There may still be a few people on Jim Lehrer’s interview wish list, but in his 50 years in the business, he can’t name a story he wishes he had covered.
“The fact is, I am blessed,” he told Marvin Kalb. “I’ve had the same experience you’ve had--you’ve been present while all these incredibly important things have happened, and that to me is a joy.”
The award-winning journalist and host of PBS NewsHour spoke with Mr. Kalb Monday for this season’s last Kalb Report at the National Press Club.
The veteran newsmen talked about the difference between reporting and fiction writing, questioning President Bill Clinton about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination, which Mr. Lehrer described as the “single most memorable event of his journalistic career.”
When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Lehrer was on the scene as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times-Herald. The event shaped him as a journalist, he said, because he learned “the lesson that everybody in journalism needs to know one way or another, which is just how fragile everything is.”
“Everything is subject to change just like that,” he told Kalb, snapping his fingers. “And you have to be prepared for that.”
“[After that], I’ve never went to work not prepared for some calamitous, earth-shaking event because I knew it could happen.”
Mr. Lehrer also talked about changes to the NewsHour, which was originally named the MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1976,then became The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in 1996 and is now the PBS NewsHour. Mr. Lehrer, who currently serves as anchor and executive editor, said he no longer thinks of NewsHour as just an hour-long program.
“We are a news organization with serious purposes and serious outputs, and we make them available any way you want them,” he said, noting the program’s new online presence. “We’ve worked very hard to make our journalism as accessible as possible.”
Mr. Kalb and Mr. Lehrer also talked about presidential debates, which Mr. Lehrer said has lately been viewed as more entertaining than educational.
The moderator for more presidential debates (11) than anyone else in history, Mr. Lehrer said he always prepares “heavily and intensely” for debates so he can be relaxed enough to listen to the answers. He told Mr. Kalb he would not speak to anyone before debates but his wife, Kate.
“I wanted to make sure that nothing I was doing or thinking or saying ever leaked out,” he said.
Deflecting criticism that he doesn’t ask enough questions during debates, Mr. Lehrer told Mr. Kalb that his questions are not the point of the events.
“It’s not about the questions; it’s about the answers,” he said. “The questions are designed to get people to talk. So if several minutes go by and you don’t hear from the moderator, that doesn’t mean he/she isn’t moderating; in fact, that’s terrific. You’re facilitating an exchange, hopefully—that’s the name of the game, at least.”
Mr. Lehrer has worked in newspapers in some form since 1959 and has always loved writing, telling Mr. Kalb he would write fiction “on the side” while he worked in newspapers. The author of 20 novels, two memoirs and three plays, Mr. Lehrer told Mr. Kalb that from an early age he enjoyed “meeting all kinds of different people.”
“Journalism is all about hearing the siren and wondering if it’s a fire engine or an ambulance or whatever it is, and following that siren to see what’s going on,” he said. “I’ve always gotten a kick out of that, and I still do. It’s a state of mind, it’s not a state of age.”
The Kalb Report series is produced by the GW Global Media Institute, the National Press Club and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. It is underwritten by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.