This page reports on the background and current undertakings of key members of the NewsHour reporting team.

Robert MacNeil

Until his retirement in October 1995, Robert MacNeil was executive editor and co-anchor of the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, a 20-year nightly partnership with Jim Lehrer on PBS.

MacNeil's 40-year journalism career began with five years at Reuters News Agency in London. He moved to television in 1960 as an NBC News London-based correspondent, covering such major events as the fighting in the Belgian Congo, the Civil War in Algeria, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1963 he was transferred to NBC's Washington bureau to report on the unfolding civil rights story and to help cover the White House. MacNeil was the NBC News correspondent covering President Kennedy on the day he was assassinated in Dallas.

In 1965, MacNeil became the co-anchor of the first half-hour weekend news broadcast, the Scherer-MacNeil Report on NBC. He also anchored local newscasts and NBC News documentaries, including "Whose Right to Bear Arms." In 1967 he returned to London to cover American and European politics as a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Panorama program.

MacNeil left the BBC in 1971 to be a senior correspondent for PBS, where he first teamed up with Jim Lehrer to co-anchor public television's Emmy Award-winning coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings. Their common disenchantment with the style and values of network news programs resulted in the Robert MacNeil Report with Jim Lehrer. Launched in October 1975, the nightly half-hour series, soon renamed the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, devoted its entire program each night to a single issue. After eight years, the Report became the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, the nation's first full hour of evening news. This innovative approach to the news won many awards, including the 1991 International Television Society's Broadcaster of the Year Award, two Emmys in 1992, two 1993 American Journalism Review's Best in the Business Awards, and the 1994 Radio and Television Correspondents Association Award for Congressional Reporting. In February 1999, with Jim Lehrer, MacNeil was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame.

MacNeil has won many personal awards, including two Peabodys, a Dupont-Columbia Award, the University of Missouri Medal and the Overseas Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has honorary degrees from many American and Canadian universities. In January 1998, he was made an Officer in the Order of Canada.

MacNeil is the author of several books. "The People Machine," (1968) studied the relationship between television and politics. He has written three memoirs, "The Right Place at the Right Time" (1982), "Wordstruck" (1989) and "Looking For My Country, Finding Myself in America" (2003). He wrote three best-selling novels, "Burden of Desire" (1992), "The Voyage" (1995) and "Breaking News" (1998). He was co-author of "The Story of English," companion volume to the BBC-PBS television series which he hosted, and its sequel, "Do You Speak American?" (2005), a three-hour PBS series on American English today.

Born in Montreal Canada in 1931 and brought up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, MacNeil attended Dalhousie University in Halifax and graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1955. During his years at college, MacNeil was an actor for CBC Radio in Halifax, an announcer at CJCH, Halifax, later at CFRA, Ottawa, and CBO/CBOT, Ottawa. He was an aspiring playwright before going into journalism. He became an American citizen in 1997.

With Jim Lehrer, he is a partner in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, producers of the NewsHour, the Story of English, Learning in America, C Everett Koop, M.D., Do You Speak American?, By the People and other specials.

He is chairman of the board of the MacDowell Colony, a historical retreat for artists, writers and musicians in Peterborough, N.H. He is a trustee of the Freedom Forum Newseum, the world's first museum of journalism, opening soon in its new location on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. He is co-chairman of the Council of Conservators of the New York Public Library.

MacNeil has four children and lives with his wife Donna in Manhattan and Nova Scotia. Since his retirement from daily journalism, he has devoted most of his time to writing.

Charlayne Hunter Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault joined the then-MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1977. Her assignments included substitute anchoring and field reporting from various parts of the world. During her association with the broadcast, she was recognized with numerous awards, including two Emmys as well as a Peabody for excellence in broadcast journalism for her work on Apartheid's People, a NewsHour series about life in South Africa.

After leaving the NewsHour in 1997, Charlayne moved to South Africa where she was chief correspondent in Africa for National Public Radio until 1999 when she became the Johannesburg bureau chief for CNN.

Charlayne is currently a special Africa correspondent for NPR and is completing a book, "New News Out of Africa," expected to come out in June 2006. According to her publisher, Oxford University Press, the book will offer a "fresh and surprisingly optimistic assessment of modern Africa."

Terence Smith

Terence Smith is an award-winning journalist who has been a political reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and television analyst over the course of a 40-year career. He has written on everything from a Bedouin wedding in the Sinai to firefights in the jungles of Vietnam.

In 1998, Smith turned to public television, founding and leading the media unit at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. As senior producer and media correspondent, Smith broadcast 110 in-depth tape reports and anchored some 250 studio discussions on media issues. In the course of seven years, Smith and his unit won 18 national awards and honors for media criticism and analysis. He is now a special correspondent for the NewsHour.

In the fall of 2005, the media unit grant ended, and Smith opted to become a freelance writer and essayist for a number of news organizations.

More information about Terence Smith can be found at his Web site.