"If you want to be successful it's just this simple," said Wil Rogers once.

He said, "Know what you are doing and love what you are doing and believe in what you're doing."

And these words describe the calling and the commitment and the accomplishments of our guest today.

For broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour.

>> She has covered politics and other news for more than five decades and when coming from NBC to PBS in 1980, Judy became chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, a move to CNN came 10 years later which would last until 2005.

When Judy stepped from the camera, she stepped into the classroom for a time of teaching at Duke and Harvard universities >> She returned to PBS NewsHour in 2007.

In 2013 she and the late Gwen Ifill became the first two women to co-anchor a national news broadcast, shattering the broadcast news industry's glass ceiling.

>> Judy was named sole NewsHour anchor in 2018 and her passion for journalism carries over to her work with numerous organizations and among them a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in journalism.

She's also an advocate for those who support the empowerment of people with disabilities.

>> So for Judy what was to be a major in mathematics at Meredith College would become a major in political science at Duke University and would also become America's gain toward an informed citizenry and civil discourse.

>> Welcome Judy Woodruff.

Welcome, Bruce .

>> Thank you very much.

And my goodness you've done your homework.

It was a lovely trail to follow and along the way noting how indeed we could have been talking about calculus and applied mathematics had it not been for all the times you hear about the role of educators knowing what to say to someone at the right time and you really had that?

>> Well, I don't know that I have it but I certainly was lucky in the early days to have some college professors, instructors and professors who sent me in the right direction.

There were a few who...the early math calculus instructor who basically thought women shouldn't be taking advanced math.

But I think that ended up in the right place as you just said, you know, someone told you can go in and be an insurance actuary, which I'm sure is an honorable profession.

I'm not sure that that would have been my calling.

>> Yeah, I'm glad the political science was the phone call you took and as you took that call there may have been as much what noise as sound on that line.

How tough was it after graduation to be a woman in journalism in those late 1960s 1970 timeframe?

>> Well, you know, it's a story of two almost two separate histories for women because on the one hand there were very few women as you looked at news and this was in Atlanta in the late 60s there were very few women in the news business in print, certainly in print and certainly in television.

>> But it was also at that very moment when there was beginning to feel as if they needed to do something the women's movement was making itself heard believe it or not.

Former president, the late president Richard Nixon pushed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to put put pressure on the broadcast networks to put more women on the air.

So we have the President Nixon to thank for that.

>> And as I mentioned along with the women's movement and a lot of other forces in our society at that time.

>> So, on the one hand there were hardly any mentors, role models but on the other hand it was just at the moment when there was beginning to be a push to bring more women on board.

>> We still had a long way to go.

So you were following an important man in Atlanta who turned out to be integral to perhaps carrying yourself from the Southeast up to the mid-Atlantic and that was Jimmy Carter.

>> You're covering the Georgia state legislature and this is the time frame where his hats in the ring, his hat in the ring.

>> He had been a Georgia state senator and was elected in fact the first year I was hired as a reporter by the CBS affiliate in Atlanta was his second run for governor and people still didn't take him very seriously and I was cutting my teeth as a reporter.

I actually covered some of his governor campaign in 1970.

I didn't know what I was doing.

It was the first year I barely knew how to ask a question much much less hold a microphone.

But fast forward he does get elected.

He serves four years and what they didn't want to share with the press was that they were very, very interested.

He couldn't serve a second term as governor and running for president and that was just about the time I was getting itchy to try a network job.

>> I was hired by NBC and NBC said, oh well, you know Governor Carter, he's not going anywhere.

And I said you better watch out because this is a very serious group and lo and behold, who wins the nomination?

Yeah, 1976.

>> And as that then carries you forward into the halls of Congress and into the presidency, this is also a rite of passage you describe as baptism by fire.

>> It was completely baptism by fire, Bruce, because I had just started reporting in 1970 so I had five whole years of reporting under my belt you could say well that's a long time, five years.

But we're talking about going from age twenty three to I think 27-28 and NBC hired me to work in their Atlanta bureau general assignmen reporter.

I was learning from the first day on the job trying to soak everything up.

Carter then gets elected.

I follow his campaign as much as they will let me.

I lobby NBC to send me to Washington to cover him, because I had good sources the Carter campaign but only get there to find out how little I understood.

I mean Washington is a completely different place from Atlanta, from any place in the country, for that matter and I had a lot to learn and every day it was like a fire hose every day.

