Robert MacNeil, Canadian journalist who created and anchored PBS NewsHour, dead at 93

Robert MacNeil, the Canadian-born journalist who created the even-handed, no-frills PBS newscast The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour in the 1970s and co-anchored the show with his late partner, Jim Lehrer, for two decades, died on Friday.

The nation's first one-hour evening news broadcast, and recipient of several Emmy and Peabody awards, it remains on the air today with Geoff Bennett and Amna Nawaz as anchors.

This 1973 image released by PBS shows co-anchors Jim Lehrer, left, and Robert MacNeil reporting on the Watergate hearings.

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.

He covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas and may have even crossed paths with killer Lee Harvey Oswald without realizing it as he searched for a telephone in the area, he told The Canadian Press in a 2013 interview.

In 1971, MacNeil left the BBC to become a senior correspondent for PBS, where he teamed up with Lehrer to co-anchor public television's Emmy-winning coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973.