The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour; Fifteen Years of MacNeil/Lehrer. Part 1

this program has been made possible by the financial support of viewers like you cannot act as a not unusual he is a new orleans police and so far almost all of my adult life they have been on the air and i would have watched them as i would primetime television you have to be a visible integration to be a day of inquiring highly inquisitive report mirror mirror on the wall who's got the best newscaster them all lots of people would answer the talented folks of the macneil lehrer newshour on pbs will raise it does

so this was like the berlin series would you be respectful just was once all this day garden are shales together with a political odd couple the macneil lehrer newshour friday regulars and take a look at politics though occasionally coakley to win over a different pleasure to host a special broadcast to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the macneil lehrer news to a government email and jam where a long history marriage in television history and then you are you most successful partnership of robin and gm is a striking mix of friendship principal and personality is produced for the most popular programs on public television when most respected news broadcast in television history and public rather than every private people years of the newshour know they don't object their personal views into the reporting but they can sit down with us for a long conversation recently reminiscing about old times telling us

how they feel about television about the country and about each other and frankly we were both surprised by just how passionately they do feel the macneil lehrer poll at the rebel half hour show ran from nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty three by tv standards that's ancient history so we thought we'd start with some instant nostalgia for those early years that would come from muslim women's health and deeply agenda before the political cover to open up the financial was a vote and if i go down in flames and the question is are there one hundred thousand political prisoners now in iranian jails as they charge two thousand two hundred or their crops whether these two thousand two hundred mostly terrorists and there were the marxist what have the americans don't you in the whale show an essential that you object to usually doesn't win look and you know if the

american government is that they have limited the biggest trial by imposing a seed with this do solemnly swear i really a sharp reduction in spending growth and the movement towards a balanced budget is the only way to get inflation coming down fast this is the first color picture from our sin is the first attempt in the whole history of news are a lot less important on the heart is driven by compressed air that enters through these two tubes which must come through the body was the patient of the chest robert new report was launched october twentieth nineteen seventy five washington correspondent jim lehrer his name would be added later do is program he could find is from

christmas day of that year a discussion of movies with film critic pauline kael and a semi from a filmmaker going to the movies with colleen carroll well it's it's absolutely fine chichi our concerts than scruples little notes on the paper you know which because i i disapproved completely as as a filmmaker i mean i think the critic should come and see the movie and just sort of let it wash over them in and so for a for someone to make stone it's an appropriately and ivan nerve wracking exploring different viewpoints has been a staple of mia lehrer in nineteen seventy six john warner now us senator and the country's official bicentennial commission jeremy rifkin hitting the alternative lot of people's bicentennial commission became a veterans next cleveland's work for the government you want to call it things known for its grit and it's not blame it's not the sort of feel guilty if anybody is to build at this illustration isn't a soul in the first place the

idea was get in dialogue is tackling one topic for a half hour each weekday evening by the kind of civic for supplement that were tv news i'm robyn like to say they want to break the mold if you think about television news in nineteen seventy five when we started at least on the national scene it was defined by three examples nbc cbs and abc but they were very much of the formula and that formula was i've said this before this is a new show like detroit were saying this is an automobile and it has to be a twenty five feet long and have big fins and weigh a ton and a half and it does this knows this well just as the automobile has been redefined by the pressures of international competition sewn in the energy crisis and pollution controls and all kinds of other things so i think we've demonstrated that there is at least a different way of practicing journalism and television and you don't need to define it only as the way the network spill

but you know where a definition of news programming a merger that coverage of the senate watergate hearings in nineteen seventy three they co anchor public television's gavel to gavel broadcast well i'm going from here isn't easy to predict but we can tell you that things will get much more complicated for the whole story comes out the unfolding testimony of white house chicanery made for high drama on tv as the questioner asked what did the viewers know and when did they know about the answer was simple they do a lot and they learned quickly from the city's a big deal in layers we're running at all each day because we think these hearings are important and because we think it is important that you get a chance to see the whole flying and make your own judgments they really seem to like it convincingly mia lehrer that they've established of following as well as the friendship it turned out that we lived in the same neighborhood and here in bethesda are we had their daughters or the same kindergarten class we sat next to each other

