Jim Lehrer, the somber and thoughtful television news anchor who helped build “PBS NewsHour” into an influential voice of public broadcasting,died Thursday. “It is with great sadness that I share the news that co-founder and longtime anchor of the PBS NewsHour Jim Lehrer died today ... peacefully in his sleep at home,” Judy Woodruff, anchor and managing editor of the “PBS NewsHour,” said in a statement. AdvertisementThe program, first dubbed the"MacNeil-Lehrer Report,” became the nation’s first one-hour TV news broadcast in 1983. “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. Lehrer wrote that it was ironic that the Watergate hearings helped establish the importance of public TV, since President Nixon hated public broadcasting.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 23, 2020 18:37 UTC