''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening
television news program broadcast on over 350
PBS member stations. It airs seven nights a week, and is known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events.
Anchored by
Judy Woodruff, the program's weekday broadcasts run for one hour and are produced by
WETA-TV in
Washington, D.C. From August 5, 2013, to November 11, 2016, Woodruff and then-co-anchor
Gwen Ifill were the first and only all-female anchor team on a national nightly news program on American broadcast television. On Saturdays and Sundays, PBS distributes a 30-minute edition of the program, ''PBS News Weekend'', anchored by
Geoff Bennett
Geoff Bennett (11 September 1926 – 2 September 2002) was an Australian field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must ...
; originally produced in
New York City by
WNET, production of the weekend broadcasts transferred to WETA in April 2022.
The ''PBS NewsHour'' originates from WETA's studio facilities in
Arlington County, Virginia; news updates inserted into the weekday broadcasts targeted for the
Western United States, online, and late-night viewers originate from the
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
. Additional production facilities for the program are based in
San Francisco and
Denver. The program is a collaboration between WETA-TV, WNET, and fellow PBS member stations
KQED KQED may refer to:
* KQED (TV), a PBS member station in San Francisco
* KQED-FM
KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both ...
in
San Francisco,
KETC in
St. Louis and
WTTW
WTTW (channel 11) is a PBS member television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by not-for-profit broadcaster Window to the World Communications, Inc., it is sister to commercial classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM). The ...
in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
.
History
Ownership
In September 1981, production of the program was taken over by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a partnership between
Robert MacNeil,
Jim Lehrer, and
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.[John C. Malone
John Carl Malone (born March 7, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman, landowner and philanthropist. He was chief executive officer (CEO) of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), a cable and media giant, for twenty-four years from 1973 to 1996. ...]
's
Liberty Media
Liberty Media Corporation (commonly referred to as Liberty Media or just Liberty) is an American mass media company controlled by chairman John C. Malone. The company has three divisions, reflecting the company's ownership stakes in Formula One ...
bought a 67% controlling equity stake in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions in 1994,
but MacNeil and Lehrer retained editorial control.
In 2014, ''MacNeil/Lehrer Productions'', owned by MacNeil, Lehrer, and
Liberty Media
Liberty Media Corporation (commonly referred to as Liberty Media or just Liberty) is an American mass media company controlled by chairman John C. Malone. The company has three divisions, reflecting the company's ownership stakes in Formula One ...
announced its donation, as ''NewsHour Productions LLC'', to
WETA-TV as a nonprofit subsidiary.
''The Robert MacNeil Report'' and ''The MacNeil/Lehrer Report'' (1975–1983)
In 1973,
Robert MacNeil (a former
NBC News correspondent and then-moderator of PBS's ''
Washington Week in Review'') and
Jim Lehrer teamed up to cover the
United States Senate's
Watergate hearings for PBS. They earned an
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for their unprecedented gavel-to-gavel coverage.
This recognition led to the creation of ''The Robert MacNeil Report'', a half-hour local news program on WNET, which debuted on October 20, 1975; each episode of the program covered a single issue in depth. On December 1, 1975, the program began to air on PBS stations nationwide. It was renamed ''The MacNeil/Lehrer Report'' on September 6, 1976. Most editions employed a two-anchor, two-city format, with MacNeil based in New York City and Lehrer at WETA's studios in Arlington, Virginia.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault joined the series as correspondent in 1978, serving as substitute host for MacNeil and Lehrer whenever either had the night off. She became the series’ national correspondent in 1983.
''The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour'' and ''The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer'' (1983–2009)
Having decided to start competing with the nightly news programs on
ABC,
CBS and
NBC instead of complementing them, the program expanded to one hour on September 5, 1983,
incorporating other changes, such as the introduction of "documentary reportage from the field"; it became known at that time as ''The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour''.