on the bun for four months day in and day out by the end of that for months we were very close friends of the compression of turning professional and convince the public television shows video and should have been nightly program renewed fervor because of the reaction of the warriors we were convinced that there was an audience for something more something more came two years later viewing it off and reveal his own show and the freedom to do with his own way was watergate colleague jim lehrer became a regular on the program within nine months it had become a big deal where report six is sitting in for jim lehrer in washington that's the mayor larry vaught and haiti has been in parliament there was on vacation and jane alexander's was again the night in new york that you mentioned democrat at a young new york times reporter who had broken racial barriers in her native

south and would break maureen journalism charlayne hunter gault sitting in for robert mcneill in new york tonight as she will be regularly from now on when either one of us is now it's your debut in other words showing well thank you jim hunter gault was recently on assignment in middle east my counselor at the time that i didn't have a lot of apprehensions about making the switch because new era was kind of like the process of a newspaper on television the reporting was in depth and everything good i did with what islands in fort wayne in a newspaper except that i did it mostly on camera you know the first year mcneill reiterated the show's unusual mission much as he might describe it even today iran is still to slow down and take a really penetrating look at one story a night by attending this we hope to help you understand both the great and the simply fascinating human issues of the day we don't pretend to be exhausted

more definitive and one night our basic aim is not just to rouse your curiosity but to satisfy a little more there was always an audience in america despite what people say about the lowest common denominator in television that is prepared to listen to a broadcast that is pitching information upwards rather than always done since the nineteen seventy six presidential campaign mcneil lehrer have focused on the political process but just on who's ahead ej for a lot of the horse race your daughters were killed you'll hear repeatedly year if i ever lived here are five or mislead you don't vote for me and yet haven't you been indulging in the time honored practice of every candidate are trimming parts of your speeches when you go to certain areas so as not to offend particular groups of people now i do emphasize the issues that are important to the orient eleven our global approach eleven and in the global oil or energy bubble

i never have been much calmer speeches delivered and up till the audience is different and the mission statement or more controversial issue not a vocal one and gm wanted to know the candidates seeking the white house and the people they would bring with them our theory is that you can sometimes gain insight into a candidate been on a little more about the people around people he listens to it accordingly we have three of jimmy carter's top campaign people were this tonight first hamilton jordan carter campaign manager mr jordan this way for fourteen years mcneil lehrer is what it does routinely included extended excerpt of candidates' stump speeches about once a week on average we carried an extended report on a campaign speech on the theory that people at home get to hear a real campaign speech anymore

just a few phrases an unlikely campaign around nineteen eighty eight was the presidential election year of snappy slogan a negative bet but mcneill us about the campaign are eager to produce certain profiles and to conduct serious interviews or feelings today's interview show your feelings out in the field when after nineteen months of your life devoted to this as well as being government only use even politics before that sixty four percent of the american people say they prefer somebody else then you were the democratic candidate doesn't hurt you that you will remember this i started as a very long shot back that this woman is talking about some abortion where we have a brokered convention a nobody could possibly one of the german song conventional wisdom has turned out to be unconventional another approach that has soured into presidential candidates in a debate over major campaign issue they are one thing one thing that vice

president bush's dodd or out that that we can be proud of first and then it went to lessons and there is take and he has come into south florida and i can tell you with a software test toys which now the people in texas mart down the east coast have asked us to duplicate miller believe television has always had the potential to be a positive force in american politics but they remain concerned that the meeting has become an instrument for mischief and manipulation was result of soundbite of news coverage and negative campaign advertising i think television is help to trivialize politics and the parties can i'd been that politicians are denied and then they're gone for any way that that can sell selected now bart all the techniques of television and madison avenue and everything

else and they made the choice of an election no more important than the tourists of a toothpaste or a cereal or buying a new car we've educated the american people to a point now where they don't expect candor from their political figures in fact candor is a way out not the way and we judge people by the way they handle questions rather than whether not they answer them and on that kind of stuff and that we approach as they did in that i mean we meet in the news media and it's a it's a it's just a bad time i think love and jim the touchstone of the reporting is to present information in a balanced way and the unorthodox assumption that voters will then make informed decisions on their own they greatly fear an uninformed aleck a fear shared by a number of their colleagues my generation baby boomers and younger don't really feel a personal connection with the nose how it's not important to watch that