>> Yeah.

You're establishing yourself though with that reporting and I'm wondering where along the line then your path and Jim Lehrer's intersect.

That was a little bit later I came to Washington in nineteen beginning of 1977 just as Jimmy Carter's being inaugurated president I covered his administration as you know he didn't get reelected.

Ronald Reagan won in 1980 and Reagan I covered the first couple of years the Reagan administration then NBC moved me to the Today Show where I was doing the Washington interviews for the Today Show.

I did that for about a year and a half during that time my time in Washington I had gotten to know this really nice guy named Jim Lehrer who along with Robin MacNeil had started the MacNeil -Lehrer Report in 1975 They had co-anchored the Watergate hearings.

>> They were a great team.

PBS liked them and put them on t air.

They started the idea of the first national hour long newscas and it would be on PBS because none of the commercial networks were doing this.

In fact today they still don't do it right and I because I knew Jim I knew the executive producer they hired he had been a president of NBC Les Cristol.

We started having conversations and I was completely taken with the idea of kind of getting in on the ground floor of this serious news organization where I would have more than a minute and a half frankly to report an I was just lucky in that one of the many commentaries from Jim Lehrer.

Guidance was the notion of letting the news be the story and certainly the program created the space or the easel on which you could have any one story take up as much canvas room as necessary.

>> Well, Jim and Robin believed in the best tradition of American journalism that the television news should be about the news I mean all news but specifically because they're working in television that it shouldn't be about the personality and this was at a time when personality was becoming ever more prominent, shall we say.

There were some people coming in to television news who were told make yourself part of the story, put yourself out front because people want to see you interacting with the subject of the story.

That was never Jim and Robin's view.

It had not I hadn't been taught to approach the news that way.

So I their view and my view were completely compatible but it was it was it was a it was an era when personality was beginning to to become more important and it was something that Jim and Robin, Jim Lehrer and Robert McNeil were fighting.

If you will.

I mean they believed that people wanted a program that would ask the tough questions and spend time with it, spend five, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes exploring a subject, ask all those questions, wait for the answers and it's not about you Judy or Jim or Robin.

>> It's about the story.

And so from Jim Lehrer and Robert McNeil, the play book is with you.

>> You are managing editor of NewsHour.

>> We know what the anchor part means.

We see that and we love that.

Tell us about the managing editor.

Well, what it says is that I have a role in the editorial say-so of the program.

We have an executive producer.

She and I have the news our Sara Just.

She and I together make the decision final decisions on the show.

I say that though pointing out that we look for ideas every day all day long from our amazing staff of about one hundred and fifty journalists.

We have four senior producers and others we're looking to them for ideas and they are they are idea machines.

I mean they come to us every day with we ought to think about this.

We need to think about that.

So it's not as if we start with a blank slate every day.

But Sara and I together make make the decisions.

Sara has more of the management responsibility for the show, the personnel, you know those kinds of decisions working with the public television station that produces the news our public TV station in in Washington is actually physically located in Arlington, Virginia.

But we call Washington Telecommunications Educational and Telecommunications.

So I do have a role in it and I think it's important for the anchor to have an editorial role in the program where you're not just sitting there as a mouthpiece reading you know, something that somebody told you to read no one can assume there are stories in the pipeline today for broadcast so many days from now and that there are some that were a couple of days to go and ready for tonight and on even weeks.

>> That's right.

And what happens when you then have the queen's passing or a September 11?

>> What are those days like?

Those are some of the hardest days in the world because often we will I mean in fact every day we plan a program and sometimes we plan to air pieces that have been literally not just days but weeks in in the effort, in the research, the production, the shooting, the editing and then newsbreaks.

So generally what happens in fact almost always is we postpone if we've done say long tapes on education for example, this week we are airing a series of reports every night on higher education if if a huge story came along that knocked everything or most everything out of the show, we would then consider postponing that we've already aired the first couple segments of it but we would postpone it and that's what we would generally do if it's something that that people put a lot of time and effort and talent and frankly resources into then we don't we know it's not going to just disappear.

>> Yeah.

What is still very much a part of all of our memories that will never disappear is that time frame in the early 2000s teens the thirteen in particular it is the arrival of Gwen Ifill on NewsHour with you it seems that this is something which you described as being with the two of you co-anchor of The NewsHour and establishing such important firsts.

>> You called it a natural thing to happen and a remarkable thing to happen.