Lester Crystal
Lester Martin Crystal (September 13, 1934 – June 24, 2020) was an Emmy Award-winning American television news executive best known for being the founding executive producer of the nation’s first hour-long nightly newscast, ''The MacNeil/Lehrer ...
was its founding executive producer. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions twice planned to launch late-night newscasts in 1995 and 1999; in both instances, the proposed expansions—which, respectively, were to have involved production and newsgathering partnerships with
Wall Street Journal Television and ''
The New York Times''—were canceled mid-development.
MacNeil retired from the program on October 20, 1995, leaving Lehrer as the sole anchor. (Hunter-Gault left in June 1997.
) Accordingly, the program was renamed ''The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer'' on October 23.
On January 16, 1996, ''The NewsHour'' announced the creation of its official website at PBS Online. ''The NewsHour'' won a
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
in 2003 for the feature report ''Jobless Recovery: Non-Working Numbers''. On May 17, 1999, ''The NewsHour'' adopted a new graphics package, but refreshed the music from 1983. On October 4, 1999, Gwen Ifill joined ''The NewsHour'' team as a new correspondent. She was a female anchor of a national nightly news program on broadcast television. Effective January 17, 2000, ''The NewsHour'' added "America Online Keyword: PBS" to its ending screen for a three-year agreement through April 22, 2003. For only the website, the program took effect on April 23, 2003. On March 3, 2003, the program added dates from the 1999 graphics in the beginning. On November 17, 2003, ''The NewsHour'' added music in the beginning with dates.
On May 17, 2006, the program underwent its first major change in presentation in years, adopting a new graphics package and a reorchestrated version of its theme music (originally composed by
Bernard Hoffer). On December 17, 2007, the ''NewsHour'' became the second nightly broadcast network newscast to begin broadcasting in
high definition
High definition or HD may refer to:
Visual technologies
*HD DVD, discontinued optical disc format
*HD Photo, former name for the JPEG XR image file format
*HDV, format for recording high-definition video onto magnetic tape
* HiDef, 24 frames-pe ...
(after ''
NBC Nightly News'' on March 26, 2007), with broadcasts in a
letterboxed format for viewers with
standard-definition television
Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...
sets watching via either
cable or
satellite television. The program also introduced a new set and converted its graphics package to HD.
''PBS NewsHour''
Departure of Jim Lehrer and switch to co-anchors (2009–2013)
On May 11, 2009, PBS announced that the program would be revamped on December 7 of that year under a revised title, the ''PBS NewsHour''.
In addition to increased integration between the ''NewsHour'' website and nightly broadcast, the updated production returned to a two-anchor format.
Lehrer described the overhaul as the first phase in his move toward retirement.
On September 27, 2010, ''PBS NewsHour'' was presented with the Chairman's Award at the
31st News & Documentary Emmy Awards
The 31st News & Documentary Emmy Awards were held on September 27, 2010, at Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Awards were presented in 41 categories, including Breaking News, Investigat ...
, with MacNeil, Lehrer, Crystal, and former executive producer Linda Winslow receiving the award on the show's behalf.
Lehrer formally ended his tenure as a regular anchor of the program on June 6, 2011. He continued to occasionally anchor on Fridays, when he usually led the political analysis segment with
Mark Shields and
David Brooks, until December 30, 2011.
Transfer of production, expansion to weekends and the west (2013–present)
On August 6, 2013,
Gwen Ifill and
Judy Woodruff were named co-anchors and co-managing editors of the ''NewsHour''. They shared anchor duties on the Monday through Thursday editions, with Woodruff anchoring solo on Fridays due to Ifill's duties as host of the political discussion program ''
Washington Week,'' which was also produced Friday evenings.
For much of its history, the ''PBS NewsHour'' aired only Monday through Friday, but in March 2013, plans to expand the program to include Saturday and Sunday editions were under development.