evening news on television they may or may not subscribe to a newspaper that probably don't use of the same people who don't vote thomas jefferson said in all the nation that expects to being written for he expects whenever a camera will be and that he was dead on target and even as our as a viewing audience for television goes up the total audience the number people prepares for an election go down what was a talented to lose that that that they're not absorbing any information that inspires them to develop if your current resurrect thomas jefferson and say when we got a little machine here that you can talk and do and they can see you in every home in this country and now they can see all year cala congressman and their lives in that way we can also take it all around the world and you can see you can see the barbary pirates seizing your sailors and you can see all these things and he would say what that's absolutely amazing that must be the

most wonderful democratic instrument there is i am my hopes for this democracy now that you brought it back and surely those are just i'm thrilled that you can do this and then you would say yes but excuse me want to jefferson watch it for a little while and you find that ninety seven percent of the time and is used for very trivial purposes to endorse we're getting ourselves as robin in general and determined to provide an alternative to the way television informs our nation's citizens below the reactions one has an editor's lined up and we also have sort of congressional slash political reaction making appearances is the job of the show's reporter asked for a morning conference call between robin and gm and other top staff in new york and washington report asserts their rolodexes for knowledgeable guests he knew this morning

final choices based on what has come to be known as the harder version of will arrive the rulers and there's a promise of alt over arms control between the united states and soviet union let's give president carter and chairman rationale and their officers and their respective offices in a connected and sort through it like to not terrific idea everybody says but just in case we can't work that we probably all have a fallback decision when you first part of the issue are often point to a free fall but just drove him clemency came even managed to move on david when we began our one of our reporters recall somebody that it takes fifteen minutes to explain a public television more than fifty most explain what we were before they're about the question it's not that not that that anymore but for sure we still out of all black but it's a great tribute to both television and your progress now that we leave mark there is that quality of

purity about that that you can have that you can take a subject to have anyone want on objects for him because he's not the best people to explore the subject not necessarily the most famous other than maybe i'm not even necessarily the most articulate but if you want to give people an understanding of what is going on the world these are the people who get hand you have the time and the depth to do i've always envied robin and she and their ability to explore an issue and out to get inside a story zammit scores in fact in my household there is a favorite joe neel where our program we like to call it in my house with their the american tomato it was television and it's like a

stage and a usual recession it's a crisis of confidence robin recent opinion poll finds that to my dough among the least loved of all vegetables and there was just about large during the new yorker how committees are being genetically bred to travel backwards and you could have it all seasons of the year and they have developed a tomato square today to which had a higher impact resistance or relative to its weight than the epa required for car bumpers we were looking for tomato juice in her country and we went out and the very bottom and random isis and often for the tomatoes for just tastes like cotton and cotton out these are some tomatoes we bought would you want to open a couple of them up and tell us as a gourmet cook what you think about them in a new route to

breathe i think tomatoes in april of this thing that i've heard it yes yes we didn't fix it we should have fixed it because the rotten tomatoes in and live on the air not pre taped or reversed reno's live on the air we had an expert in tomatoes she cut into one on the border in front of me and out in the most delicious flavor of perfect tomato she cut into another one it was one of just everything you'd want in a tomato which we just bought a random down the street a successful process when he was i think it was a half hour show in an hour zach returned to jerusalem or the right after seven years of half of life has gotten even considered a

major innovator creating an hour long program now vecchione was executive producer of the times that nobody had ever done it before and we were kind of a small tin lizzie operational most pampered to contemplate taking that kind of a leap not much of a safety net anywhere that we could see either it was very daunting and furthermore we were giving up in a very real sense of very successful half hour program enterprise that we've had going at that time some seven years the commercial networks had been given the ideas of thought as well when i came to abc almost fifteen years ago and it's that god awful laser publicity abc had guarantee that they were going to do and how was news and that it was going to start with three quarters of an hour and then be an hour their work affiliate products giving up a lucrative advertising minute commercial newshour has yet to materialize the year the moment i remember most about the making of a report was when was when he went to