I did because naturale because Gwen and I were good friends she had been at the news hour I think since twenty possibly twenty eight no twenty now before that she had been at the news hour I think since since the late 1990s I had left the news hour for this hiatus where I went to CNN anchored a program called Inside Politics and did other anchor work for CNN over a period of twelve years.

But then not knowing that I was going to come back to the NewsHour found my way.

I worked on a project we called Generation Next about young people in America the what we now call the millennials and that project was of great interest to the NewsHour to Jim Lehrer and he ended up inviting me to come back which I never thought would happen.

I thought OK, Judy, you you left for CNN in nineteen ninety three goodbye.

>> But here it is what fourteen thirteen years later proves it proves you can go home again.

That's right.

It was certainly for sure but it was so it was it was natural in that Gwen and I were friends and I had enormous respect for her as a journalist I had known her in Washington but we had gotten to be closer when she when she and I were colleagues at the News Hour.

>> But also remarkable because there were it was the first time any national news broadcast evening news broadcast paired two women.

There were women you could see fairly regularly on cable news but this was the first time that two women were deliberately brought together and I just thought I thought it was remarkable because the program was founded by two men.

I mean it was Robin McNeil who originally started the program.

He brought Jim Lehrer on board.

It was the two of them until Robin retired in nineteen ninety five.

Jim carries the torch forward until he retires in 2011.

We had a little period where there was sort of a a minuet there were four or five of us trading the anchor role and then and then Gwen and me starting in twenty thirteen and then tragically we lost Gwen in twenty fifteen I'm sorry twenty sixteen when she passed away died of cancer tough.

>> It was a joy to watch and I think you may have sensed on the other side of the screen how much those who watched NewsHour you talk about the news our family that's a that's a true coming together in not only inside the newsroom but across the country as well.

>> I think so too.

I mean I think we had a room we had just a I think a stunning reaction to the two of us.

It wasn't just that it was a black woman and a white woman sitting next together, although clearly that's the optics of it.

>> It was the fact that we both were we had both had decades of reporting in our background.

We both love journalism.

We love working together.

We believe in the news hours approach to the news.

So you had two people sitting together who had this history and this friendship and you put it all together and it was it was really more than the sum of of the two of us.

>> Yeah, I'm smiling because we actually have a little something of the two women sitting together that Segway is well to another dimension we'll get to in just a moment.

But I believe this piece from around twenty fourteen speaks to itself another day in the life if you will with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff.

>> Take a look.

Hi, I'm Gwen Ifill.

And I'm Judy Woodruff of the PBS NewsHour and we are here on this Friday morning to enthusiastically accept the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge from PBS President Paula Kerger.

>> One of the things we want to do is make sure that we challenge our favorite charities to do likewise.

Donald Blanching at the Whitman Walker Clinic here in Washington, D.C. You're next.

>> And for me it's the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore very much a part of Johns Hopkins University Kennedy Krieger Pediatric Neuro Rehab Hospital Research Center and its CEO Gary Goldstein.

>> But that's not all.

We also want to challenge some members of our PBS news family David Brooks and Mark Shields and you guys are next.

And here to join us are some other members of our PBS family who are really only too happy to do this.

How our staff hats off.

Oh, here we go.

Oh my gosh.

It's as if we are watching a home movie.

>> It just makes us all smile because that's the whole movie you would pull up a chair for us it was cold, good cause and I tried to but Gwen and I both talked about how we were bracing ourselves for this.

But we both agreed it was kind of painful but for a very good cause and those were our colleagues.

Those were our producers who were only too happy to perform this function.

>> A bucket of ice cold water on both of our heads and well, I would perhaps be subject to one on mine if I did not have a chance for you to share about the importance of the International Women's Media Foundation, a part of additional nonprofit work that for which you are passionate that this was 1990.

>> I think it's founded.

That's right.

It was 1990.

So this is earlier in my career.

I was at the news hour at that time and I came together with a group of women journalists in Washington.

We came from all different sectors.

Some of us were print some radio, television.

>> I was public broadcasting but we had network, commercial network and others and we decided that as democracy was literally breaking out around the world you remember the Berlin Wall?

This was right when the Berlin Wall was coming down.

The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapsing.

>> In fact in that period it did collapse communism seemed to be on the run and more countries we were looking at the Philippines, South Africa was throwing off apartheid and becoming a democracy.