Weekend editions of the ''NewsHour'' premiered on September 7, 2013, with
Hari Sreenivasan serving as anchor. Although they aired for a half-hour, the weekend broadcasts were branded ''PBS NewsHour Weekend'' for the duration of WNET’s involvement with the program. From the weekend broadcasts' debut until the March 27, 2022 edition, the Saturday and Sunday editions originated from the Tisch/WNET Studios at
Lincoln Center in
Manhattan, as opposed to the program's main production facilities at the Arlington, Virginia, studios of WETA-TV.
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions announced in a letter to the show's staffers on October 8, 2013, that it had offered to transfer ownership in the ''PBS NewsHour'' to WETA. In the letter, Lehrer and MacNeil cited their reduced involvement with the program's production since their departures from anchoring, as well as "the probability of increasing our fundraising abilities."
WETA's board of trustees approved the transfer on June 17, 2014, and it took effect on July 1. At that time, NewsHour Productions, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of WETA, took over production of the program. WETA also acquired MacNeil/Lehrer Productions' archives, documentaries, and projects, though not the company's name. ''PBS NewsHour Weekend'' was not affected by the ownership transfer and continued to be produced by WNET.
[
On July 20, 2015, the ''PBS NewsHour'' introduced an overhauled visual appearance for its weekday broadcasts, debuting a new minimalist set designed by Eric Siegel and George Allison that heavily incorporates PBS's longtime "Everyman" logo. The program also introduced a new graphics package by Troika Design Group and original theme music by Edd Kalehoff, which incorporates a reorchestration of the nine-note "Question and Answer" musical signature that has been featured in the program's theme since its premiere in 1975 and a musical signature originally incorporated into the Kalehoff-composed theme for the '' Nightly Business Report'' used from 2002 to 2010. ''PBS NewsHour Weekend'' retained its original graphics package and the theme music by David Cebert until August 29, 2015, when it transitioned to the same theme music and a reworked version of the graphics package used for the weekday broadcasts.
Ifill took brief breaks from her ''NewsHour'' anchor duties in the late spring and in November 2016 (and was also absent from the program's presidential election coverage on November 8), as she had been undergoing treatment for advanced stage breast and ]endometrial cancer
Endometrial cancer is a cancer that arises from the endometrium (the lining of the uterus or womb). It is the result of the abnormal growth of cells that have the ability to invade or spread to other parts of the body. The first sign is most o ...
. After her death was announced on November 14, 2016, that evening's edition of the ''PBS NewsHour'' was dedicated to Ifill and her influence on journalism, featuring tributes from Woodruff, Sreenivasan, former colleagues and program contributors (news content was relegated to the standard news summary, which aired during the second half-hour). Although the program initially featured guest anchors on some editions between January and March 2017, Woodruff effectively now serves as sole anchor.
In 2018, ''The Plastic Problem'' aired, which then went on to win a Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
, presented at the 2019 awards ceremony.
On October 14, 2019, ''PBS NewsHour'' launched "''PBS NewsHour'' West", a Western United States bureau at Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix. Anchored by Stephanie Sy, the bureau produces its own news summary with up-to-date information on events that develop after the original broadcast. A version of the program with this summary is shown to viewers in the Western United States and to online and East Coast viewers watching re-broadcasts.
On April 2, 2022, WETA assumed production responsibilities for the ''NewsHour''s Saturday and Sunday editions, which concurrently began originating from the studio at the station’s Washington facility used for the weekday broadcasts. The broadcasts were retitled ''PBS News Weekend'', omitting ''"NewsHour''" in view of their shorter duration. NewsHour Productions transferred production of the weekend broadcasts from WNET in a move to streamline the program's production and news-gathering resources, allowing the weekday and weekend ''NewsHour'' broadcasts to have the same pool of correspondents and to share resources with ''Washington Week'' (which is also produced by WETA-TV). Coinciding with the move, the weekend editions began carrying feature segments covering culture and the arts. Sreenivasan (who remains a New York-based correspondent for the weekday broadcasts and serves as a contributor for the PBS news discussion program '' Amanpour & Company'') was replaced as weekend anchor by NBC News and MSNBC correspondent Geoff Bennett.
