PBS stations, reaching 99% of the viewing public, and audio is broadcast by some National Public Radio stations. Broadcasts are also made available worldwide via satellites operated by various agencies. In Australia, the program appears on free-to-air station SBS from Tuesday to Saturday at 5 p.m. Archives of shows broadcast after February 7, 2000 are available in several streaming media formats (including full-motion video) at the program's website. The show is available to overseas military personnel on the American Forces Network. Audio from select segments are also released in podcast form, available through several feeds on PBS's subscriptions page and through the iTunes Music Store. The program originates in Washington, D.C., with additional facilities in San Francisco, California and Denver, Colorado, and is a collaboration between PBS television stations WNET, WETA, and KQED.

Behind the scenes at The Newshour, during a Gen. Peter Pace interview.

Other people work on The NewsHour. The program's senior correspondents are Gwen Ifill, Ray Suarez, Margaret Warner and Judy Woodruff. Essayists include Jim Fisher, Clarence Page, Anne Taylor Fleming, Richard Rodriguez, and Roger Rosenblatt. Correspondents include Jeffrey Brown, Susan Dentzer, Jan Crawford Greenburg, Tom Bearden, Kwame Holman, Fred de Sam Lazaro, Terence Smith, Paul Solman, James Trengrove, and others.

For most of the run, funding has been provided by AT&T, SBC Communications (prior to its takeover of AT&T), Archer Daniels Midland, PepsiCo, New York Life, Smith Barney (and its former mid-to-late '90's moniker "Salomon Smith Barney", when merging with Salomon Brothers), Travelers Group, Pfizer, CIT Group, Grant Thornton, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Pacific Life, the Ford Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The National Science Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthrophies, The Park Foundation, BP, Toyota, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to PBS stations from Viewers Like You.

Critics of The Newshour

Critics have accused The Newshour, along with mainstream American media, of being "stenographers to power" with a pro-establishment bias. In October 2006, a study by the left-oriented media analysis group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) accused The NewsHour of lacking balance, diversity, and viewpoints of the general public, in favor of Republican and corporate viewpoints. FAIR studied NewsHour's guest list for the 6 months October 2005 to March 2006. Republicans outnumbered Democrats 2:1 (66% to 33%). People of color made up only 15% of US sources. Alberto Gonzales accounted for 30% of Latino sources, while Condoleezza Rice accounted for 13% of African-American sources. Hurricane Katrina victims were 46% of all African-American sources. On Iraq, "stay the course" sources outnumbered pro-withdrawal sources 5:1 (this ratio continued even after polls favored a withdrawal from Iraq). Not a single peace activist appeared. Public interest groups were 4% of sources. Current and former government and military officials were 50% of sources.^[1]

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler agreed with certain aspects of FAIR's report. These are "perilous times," wrote Getler in his Ombudsman column. "As a viewer and journalist, I find the program occasionally frustrating; sometimes too polite, too balanced when issues are not really balanced, and too many political and emotion-laden statements pass without factual challenges from the interviewer."^[2]

International broadcasts

PBS News programming is shown daily on the 24 hour news network Orbit News in Europe and the Middle East. This includes The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

In Australia by SBS Television.
In Japan by NHK BS-1.
In New Zealand by Triangle TV (Auckland and Wellington only), and Triangle Stratos.
Broadcast by Voice of America.

References

1. ^ Are You on the NewsHour’s Guestlist? PBS flagship news show fails public mission, By Steve Rendall and Julie Hollar, Extra! September/October 2006
2. ^ A FAIR Analysis? By Michael Getler October 6, 2006

External links

News Hour, as a title, may refer to:

The BBC World Service radio programme Newshour; the flagship programme of the service, broadcast twice a day.
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, a U.S.

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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.
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James Charles Lehrer (pronounced [lɛɹə]) (born May 19, 1934) is an American journalist. He is the news anchor for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.
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Elizabeth Farnsworth (born Elizabeth Fink) is an American television news anchorwoman.

She is a graduate of Middlebury College, and earned an M.A. in Latin American History from Stanford University and lived in Peru and Chile for extended periods.
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Gwen Ifill (born September 29, 1955) is a journalist for PBS. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She has also received 15 honorary degrees. She serves on the board of the Harvard Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Museum of
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Judy Woodruff (born November 20, 1946) is an American television news anchor and journalist. Woodruff has had extensive plastic surgery including face lifts and botox injections. She is famous for her blonde wig that is always styled the exact same way.
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Margaret Warner is a senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before joining the News Hour in 1993, she was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Concord Monitor, and Newsweek.
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Rafael Suarez, Jr. (born March 5, 1957), better known as Ray Suarez, is a senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, an evening news program on the PBS television network.
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Mark Shields (born May 25, 1937 in Weymouth, Massachusetts) is an American political pundit who appears frequently on CNN and PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as a liberal commentator.

Shields graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1959.
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David Brooks (b. August 11, 1961) is a columnist for The New York Times and has become a prominent voice of politics in the United States.

David Brooks was born in Toronto and grew up in New York City in Stuyvesant Town.
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Motto
"In God We Trust" (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum" ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

Type Broadcast television network
Country United States
Availability United States and parts of Canada
Founded 1969
Launch date October 5, 1970
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October 20 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

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1740 - Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria.

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Year 1975 (MCMLXXV
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Television (often abbreviated to TV, T.V., or more recently, tv; sometimes called telly, the tube, boob tube, or idiot box in British English) is a widely used telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures
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NeWS (for Network extensible Window System) was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the late 1980s. Its primary architect was James Gosling, who subsequently designed Java.
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worldwide view.

A television program (US), television programme (UK) or simply television show is a segment of programming in television broadcasting.
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Motto
"In God We Trust" (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum" ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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The hour (symbol: h, or occasionally hr; via Latin from Greek ὥρα "season, time span", ultimately cognate to English ) is a unit of time. It is not an SI unit but is accepted for use with the SI.
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The of this article or section may be compromised by "weasel words".
You can help Wikipedia by removing weasel words. In film and broadcasting, a soundbite is a very short piece of footage taken from a longer speech or an interview in which someone with authority or the
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The Liberty Media Corporation is an American media conglomerate and the control is exercised by engineer Dr. John Malone, with a majority of the voting shares. In May 2006, Liberty shareholders approved the creation of four new tracking stocks, two classes for each of Liberty's two
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United States Senate

Type Upper House

President of the Senate Richard B. Cheney, R
since January 20, 2001
President pro tempore Robert C. Byrd, D
since January 4, 2007

Members 100
Political groups Democratic Party
Republican Party
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Watergate is a general term for a series of political scandals, which began with the arrest of five men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, D.C., office/apartment complex and hotel called the Watergate on June 17, 1972.
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Emmy Award

Emmy Award
Awarded for Excellence in television
Presented by ATAS/NATAS
Country United States
First awarded 1949

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The Newshour With Jim Lehrer

Information about The Newshour With Jim Lehrer

History

Production and ratings

Critics of The Newshour

International broadcasts

References

External links

Events