an hour and knew i could feel with real agony and commercial television that the now jim and robin we're going to have that kind of luxury which old journalist hunger after the time on the daily basis to deal with issues in greater depth than we're able to and alas nick naylor reports every second add three new program that's often i just before we go we'd like to note that when we return on monday night it will be and our new format expanded from the president have power to a comprehensive one hour program of news and analysis it is called mcneil lehrer news hour we hope you'll join us three months later the newshour fifty places today's half of his appearance friday december nine years you had a heart unique honoring white house surgery james

drama in treatment were eventually chronicled in a public television special called my heart your heart and scare the hell out of me in a certain spirit and europe there's been this if there was ever never needed a name that there was never an indication they're ever just incredible proof of what mark our friendship was all about it was then you gotta understand what happened about the heart attack happened three months into the beginning of a one hour that was a repeat wrenching muth and we do know what that we were due on which darwin made a lot of mistakes and just three months until we were barely moving and not terribly well i must a sudden antarctica and so robin have to carry the whole thing but the important thing here was that he had this guy had all that where every day he called me i know i know you know it really kind of bizarre echo he was a guy

who would drive to the corner one block for a couple of packages of cigarettes ed pastrami sandwiches with mayonnaise for lunch every day he i didn't get a lot of your work for a lot of them enough to major french they're more characters are his father died of our agenda sure but it's a lot of him there must have been enormously listening in the dark and a half we'll resume shortly after this opportunity for you to show your support for public television the pay fb

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been running gm wants their experiment with an hour long news show to great fanfare at stars of commercial news broadcast would've loved an hour long program but was mcneil lehrer but we took a plunge which turned out to be no day at the beach there were rumblings at the end of year one of public television's would not renew the newshour an ear to the program followed its voice and its footing the newshour reached an average of three million viewers nationwide each evening a laminated you is a week of the nineties unfold for long term presence in lebanon by us forces in my view in an untenable military position is not consistent with our vital interest elsewhere in the world including the persian gulf the day began with smiles and a handshake on the steps of the geneva chateau these two men can sit down in and the disgust very serious issues issues into the fact that we have tremendous differences between as you would have expected them to none of the region it's bad to be

close yes it was an accident oh i had many many warnings that there was something wrong and the lights go out one reason to survive money diverted from the iranian arms sales may have been used to buy weapons and to pay for dropping them by ear to conquer forces inside nicaragua punk group bad note we know the buck stops here with me and the buck stopped with poindexter senator well obviously the bargains stop in the oval office about never gets there most are people still suffer the fall of the world can hear a low key to career which is basically seen we want to be able to leave and they couldn't really neat white peep to eight is now an

iraqi occupied nation we're dealing with a situation here that is not only an immediate emergency but it's a long range problem former nbc news president was priscilla had been an advocate of an expanded evening news broadcast he left the network to become executive producer of the newshour where we assemble what i think was a very talented group of people still do but yet we often work together and we hadn't put an hour together and despite all the experience that a lot of people might have to actively when you come to do a project like this sometimes you don't know how it's going to work until you get on the air and i think that's what happened to us was a senior correspondent nbc would join the newshour experiment it was clear to me that this was a this is a really serious news show and i hate to use that word because when you say serious it's its long in the mountain heavy in its meats are sober and the rest of it but it was a show that they

want to make this a serious statement about why we do this anywhere we're reporting the news to inform the american people and this as lofty and whatever as that sounds that really is the reason i got into this the first place you first assignment with the gemini anchor desk in washington while he recovered response has been a frequent writer ever assessed as well was pursuing her team is interest as for the democrats in congress we couldn't find any you are willing to go on camera to talk about their problems with sununu though several referred private late in his condescending attitude toward them like you would be paid a few years well and cbs and nbc political science there's no more fascinating spectacle of the city than a dramatic political power and yet each time there is a four we act as if it were the first are getting the powerful than falling from grace is the early days of the republic newshour rogers chief congressional correspondent while