On May 13, 2022, Woodruff announced to ''NewsHour'' staffers that she would step down as anchor at the end of the year, though she intends to continue reporting longer pieces for the program while doing projects and specials for WETA through the 2024 United States presidential election
The 2024 United States presidential election will be the 60th quadrennial presidential election, scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, 2024. It will be the first presidential election after electoral votes were redistributed during the 2020 ce ...
at the earliest. Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett
Geoff Bennett (11 September 1926 – 2 September 2002) was an Australian field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must ...
will reportedly be Woodruff's successors.
Production and ratings
The program is notable for being shown on public television. There are no interruptions for advertisements (though like most public television programs, there are "corporate image" advertisements at the beginning and end of each broadcast, as well as barker interruptions asking viewers to donate to their local PBS member station or member network during locally produced pledge drives, which are replaced by encore presentations of a select story segment from the past year for stations that not holding a drive during that time).
The program has a more deliberate pace than the news broadcasts of the commercial networks it competes against, allowing for deeper detail in its story packages and feature segments. At the start of the program, the lead story is covered in depth, followed by a news summary that lasts roughly between six and eight minutes, briefly explaining many of the top national and international news headlines; international stories often include excerpts of reports filed by ITN
Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based television production company. It is made up of two divisions: Broadcast News and ITN Productions. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, N ...
correspondents. This is usually followed by three or four longer news segments, typically running six to twelve minutes, which explore a few of the events mentioned in the headline segment in depth and include discussions with experts, newsmakers, and/or commentators. The program formerly included a reflective essay on a regular basis, but these have been curtailed in recent years; since Woodruff and Ifill became anchors, these essays have mainly aired as part of the end-of-show segment "Brief, but Spectacular".
On Fridays, the program features political analysis and discussion between two regular contributors, one from each of the Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
and Democratic
Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to:
Politics
*A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people.
*A member of a Democratic Party:
**Democratic Party (United States) (D)
**Democratic ...
parties, and one host from among the senior correspondents. Since January 2021, the usual participants have been '' Washington Post'' columnist Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan T. Capehart (born July 2, 1967) is an American journalist and television commentator. He writes for ''The Washington Posts ''PostPartisan'' blog and is host of '' The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart'' on MSNBC.
Background ...
and '' The New York Times'' columnist David Brooks. Analysts who fill in when Capehart or Brooks are absent have included David Gergen, Thomas Oliphant, Rich Lowry, William Kristol, Ramesh Ponnuru
Ramesh Ponnuru (; born August 16, 1974) is an American conservative thinker, political pundit, and journalist. He has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2012. He is the editor of ''National Review'' magazine, a colu ...
, Ruth Marcus, Michael Gerson, David Corn and E. J. Dionne. On Mondays, a similar segment, "Politics Monday", features analysis and discussion of political issues with contributors Amy Walter, national editor of '' The Cook Political Report'', and Tamara Keith
Tamara Dawnell Keith (born September 25, 1979) is NPR White House correspondent and co-host, with Scott Detrow, of the ''NPR Politics Podcast'', joining as a business reporter in 2009. She covered the earthquake in Haiti and hosted ''B-side Radi ...
, Washington, D.C. correspondent for NPR.
The program's senior correspondents are Woodruff and Jeffrey Brown (Arts, Culture & Society). Essayists have included Anne Taylor Fleming, Richard Rodriguez, Clarence Page and Roger Rosenblatt. Correspondents have been Tom Bearden, Betty Ann Bowser, Susan Dentzer
Susan Dentzer an American health care and health policy analyst, commentator, and journalist. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer oAmerica’s Physician Groups the organization of more than 335 physician practices that provide patient ...
, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Kwame Holman, Spencer Michels, Fred de Sam Lazaro, the economics correspondent Paul Solman
Paul Solman (born September 9, 1944) is a journalist who has specialized in economics, business, and politics since the early 1970s. He has been the business and economics correspondent for the ''PBS NewsHour'' since 1985, with occasional for ...
