Robert MacNeil, creator and first anchor of PBS ‘NewsHour’ nightly newscast, dies at 93

Robert MacNeil, who created the even-handed, no-frills PBS newscast “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” in the 1970s and co-anchored the show for with his late partner, Jim Lehrer, for two decades, died on Friday. MacNeil died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, according to his daughter, Alison MacNeil. MacNeil first gained prominence for his coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings for the public broadcasting service and began his half-hour “Robert MacNeil Report” on PBS in 1975 with his friend Lehrer as Washington correspondent.