Robert MacNeil Biography
Robert MacNeil (Robert Breckenridge Ware “Robin” MacNeil, OC) is a Canadian-American novelist, and retired television news anchor and journalist. He partnered with Jim Lehrer to create The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1975. He attended a boarding school at Upper Canada College.
Later on, he attended Dalhousie University. In 1955, he graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa. MacNeil began working in the news field at ITV in London, then for Reuters. He then started working for NBC News as a correspondent in Washington, D.C. and New York City. He covered President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Dallas for NBC News on 22nd November, 1963.
After shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, Robert MacNeil, who was with the presidential motorcade, followed crowds running onto the Grassy Knoll. He then headed towards the nearest building and encountered a man leaving the Texas School Book Depository. He asked the man for directions to the nearest telephone.
Robert MacNeil later learned the man he encountered at about 12:33 p.m. CST might have been Lee Harvey Oswald. This conclusion was made by historian William Manchester in his book The Death of a President (1967). For his part, MacNeil says “it was possible, but I had no way of confirming that either of the young men I had spoken to was Oswald.”
At approximately 1:40 PM CST, Robert MacNeil relayed to McGee that White House acting press secretary Malcolm Kilduff had made the official announcement that President Kennedy had died at 1:00 CST. At the beginning of 1967, MacNeil covered American and European politics for the BBC.
Between 1971 and 1974, he hosted the news discussion show Washington Week. He rose to fame during his coverage of the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings with PBS. He also received an Emmy Award for his work. MacNeil retired from his nightly appearances on October 20, 1995.
After the terrorist attacks in New York City and Arlington County, Virginia, on 11th September 2001, he called PBS and offered to help. He joined PBS in its coverage of the attacks and their aftermath, interviewing reporters. Six years later, Robert MacNeil hosted the PBS television miniseries America at a Crossroads. The miniseries presented independently produced documentaries concerning the “War on Terrorism”.
Robert MacNeil Age
Robert MacNeil was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was born on 19th January, 1931. His age is currently 88 years old as of 2019.
Robert MacNeil Net Worth
Robert MacNeil has made a huge fortune from his career as a journalist. Even today, he is making significant contribution. No wonder someone said that journalists don’t retire. He has won a number of Emmy Awards for his work as a journalist. He covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Robert MacNeil net worth is however currently under review. It is approximated that he however has a net worth that runs into millions. Journalism is a paying career but it requires passion. He has made most of his cash through his career.
Robert MacNeil Wife
Robert MacNeil is currently married to his wife Donna Richards. They tied the knot in the year 1984. Details about how they met are not yet known. He married his second wife Jane Doherty in 1965. Eighteen years into their marriage, things turned sour and they separated in 1983.
He was also married to his first wife Rosemarie Coopland in 1956. Things did not start well for him. They divorced in 1964. There is no information about his kids.
Robert MacNeil Awards
- 1979: Robert MacNeil received an LHD honorary degree from Bates College. In 1997, he was made an Officer of the Order of
- Canada, one of Canada’s highest civilian honors, for being “one of the most respected journalists of our time”.
- 1990: Paul White Award, Radio Television Digital News Association.
- 1999: Television Hall of Fame.
- 2008: Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism
Robert MacNeil Books
- Breaking News (novel)
- Burden of Desire (novel)
- Eudora Welty: Seeing Black and White
- Looking for My Country: Finding Myself in America
- The People Machine: The Influence of Television on American Politics
- The Right Place at the Right Time
- The Voyage (novel)
- The Way We Were: 1963, The Year Kennedy Was Shot
- The Story of English with Robert McCrum (accompanied by a PBS documentary miniseries in 1986)
- Wordstruck: A Memoir (Published 1989)
- Do You Speak American? (accompanied by a PBS documentary miniseries in 2005)
Robert MacNeil Interview
Robert MacNeil is one of a half-dozen television broadcasters in the United States who insist on speaking English as they learned it at their mother’s knee.
In Mr. Robert MacNeil’s case it was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which explains the quaintly un-American touch he often brings to “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on public television.
“I was enormously lucky,” he said during a recent visit here, “because my mother was enthusiastic, and read with great fervor and delight. And I think a lot of the books … like Dickens … she was reading for the first time herself, so it was very exciting.”
Robin (as his friends call him) MacNeil and his wife raised four children – and managed to preserve Robin’s family tradition of reading aloud.
“It was a little harder,” explained Robert MacNeil, “as we got into the television age with our youngest son, who, when invited to hear my rendition of my favorite, `Treasure Island,’ responded brusquely, `Naw … I saw that on television.”‘
The lad was not won over until father and son shared a boat trip and Robert MacNeil set aside an hour every evening to read “Treasure Island” aloud.
“Parents can plant magic in a child’s mind,” he said, “through certain words spoken with some thrilling quality of voice, some uplift of the heart and spirit.
“It’s very hard to compete with television these days,” he added with feeling, “but I think if you persevere and make daily reading the occasion of your intimacy with the child, and something predictable and routine, you can still do it.”
“If you love the language,” Robert MacNeil writes in the just-published second volume of his memoirs, “Wordstruck” (Viking Penguin, New York, $18.95), “the greatest thing you can do to ensure its survival is not to complain about bad usage but to pass your enthusiasm to a child.”
BUT what if one finds little to be enthusiastic about in the imprecise verbal shorthand that passes for speech today? …
SOURCE: www.questia.com