(''Making Sen$e''), Malcolm Brabant and others.
Lehrer and Ifill were frequent moderators of U.S. political debates. By November 2008, Lehrer had moderated more than ten debates between major U.S. presidential candidates. In 2008, Ifill moderated a debate between U.S. vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...
; in 2004, she moderated a debate between candidates Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
and John Edwards.
Honor Roll segment
On March 31, 2003, after the U.S.–led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the ''PBS NewsHour'' began what it called its "Honor Roll", a short segment displaying in silence the picture, name, rank, and hometown of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. On January 4, 2006, military personnel killed in Afghanistan were added to the segment. According to Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...
at the program's website, 2.7 million people watch the program each night, and 8 million watch in the course of a week. ''PBS NewsHour'' aired the final honor roll segment on August 30, 2021, after the end of War in Afghanistan.
Availability
The ''PBS NewsHour'' is broadcast on more than 350 PBS member stations and member networks, making it available to 99% of the viewing public, and audio from the program is broadcast by some NPR radio stations. It is also rebroadcast twice daily in late night via American Public Television
American Public Television (APT) is an American nonprofit organization and syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States. It distributes public television programs nationwide for PBS member stations and indep ...
's World digital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...
service. Broadcasts of the ''PBS NewsHour'' are also made available worldwide via satellites operated by various agencies such as the Voice of America.
A limited number of PBS member stations and regional member networks do not clear the ''PBS NewsHour'' on their schedules due to existing carriage on a "primary" PBS member station, a pool mainly confined to "secondary" stations (most of which participate in the service's Program Differentiation Plan) that share certain media markets with a "primary" member outlet. These include the NJ PBS network in New Jersey (as WNET, which co-manages NJ PBS and WLIW, carries the program in the New York City area, the latter airing the program live, while WHYY-TV does so in the Philadelphia market); KVCR-DT in San Bernardino, California; KCET
KCET (channel 28) is a secondary PBS member television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the Public Media Group of Southern California alongside the market's primary PBS member, Huntington Beach–licensed KOCE-TV ...
in Los Angeles ( KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach, which shares ownership with KCET through parent Public Media Group of Southern California and is the primary PBS member in the region, serves as the program's carrier in the Los Angeles market); and WYIN in Gary, Indiana (WTTW
WTTW (channel 11) is a PBS member television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by not-for-profit broadcaster Window to the World Communications, Inc., it is sister to commercial classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM). The ...
, the primary PBS station for the Chicago DMA that includes WYIN's Northwest Indiana service area, serves as the program's carrier in the Chicago market). In Boston, WGBH-TV airs the program live each weeknight (with a simulcast online), while its secondary station WGBX rebroadcasts the weekday editions later the same evening, and the weekend editions live; a similar case exists in New York City but in reverse, where WLIW airs the weekday and weekend editions of the ''PBS NewsHour'' live while WNET airs them on a tape delay (delayed by one hour on weekday editions and by a half-hour on weekends). KQED KQED may refer to:
* KQED (TV), a PBS member station in San Francisco
* KQED-FM
KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both ...
in San Francisco airs the program each weeknight in simulcast with its radio sister at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time (6:00 p.m. Eastern Time), in addition to airing the Western Edition on television at 6:00 p.m. PT. Unusually for many years, the secondary station of Milwaukee PBS, WMVT, carried the program as part of an early-evening news block with the '' Nightly Business Report'' (which was the lead-in to ''NewsHour'' on many member stations until that program ceased production in December 2019), and half-hour international newscasts from Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service cons ...
and BBC World News, due to an expanded schedule of PBS Kids
PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Some public television children's programs are not produced by PBS member stations or transmitted by PBS. Instead, ...
and local-interest programming on WMVS; this has since been rectified with the launch of the all-hours PBS Kids subchannel network.