also pursuing his love of literature really talking here with author eudora welty about her photographs of the depression era south i love the way through looking him three that era just doesn't know or intended but that i don't know what exactly was it because gdp so along the bat crack with a one hour format has given charlayne hunter gault expects many viewers remember report on the drug prices an american family as well as to report a growing number of clients apartments people was internationally acclaimed for the past three months about the army and the police have waged a brutal campaign sometimes they're tight it's alluded them other times the smallest children were the victims of the attack i love reporting i love writing and now i love taking the writing

including the picture with it because you don't have to give out one for the other is a it's a it's a sin if it's a combination of learning how to make the combination worked and when the combination works this nothing will hold more powerful regular television stations across the country this is part one of paul solomon in boston well they believe a spoonful of humor will only investors in the market these days the most important is the modern money manager we've had can here flown in from toys r us to represent them what about that show that we see on how hard

as it used to be are you resisting the backstage things that the rehearsal of proportion the newshour has given new life to offer strong opinions and offbeat points of view without compromising the object expense of the program the likening of saddam hussein to at all that there may be exaggerated in certain respects but it's on the money in terms of saddam's attractiveness to his people this is the man millions of arabs cheered their leader the pattern is very popular in a similar personality and similar activities and you know fabulous when i see the main event the whole concept of daily fantasy city services and they have that conversation if you're going to have

your authentic texas and if you don't have issues that google is actually you interviewed remains robin young tall martin says they'd been together and they've interviewed nearly ten thousand years and that is now call them with mia lehrer were i think it's over a welcome relief from aggressive journalism as expressed on and buy some broadcast journalist all along the aggressive journalism and show business and doesn't really having to do with the extract in the story they don't get ruined our that there probably would never talked to george bush the way again rather than i'm really do they say ah you know where you know that's all well and that would please get to the point something like that or what i would do i say he really didn't answer my question we'll bring people on to beat up on him we're not bringing them on their show are stupid they

are and that that is the opposite of what helps them get their positions out rather than endure you'd be tapped jim i'm gary hartley we had the race in nineteen eighty eight because of it i don't think i'd be greeted by absolute thumbs down by reviving and i said well you're greeted response has been great flesh that out what why hasn't been great this is a campaign that's going directly to the people as i explained yesterday on and people's responses i knew it would be was a very very warm very hospitable very very encouraging both in new hampshire and in maine and a senator but back generations in the right thing or forty i realized man did not come talk straight so i started reading editorials i want more editorial oh these are all as they get older you get is a major newspapers of america's thorniest us as thirty hours later i asked you whether you know what the reactions been in several newspaper editorials imagine is when you would not agree with you not that that is an element in a digital

reaction ok well as the sows the reaction of the people of new hampshire i'm really sure i agree and i asked about that and you said it was and was encouraging more like the new york times said what did people do yesterday when they heard that gary hart henry under the dome credit presidential race again and again they laugh and so i i felt my responsibility as a brit as it as the interviewer was to bring the real world to him because he's sure they'll wanna bring a larger us radar second largest airline we can you know you want to get a news point nor would like better but you know war crimes whereas i went to do an interview with senator goldwater when he retired from me or from the us senate because i'd covered in this presidential campaign years before we've been friendly and i did this hand states like politics

the couple questions i was dying to ask you twenty two years ago when i covered her presidential campaign and i was never really an opportunity to ask him one was how much how much did you really wanted writing manager yeah jobs most significant though the republican party away from new york and so then the states and over that was that we were able to do that thank you very much melissa i just knew about iran contra and i said it means they're going to start to speak and well and he said both then forced to put foreign policy decision i've ever heard of my life mr bridges say that overture the camera that the research are with the writer the gamut they're gone and you said i think there's a

dreadful mistake that we were the major mistakes united states has ever made in foreign policy and it really really key to any interviews at live interviewer oriented and interviewers is you must know what the answer you're gonna be pretty much at a time so you can listen to another you can relax about it you can concentrate on what your job is which is to listen and when the interview along i came into the beginning of her relationship with the kind of forum interviewing technique we're divided on your sense because that work a person in that was you asked the question to show off its much as you could get away with how much you knew about the subject before you actually put a question mark at the end with the hair don't need to ask questions that were mentioned were like i don't know i don't understand the interviewer is the least important person on the

