Q & A with ROBERT MacNEIL : A PBS Icon Turns to the Writing Life

Robert MacNeil will retire Friday as executive editor and co-anchor of PBS’ “The MacNeil/Lehrer News-Hour.” The 64-year-old Canadian, who has written two novels (“Burden of Desire” and the newly published “The Voyage”), plans to write fiction full time while remaining a partner in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.

MacNeil, a former correspondent for NBC News, was paired with Texas journalist Jim Lehrer in 1973 to anchor PBS’ coverage of the Watergate hearings. They began a daily 30-minute newscast in 1975 and expanded to an hour in 1983.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer News-Hour” is viewed by 2.7 million viewers per night, double its audience five years ago. On Monday it will be re-christened “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” with Lehrer anchoring alone from Washington.

Known for his dispassionate demeanor on the air, MacNeil revealed surprisingly strong views on TV news and public television during a recent interview.

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Question: How do you feel about leaving the “News-Hour”?

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Answer: It’s bittersweet. It’s sweet because I’ve wanted to have more time to write novels. I’ve been thinking about leaving for about 2 1/2 years, and I finally decided a year ago that I’d been doing this long enough. That’s nothing negative at all about the program, which I have loved doing. I just don’t want to wake up every morning and fill my head with the news agenda and have that agenda be mine.

The bitter part is that I am leaving my other family, people with whom I’ve worked for 20 years, people whose careers have been shaped in our own little school of journalism. I will miss the daily, close contact with Jim, to whom I talk many times a day.

Q: The “NewsHour” made a point of giving very little coverage to the O.J. Simpson story. Why?

A: We don’t normally cover big murder stories, for one thing. . . . It is inconceivable to me that a generation ago, NBC News and CBS News would night after night have said to their audience, “This is the most important thing that happened in the world today,” by leading with Simpson and coming back to it later in the program. ABC devoted less time to the Simpson case than to Bosnia on their newscast this year, and they maintained their [No. 1] rating. What’s interesting to me is how frightened the mainstream media are of the tabloid shows, and the new networks.

Q: The “NewsHour” has been widely praised for its reasoned tone and balance. But let me ask you about a couple of criticisms of your show over the years. One is that you don’t challenge enough the powerful people in Washington.

A: We do have a lot of Washington people on. We are a program that believes in the institutions of the democracy. I believe that journalists are observers--detached and independent observers, but not disinterested observers. So many other institutions have fallen away that TV journalism is intimately a factor now in the democracy. Journalists are citizens who have a stake in the democracy.

I think we have made a major contribution to civil discourse on our program. We’re not subservient to politicians. But we’re not an audience, standing and laughing at the idiots screwing up. I think it’s bull that unless a TV interviewer is belligerent and behaving like Perry Mason with a reluctant witness, you’re not doing a tough interview. It’s theatrical posturing, and it’s become part of what people think the American culture is all about.

Q: The other criticism of your program from some liberal critics is that you have too many Establishment figures on, not enough diversity of voices.

A: Well, that’s untrue. It is true that we have a lot of officials and former officials on when we talk about federal policy. But we do a lot with the people who are affected by policies as well. Beyond the studio discussion, we have many other elements, from documentaries to essayists, that have many voices in them.

Let me ask you something: If we’re so cholestrolic with officialdom, why does our audience steadily grow? I believe it’s because we’re serving a need, and people feel they’re getting something [here] they’re not getting elsewhere.

Q: How will the program change after your departure?

A: Jim is going to have a system of sub-anchors. You’ll see more of Elizabeth Farnsworth [who will be the principal substitute anchor for Lehrer], Margaret Warner, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and the regional correspondents and essayists. Jim has just brought David Gergen back [as a contributor], to do dialogues with authors. Jim continually thinks up new things for the program to do, and this is an opportunity for that.

Q: But it won’t be a radical shift from what you’ve been doing?

A: No. We’re not like Detroit--we don’t bring out a new model every year.

Q: Public television has been under attack recently. Do you believe that public television has brought some of its troubles on itself?

A: Yes, some of them. Public television will die if it only makes programs that resemble programs on commercial television, cable or network.

The funding of public television encouraged the building of local stations, but it discouraged the building of a strong network. There is not enough investment in radically different programming, programming that would be unique to public TV and fill a clear need. This is what first distinguished public television in the 1960s and 1970s.

Q: Public TV has been under attack from some conservative critics in Congress who say it’s too liberal, and we don’t need it. What is your response to that?

A: I think it would be appallingly shortsighted, stupidly mean-spirited to do away with public television. I know that some people are offended by some programming--but some of the criticisms have been pure political posturing of the cheapest kind. I don’t believe the American people want the cultural life of the country to be hostage to the most narrow-minded people, who are mostly doing it for political effect.

Q: I understand that your production company is proposing an 11 p.m. newscast for PBS. What would that be like?

A: Many younger viewers today are watching the 11 p.m. local news. Our program would be a straight, national newscast, anchored by people in their young 40s who would speak in the idiom of their generation about the news in a civilized way. We’ve joined with the Wall Street Journal on this, and they’re out looking for the money to do it.

Q: Some people who know you only from television might be surprised by your novels, which have been described as passionate and romantic. Do you have a secret inner life?

A: [Laughs] Who knows--maybe I’m just a wanna-be. . . . No, I have a normal life, but obviously you don’t go on a television news program and talk about romance, the battle of the sexes and the pursuit of love and adventure. You keep your personal life out of it.