Archives of shows broadcast after February 7, 2000, are available in several streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
formats (including full-motion video) at the program's website. The show is available to overseas military personnel on the American Forces Network
The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the U.S. military provides to those stationed or assigned overseas. Headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, AFN's broadcast operations, which i ...
. Audio from select segments is also released in podcast form, available through several feeds on the PBS NewsHour's subscriptions page with link to a FeedBurner website (for free mp3 download) and through podcast services such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and among others.
Livestreaming
The ''PBS NewsHour'' is streamed live on the program's YouTube channel at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time each weeknight, with the Western edition also streaming live at 9:00 p.m. ET (6:00 p.m. Pacific Time). ''PBS News Weekend'' is also streamed on the YouTube channel live Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00 p.m. ET. Full episodes are available later on the ''PBS NewsHour'' YouTube channel and on the program's dedicated page on PBS's website.
The ''NewsHour'' was also livestreamed on Ustream until IBM Watson Media discontinued free livesteraming on the platform on September 17, 2018. The ''NewsHour'' has also provided livestreaming of special events, most notably streaming the January 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump on the program's Twitter account.
International broadcasts
* In the United Kingdom it is seen daily at 6am on ABN TV on the Sky platform.
* In Australia the program is seen Tuesdays through Saturdays at 1:00 p.m. AEST on SBS.
* In New Zealand the ''NewsHour'' is seen Tuesdays through Saturdays at 10 p.m. on Face TV
The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may af ...
(Auckland).
* In Japan the program is seen every weekday on NHK BS1
, also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestr ...
.
* Around the world for members of the United States Armed Forces on the American Forces Network
The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the U.S. military provides to those stationed or assigned overseas. Headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, AFN's broadcast operations, which i ...
.
* The program is seen internationally through the Voice of America.
''PBS NewsHour'' editorial guidelines
On December 4, 2009, when introducing the new ''PBS NewsHour'' format, Lehrer read a list of guidelines for what he called "MacNeil/Lehrer journalism":
* "Do nothing I cannot defend."
* "Cover, write, and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me."
* "Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story."
* "Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am."
* "Assume the same about all people on whom I report."
* "Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise."
* "Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything."
* "Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions."
* "No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously."
* "And finally, I am not in the entertainment business."
On-air staff
Current
* Judy Woodruff – weekday anchor (joined September 5, 1983 – June 24, 1993; joined CNN Group and returned to PBS on April 12, 2006; planning to step down as main anchor on December 30, 2022)
* Jeffrey Brown – chief correspondent for arts, culture, and society, substitute weekday anchor (joined December 23, 1998)
* John Yang – special correspondent, substitute weekday and weekend anchor (joined March 1, 2016)
* Miles O'Brien – science and aviation correspondent, substitute anchor (joined February 9, 2010)
* Lisa Desjardins – political correspondent (joined October 29, 2014)
*William Brangham
William Brangham (born 1968) is an American journalist who is currently a correspondent, producer, and substitute anchor for the ''PBS NewsHour''. Before, he worked as a producer for several other television programs, mostly for PBS. He has won t ...
– regular interviewer and occasional substitute anchor for the weekday and weekend program (joined August 10, 2012)
* Amna Nawaz – Chief Correspondent and White House correspondent on Fridays (joined April 6, 2018; replacing Judy Woodruff on January 2, 2023)
*Laura Barrón-López – White House correspondent (joined on June 16, 2022)
* Michael Hill – substitute anchor for weekends (joined in September 2020)
*Nick Schifrin
Nick Schifrin (born July 10, 1980) is an American journalist. He is the ''PBS NewsHour'' foreign affairs and defense correspondent. He was previously Al Jazeera America’s Middle East correspondent and a correspondent for ABC News in London and ...
– foreign affairs and defense correspondent and substitute anchor (joined February 10, 2016)
*Paul Solman
Paul Solman (born September 9, 1944) is a journalist who has specialized in economics, business, and politics since the early 1970s. He has been the business and economics correspondent for the ''PBS NewsHour'' since 1985, with occasional for ...
