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The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

For other uses, see News Hour.

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.

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.

New era begins

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. On December 17, 2007, the NewsHour became the second nightly broadcast network newscast to broadcast in 1080i High Definition behind NBC Nightly News which went HD in March 2007. This difference between this broadcast and Nightly News is that the NewsHour is shown in a letterbox format for those with standard definition television sets. The switch came with the current graphics updated to HD and a new set.

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. Analysts who sometimes fill in when either Shields or Brooks are absent include David Gergen, Thomas Oliphant, Rich Lowry, William Kristol, Ramesh Ponnuru, William Safire and E. J. Dionne. 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 and end of the show and interruptions to call for pledges during public television pledge drives).

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 4:30 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-TV, and KQED.

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

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler agreed with 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.

FAIR also protested when Liberty Media purchased a majority of the program, citing Liberty's majority owner, John Malone.

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.