Growing up I spent an inordinate amount of time watching PBS. Mister Rogers, Sesame Street, Zoom were the starter kit. Benny Hill and Monty Python provided special moments for the later nights. McLaughlin Group and the MacNeil/Lehrer News hour were the big boy shows I ultimately glommed on to. McLaughlin Group was humorous angst and seemed a decent way for folks to disagree and yet still get along (be in the same room each week). MacNeil/Lehrer was the real deal. It wasn't for everyone because it was literally just facts and interviews. Neither provided an opinion which sometimes led to a segment ending and your left with your own thoughts on what just happened? Who is right and wrong? Lehrer, in particular, was like watching my old man deliver the news. Few words, each counted, fair...hear both sides, detailed. No frills people. Just the facts. He's been out of the game for a little while which is too bad. He moderated some of every presidential debate from 1988-2012. Saw this quote and wish more people valued the same:

“I have an old-fashioned view that news is not a commodity,” Mr. Lehrer told The American Journalism Review in 2001. “News is information that’s required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/media/jim-lehrer-dead.html

85, same as the old man. Travel well. You earned it.

edit..gotta include the PBS obit https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/remembering-jim-lehrer

Jim Lehrer’s Rules
1. Do nothing I cannot defend.
2. Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
3. Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
4. Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am.
5. Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
6. Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
7. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label everything
8. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should be allowed to attack another anonymously.
9. “I am not in the entertainment business.”

I didn't watch Lehrer much but yes he was an actual journalist. Nowadays of course on tv there are virtually none of them. Maybe Brett Baier. FYI McLaughlin Group is back on although it's a tough watch with Clarence Page bumbling/stuttering his way through.

In its heyday, there were several bumblers and stumblers. But it was back when they were mostly wordsmiths. And the concept of giving quick quips on the TV was still novel. I always gave those guys a pass and would today too. Some fat dude from the Sun Sentinel or something was the worst. You had to crank the TV just to hear him.

Jack Germond was the fat guy. I liked him. Page is nails on the old chalkboard.

I held the door open for him at Starbucks in Evanston. He said thank ya.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

The News hour and McLaughlin group were constants along with Washington Week in review (only memory I have of the show is it’s name) and the occasional Market to Market which sent me and my brother scurrying out of the room. I remember the slow transition of all of those shows effecting ya that way to us tolerating them to turning them on to watch on my own volition.