Birthdays

In reverse order, Lehrer (left)- McNeill

James Charles Lehrer (1934-   )

Journalist, news program host, presidential debate moderator, author

Veteran, United States Marine Corps

Emmy winner

Peabody Award recipient

Author, 20 novels, three memoirs, three screenplays, and three plays

Co-host/Host, The Robert McNeill Report (1975); The McNeill-Lehrer Report (1976-83); The McNeill-Lehrer News Hour (1983-95); The Newshour With Jim Lehrer (1995-2012)

Moderator of twelve United States presidential election debates

Both Robert McNeill and Jim Lehrer were covering President Kennedy’s Dallas visit in November 1963; Lehrer, for The Dallas Times-Herald; McNeill, for NBC. They didn’t meet for another ten years, after Lehrer had moved into public broadcasting at KERA in Dallas, then PBS/CPB, and then the National Public Affairs Television Center. They covered the 1973 Watergate hearings and the Nixon Tapes scandal in 1974; Lehrer also anchored PBS coverage of the House Judiciary Committee’s Nixon impeachment hearings. The next year he signed on as Washington correspondent for McNeill’s show, broadcast by WNET in New York, and a year later what those of a certain age will always call “McNeill Lehrer” was born. Jim Lehrer spent 36 years with the show, writing novels on the side. One, Viva Max! (1966), about a Mexican general who decides to retake The Alamo, was made in to a 1969 comedy starring Peter Ustinov, John Astin and Jonathan Winters. Lehrer wrote the screenplay for the film, whose subject matter so upset The Daughters of the Republic of Texas that filming at the monument had to be halted, and split between a replica built in Brackettville,Texas and interiors in a studio in Rome.

Related sites:

PBS Newshour

Alexander Cockburn, “The Tedium Twins: Tonight- Are There Two Sides to Every Question? Back to you, Jim,” Harper’s, August 1982