– business, economics and occasional art correspondent, creator of ''Making Sen$e'' (joined September 1, 1978)
* Malcolm Brabant – special correspondent, especially reporting from Europe, based in Denmark (joined June 15, 2015)
*Geoff Bennett
Geoff Bennett (11 September 1926 – 2 September 2002) was an Australian field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must ...
– chief Washington DC correspondent and weekend anchor (joined January 3, 2022 and weekend editions on April 2, 2022; replacing Judy Woodruff on January 2, 2023)
*Alison Stewart
Alison Stewart (born July 4, 1966) is an American journalist and author. Stewart first gained widespread visibility as a political correspondent for MTV News in the 1990s.
Early life and education
Stewart was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.
...
– substitute weekend anchor (joined September 27, 2013)
* Megan Thompson – substitute weekend anchor (joined January 11, 2013)
* Mike Taibbi – special correspondent for the Weekend program (joined April 11, 2015)
*P.J. Tobia
* Pajamas, or PJs
Arts and entertainment
* ''P.J.'' (film), a 1968 film starring George Peppard
* P.J. (Disney), Pete Junior, a Disney cartoon character
* P.J. (comics), a character in ''The Family Circus'' comic strip
* PJ (singer), Paris Alex ...
– foreign affairs editor (joined June 19, 2013)
*Fred de Sam Lazaro
Fred may refer to:
People
* Fred (name), including a list of people and characters with the name
Mononym
* Fred (cartoonist) (1931–2013), pen name of Fred Othon Aristidès, French
* Fred (footballer, born 1949) (1949–2022), Frederico Rodr ...
– correspondent and contributor to the ''Agents For Change'' series (joined December 10, 1985)
* Stephanie Sy – correspondent and PBS NewsHour West anchor (joined October 14, 2019)
*Daniel Bush
Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength ...
– senior digital political reporter on air during election night coverage (joined November 2015)
* Hari Sreenivasan – former substitute, news brief and weekend anchor (December 7, 2009 – March 27, 2022; left ''NewsHour'' after weekend editions moved back to Washington, D.C., and moved to Amanpour & Co.) He still reports for the ''NewsHour'' as Special Correspondent.
Political analysts
* David Brooks of '' The New York Times'' (Fridays; joined September 21, 2001)
* Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan T. Capehart (born July 2, 1967) is an American journalist and television commentator. He writes for ''The Washington Posts ''PostPartisan'' blog and is host of '' The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart'' on MSNBC.
Background ...
of '' The Washington Post'' (Fridays; joined January 8, 2021)
* Tamara Keith
Tamara Dawnell Keith (born September 25, 1979) is NPR White House correspondent and co-host, with Scott Detrow, of the ''NPR Politics Podcast'', joining as a business reporter in 2009. She covered the earthquake in Haiti and hosted ''B-side Radi ...
of '' NPR'' (Mondays; joined November 1, 2012)
* Amy Walter of '' The Cook Political Report'' (Mondays and election night; joined July 29, 2004)
* Jeff Greenfield (weekends)
* E. J. Dionne of '' The Washington Post'' (substitute)
* Susan Page of '' USA Today'' (substitute; joined July 16, 2018)
* Stuart Rothenberg of ''Inside Elections'' (substitute; joined October 30, 1992)
Former
* Robert MacNeil – weekday anchor (October 20, 1975 – October 20, 1995; retired)
* Jim Lehrer – weekday anchor and executive editor (March 15, 1976 – June 6, 2011; retired except on Fridays until his last day December 30, 2011, and his last day as an executive editor on September 26, 2014; died on January 23, 2020)
* Charlayne Hunter-Gault – weekday anchor (December 8, 1977 – June 13, 1997; retired)
* Kwame Holman – correspondent (1983 – 2014; retired)
* Margaret Warner – weekday anchor (June 24, 1993 – September 7, 2017; now a White House correspondent after leaving ''NewsHour'')
* Gwen Ifill – Monday-Thursday anchor (also a Senior Correspondent) (October 4, 1999 – November 14, 2016; died from endometrial cancer
Endometrial cancer is a cancer that arises from the endometrium (the lining of the uterus or womb). It is the result of the abnormal growth of cells that have the ability to invade or spread to other parts of the body. The first sign is most o ...