screen at any given time it's the person you're interviewing we should be the focus and if you remember the questions rather than the answers and you have failed as an interviewer like many journalists robin and jim have been inspired by interviews with leaders who've been at the center of the enormous changes in the soviet union and the crumbling of communism in eastern europe you believe in multi party government or would you be much more comfortable with uncertainty is one part of this alliance she says it's all about the performer love the police the government is ineffective to do so you just found out former for the job was a monopolistic murders in effect is what's typical description yes that's what i say here is a monumental story that my family brings tears to your eyes and then just gives you feeling you know the feeling of hope and we have what and so prolific about the great jobs that we get a robin and i have the people on our program a main we've been able to

sit down across a table and talk to people about love hobble or an euro cells usually only see people individual people who hadn't done we should do everything to help the world to progress you know that everything to reunite europe but not the way that there are starving wanted it we should do better we are so immediately took on the bureaucracy is unorthodox style won him a wide following that the lawyer what is the studies we should build a new model of socialism which to be built or with orchestras that is bearing in mind the experience of the united states of america for the pool which has a more than twenty years' experience of democracy literature contractors about the new freedom under the reforms known as perestroika era the people's democracy

geese space for the vote and warm was gifted people most progressive people about democracy unfortunately india's space and possibility for the new development even some reaction forces but i do believe in this brutal or fall society and i think oh we sure do jim sheridan who feel your home this democracy which is the year which is the sort of beacon light of the democracies around the world has so many ways in which it it has feet of clay then turn that it is that the ironies are so heavy that they current law survive very long without some kind of political action i think it

is it is a mockery of itself america's ironies those internal social ills that seemed to threaten democracy are frequently the subjects of newshour documentaries he's trying to learn how to be a mother and take her addiction to crack cocaine at the same time and that puts tracy and her child in what drugs specialist believe is a new and growing class of disadvantaged youth with problems unlike anything society has seen before there are a lot of people being born as we're speaking who have had it on the second they take their first breaths only a fool would say to this little baby born in a particular hospital you could grow up build a big house and have a really nice car and be present in the united states everybody knows i'm a look at that baby at that baby because the system doesn't work

anymore the way it used to wear loose it doesn't work for the increasing number of people are leaders haven't figured it out yet that the country has a vested interest in helping these people that doesn't have a damn thing to do with wealth there goes another damn thing to do with cherry it has to do with his self interest of this country and keeping the fabric of that together i think there is a new norms dealers in the american people whether they're working for their benefit and from the system now or whether they're not allow some of that may be eroding it from people who aren't it has not been tapped by the leadership for a very long time people have not been asked to use kennedy's phrase to do for their country or for their fellow countrymen left more than for themselves that has been asked for a long time and that expresses itself in all kinds of ways of the political system and i think that the question we're asking the answer would be an overwhelming positive

answer i think the people of this country who are waiting to take charge and do better in the end of the cold war created this enormous opportunity there's an interview that i did with a woman named jacqueline jackson quant two years ago not quite two years ago a woman in denver colorado black woman from a neighborhood now tam neighborhood in denver more pure wisdom from that woman then the most are the experts etc that you hear about what's going on this country so we accept things as they are and six which means that we'll ever be as good as we dreamed we might be in town but the point is you don't stop dreaming i think a lot of americans just opting not to get children to bring in a president was very sure can dig it was arranged so what happened there and johnson had dreams that he was able to pass a lot of the country even though one hundred years

congress does what they like but the president can give the country a feeling of what we can be doing that we don't have to be separated any other country our children can be the best educated children well it doesn't take a lot of money it just takes commitment and just take the commitment to do the news what we have proposed and that raises directly to your committee you folks out there about to be asked to make a financial contribution to public television as you know this is fine raising a time when a local public station needs to review its own life like when we return will move beyond money on where the broadcasters robyn and jim the man their background that suggests radically different people one from the seacoast of canada the other from the plains of america and in truth they're very much alive the

pope or when we're heading in the homestretch now we've saved the very best for last a peek inside the site teetered