We knew that as this was happening more countries would be looking at a free press and opening the door to open press coverage.

I'm smiling as I'm saying that because saying it and experiencing it are two different things.

But we thought women need to be we need to be clear to women around the world who want to go into journalism that they're supported and they may not know that and whatever country.

So we convened a national in fact two international conferences with women journalists from all around literally all around the world and we stayed in touch with them and at the second conference in nineteen ninety we honored Katharine Graham who was then of course the publisher long time of The Washington Post and we created the International Women's Media Foundation to be an enduring organization supporting women around the world, promoting freedom of the press, making sure again that women who go into journalism wherever you are, whether you're the country you work in is friendly or not that we are here.

>> We have your back and it's still it's been a tough time.

That was 1990 Bruce we are today we're at 2022 and I'd like to tell you it's been an unbroken line of moving forward and success for women.

The fact is it's still very very tough.

A lot of countries are still throwing reporters in jail including women.

A lot of countries are threatening women.

Women have been journalists have been murdered in a number of countries as have men.

We think the need has never been stronger than it is today to support women journalists.

So this is probably something I'm as proud of as anything else other than my children to to have been involved in.

>> And it is an expression of another powerful point of Africa.

>> See where you say we don't appreciate enough in the US of what it means to have a free we don't we don't most of the world is in.

They're under a government that does not welcome an open and free press, a press that may criticize whoever is in power and then you have free debate of ideas.

We certainly have that in the United States right now.

But unfortunately not in states.

>> You also have people who are saying that the mainstream media can't be trusted, that we are enemies of the American people.

That's not true.

Certainly not anything I've ever experienced.

I don't know of any reporters but that has been the case.

Our political leaders, some of them have made that point.

Others talk about fake news.

Surely not everything we do is perfect.

We make mistakes.

But everybody I know who works as a serious journalist in Washington or anywhere else in the country, they're doing it to to find out the facts, to get the information, to inform the American people, to make sure people know what's going on in our country and doing it out of a sense of , you know, I care about I love this country.

I want this country to have a robust democracy.

We can't have a robust democracy unless we have a free press where there is a robust debate, people are able to argue, criticize and may the best person win and we see what happens and frankly where we accept election results when they're legitimate as they were in 2020 where you mentioned Katharine Graham.

Philip Graham is attributed to these remarks connect to him and they go like this, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history."

which is a very interesting image and you like that?

>> I do like that I because it is it reminds us of the responsibility of journalists to get it right to get it right.

It doesn't mean we're going to ultimately understand this moment in world history or human history there there's going to be new information that emerges over time.

That's why we have historians we need historians to to go back and they have access to information we don't have access to in the moment but we have to try to get it right in the first instance and that's why reporting is so important.

Our again our system of government depends on it.

People need information they can count on when they go vote, when they make decisions about what do they think about this or that policy?

What about taxes?

What about earned income tax credits?

What about what we should do with regard to women's reproductive rights?

What about what we should do when it comes to climate change?

All these things depend on information we can count on and on and on frankly understanding what our political leaders are doing and any and saying at any given time.

So there's a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the press and we need to take that responsibility seriously.

>> Yeah, I have 90 seconds for one come one more question that could take a whole half hour but of course many may know the PBS is closing in on twenty consecutive years of being named the most trusted media organization in the country.

>> What comes to mind when you hear that and what's the value of that trust?

The first thing that comes to mind is humility.

We always need to be humble in thinking about what we do and how and the work that we do.

We can never rest on our laurels.

I happen to agree with that.

I think what Jim Lehrer and Robin McNeil created and what so many other journalists from Charlayne Hunter-Gault to Gwen Ifill to I'm I'll start to name them Jeff Brown, Amna Nawaz, you go down the list of people who work for the news are Nick Schifrin, Lisa Desjardins.

These are serious journalists and and that's what I'm so proud of .

>> But we can never rest on our laurels.

We need to do our best, come to work every day, do the best that we can and you can see the product of that work when you tune into the PBS NewsHour on PBS Fort Wayne right there Monday through Friday at 6:00 and of course don't forget the weekend at five o'clock also on all of the same channel.

>> Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour and it is such an honor to share desk space with you.

>> Thank you so much for being with us today.

It's an honor.

Bruce , thank you very much for having me and for all of us with prime time.

>> Thank you for tuning in as well.

Take care and we'll see you again soon.

Good night