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Jim Lehrer, host of the nightly PBS show NewsHour, died Thursday at his home.
Jim Lehrer, host of the nightly PBS show NewsHour, died on Thursday at home. Photograph: Associated Press
Jim Lehrer, host of the nightly PBS show NewsHour, died on Thursday at home. Photograph: Associated Press

Jim Lehrer: renowned TV journalist and PBS NewsHour host dies at age 85

This article is more than 4 years old

He was also a frequent moderator of presidential debates and likened the job to ‘walking down the blade of a knife’

Jim Lehrer, co-host and later host of the nightly PBS NewsHour that for decades offered a thoughtful take on current events, has died, PBS said on Thursday. He was 85.

Lehrer died “peacefully in his sleep”, according to PBS. He had suffered a heart attack in 1983 and more recently, had undergone heart valve surgery in April 2008.

For Lehrer, and for his friend and longtime partner Robert MacNeil, broadcast journalism was a service, with public understanding of events and issues its primary goal. Lehrer was also a frequent moderator of presidential debates.Tributes poured in from colleagues and watchers alike, including from Fox News’ Bret Baier, who called Lehrer “an inspiration to a whole generation of political journalists – including this one”. “Few approached their work with more equanimity and integrity than Jim Lehrer,” Dan Rather said. And Jake Tapper of CNN called Lehrer “a wonderful man and a superb journalist”. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called him a “champion for truth and transparency”.

The half-hour Robert MacNeil Report began on PBS in 1975 with Lehrer as a Washington correspondent. The two had already made names for themselves at the then fledgling network through their work with the National Public Affairs Center for Television and its coverage of the Watergate hearings in 1973.

The nightly news broadcast, later retitled the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, became the nation’s first one-hour TV news broadcast in 1983 and was then known as the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. After MacNeil bowed out in 1995, it became The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Politics, international relations, economics, science, even developments in the arts were all given lengthy, detailed coverage in their show.

Lehrer moderated his first presidential debate in 1988 and was a frequent consensus choice for the task in subsequent presidential contests. He likened the job to “walking down the blade of a knife”.

“Anybody who would say it’s just another TV show is a liar or a fool,” he once said. “I know how important it is, but it’s not about me. It’s what the candidates say that matters.”

He also anchored PBS coverage of inaugurations and conventions, dismissing criticism from other TV news organizations that the latter had become too scripted to yield much in the way of real news.

“I think when the major political parties of this country gather together their people and resources in one place to nominate their candidates, that’s important,“ he told the Associated Press in 2000.

Naturally, Lehrer came in for some knocks for being so low-key in the big televised events. After a matchup between George W Bush and Al Gore in 2000, David Letterman cracked, “Last night was probably the first and only that time Jim Lehrer [was] the most exciting person in the room.”

But the real-life Lehrer – who had a tradition of buying a new tie for good luck before each debate – was more colorful than he might have seemed on PBS.

On the side, he was also a novelist and sometime playwright. His debut novel Viva Max! was made into a movie starring Peter Ustinov. He did a whole series of novels about the adventures of an Oklahoma politician known as The One-Eyed Mack.

“Hemingway said this, too: if you paid attention as a reporter, then when the time came to write fiction you’d have something to write about,” Lehrer told the Associated Press in 1991.

“And it turned out I did. And I’ve got all these stories stored up after 30 years in the news business. And they’re just flowing out of me.“

As Lehrer turned 75 in spring 2009, PBS announced that the show would be retitled as PBS NewsHour later in the year, with Lehrer pairing up on anchor duties with other show regulars.

Lehrer was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1934, the son of parents who ran a bus line. In addition to titling his memoir A Bus of My Own, he collected bus memorabilia from station signs to a real 1946 Flxible Clipper bus.

After graduation from college in 1956, he served three years in the US marines, later calling the experience so valuable that he thought all young people should take part in national service.

He went to work from 1959 to 1970 at the Dallas Morning News and the now-defunct Dallas Times-Herald. Lehrer jumped to television for a Dallas nightly newscast.

Lehrer wrote that it was ironic that the Watergate hearings helped establish the importance of public TV, since President Richard Nixon hated public broadcasting. He also recalled that the lengthy hearings gave him the chance to practice his new craft, and MacNeil, already a veteran, gave him valuable pointers on how to speak on camera clearly and conversationally.

He is survived by his wife, Kate; three daughters: Jamie, Lucy, and Amanda; and six grandchildren.

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