The iconic PBS NewsHour leader talks to the public editor about untethering from the anchor desk so she can help us redefine democracy and what it means these days to be an American.
When I became public editor for PBS, I was told that I would be able to tell how effective our public affairs programming had been on a given night just by watching the flow of letters after an episode of the NewsHour. It is, far and away, the PBS program that each day elicits the most reaction, good and bad, from viewers.
And, as principal news anchor, Judy Woodruff has been the lightningrod among viewers of The PBS NewsHour. All at once, it seems, our audiences see her as “right-leaning”, “left-leaning”; objective, biased; too hard on sources, and too quick to let them off the hook. We take this to mean she is doing her job just about right.
To get to the point where you feel the need to write to us, you must be pretty moved. So it’s stunning to see that in the nearly four years I’ve been public editor, some 1,000 letters and recorded comments about Woodruff and the NewsHour have come our way. (Mine is just one of several email platforms in public media that field viewer messages about PBS programming.)
Here are classic examples from the flow of messages:
“Judy Woodriff (sic) has been presenting news with an increasing liberal bias and editorial slant to her political views.”
– Cathie Walling, Georgetown, Texas (Oct. 14, 2020)
“The Newshour continues to give more coverage to Conservative angles on issues than to Liberal.
“ I'll never forget Judy asking a 2020 guest why it was that the media covered Trump's daily blusters, thus giving him a free publicity outlet. I wished the guest had said something like, ‘Gosh, Judy, why do YOU?’”
–Gerry Loney, Middlebury, Vermont (April 22, 2022)
The pace of the Woodruff and NewsHour commentary quickened in the fall of 2022, and then intensified this month when it dawned on viewers that Woodruff was stepping back and handing the anchor duties to Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett.
“I can't begin to say how much we will miss Judy Woodruff in the coming years. What a so very trustworthy, intelligent, curious and decent person she has proved to be, and what a wonderful journalist. It has been a pleasure getting to know her, as a person we spend an hour with in our living room in the Bronx, five evenings a week. And what an empty place there will be now in our lives. We don't ever ask each other if it's almost seven o'clock in the evening. We just say, ‘Is is almost time for Judy.’ Or puttering around in the kitchen, I will ask my wife, ‘How long until Judy is on?’ ”
– Kevin Kane (and Janet Rogerson), Bronx, New York
On to the next beat
The new buzz for Woodruff gave us cause to reach out to the veteran journalist to talk about some of the issues most often on the minds of viewers who’ve reached out to us: objectivity, democracy and the state of truth in America. Yes, it’s as though Woodruff had absorbed all of the commentary from our audiences and then shaped a beat at the NewsHour that can be a worthy follow up to her 10 years as co-anchor and anchor, and some 16 years as a NewsHour correspondent.
The new beat will feature vital reporting at a time of great discord in this country. And if I were to assign this task, it would be to someone who, for almost 50 years has thoroughly covered local news as well as Washington and national politics – and left an impact on millions of viewers.
In our conversation, Woodruff takes on questions about the new assignment, and what she learned about journalism and its challenges in today’s media landscape.