)
* Ray Suarez – weekday anchor (October 4, 1999 – October 25, 2013; moved to Al Jazeera America, and left ''NewsHour'' after the launch of 2013's ''NewsHour'' with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff)
* Terence Smith – weekday anchor (August 17, 1998 – November 23, 2005; retired)
* Yamiche Alcindor – White House correspondent (December 31, 2015 – January 7, 2022; moved to NBC News)
Political analysts
* David Gergen (Fridays; March 30, 1981 – March 18, 1994)
* Michael Gerson of '' The Washington Post'' (substitute)
* Paul Gigot (Fridays; March 25, 1994 – September 14, 2001)
* Mark Shields as a syndicated columnist (Fridays; November 11, 1988 – December 18, 2020; died on June 18, 2022, from kidney failure)
Criticism and reception
In 1992, radio broadcaster David Barsamian
David Barsamian (born 1945) is an Armenian-American radio broadcaster, writer, and the founder and director of ''Alternative Radio'', a Boulder, Colorado-based syndicated weekly public affairs program heard on some 250 radio stations worldwid ...
called the ''NewsHour'' "stenographers to power", accusing them and other news media of having a pro-establishment bias.
Critical response
''PBS NewsHour'' has received generally positive reviews from television critics and parents of young children. Patrick Kevin Day of the '' Los Angeles Times'' wrote, "Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff are making history on PBS." David Leonard and Micah Schwalb of '' The Denver Post'' wrote, "One of the most trusted news programs on television." Phil Owen of '' TheWrap'' wrote, "The least partisan analysis." Tim Surette of '' TV Guide'' wrote, "The calm and credible information we need."
In 2003, UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and Missouri economist Jeff Milyo evaluated various media programs based on " think tank" citations to map liberal versus conservative media slants and published a study alleging liberal media bias in general. Based on their research, ''PBS NewsHour'' is the most centrist news program on television and the closest to a truly objective stance. However, their methodology has been questioned.
FAIR study
In October 2006 the media criticism
Media studies is a discipline (academia), discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media (communication), media; in particular, the mass media. Media Studies may draw on traditions from both the s ...
group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) accused the ''PBS NewsHour'' of lacking balance, diversity, and viewpoints of the general public, and for presenting corporate viewpoints. FAIR found that the ''PBS NewsHour''s guest list from October 2005 to March 2006 had Republicans outnumbering Democrats 2–1, and minorities accounting for 15 percent of U.S.-based sources. FAIR also protested in 1995 when Liberty Media purchased a majority of the program, citing Liberty's majority owner, John Malone, for his "Machiavellian business tactics" and right-wing sentiments.
''NewsHour'' executive producer
Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights o ...
Linda Winslow responded to many aspects:
She also accused FAIR of counting sound bites as interviews, thereby skewing their numbers toward the political party holding a majority (at the time of FAIR's report, Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
).
Partnership with NPR
The ''PBS NewsHour'' partnered with NPR for the broadcast of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 2016, in a strategy to prepare for the election between Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of ...
and Hillary Clinton.
References
External links
*
*
*
"''PBS NewsHour''" Special Collection.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Retrieved July 23, 2020.
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ITN
NewsHour
''Newshour'' is BBC World Service's flagship international news and current affairs radio programme, which is broadcast twice daily: weekdays at 1400, weekends at 1300 and nightly at 2100 (UK time). Each edition lasts one hour. It consists of n ...
Peabody Award-winning television programs
Television series by WNET
English-language television shows
Television news in the United States