New York CNN —Longtime broadcast journalist Robert MacNeil, who covered some of the biggest headlines of the 20th century and co-anchored PBS nightly news for two decades, died on Friday, PBS announced. MacNeil “was an incredibly erudite reporter, anchor and writer who raised the bar for serious journalism in America,” Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president of NewsHour Productions, said Friday in a news release. Arriving at PBS in the early 1970’s, MacNeil began a decades-long partnership with fellow journalist Jim Lehrer, according to PBS The two led PBS coverage of the Senate’s Watergate Hearings in 1973. In 1975, the pair co-founded the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, a show that would later become PBS NewsHour. MacNeil sat at the helm alongside Lehrer before leaving in 1995, according to PBS.

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Persons: Robert MacNeil, MacNeil “, ” Sharon Percy Rockefeller, Jim Lehrer, MacNeil, John F, Kennedy, Lehrer, WETA, ”, “ Organizations: New, New York CNN, Longtime, PBS, NewsHour, NBC, WETA, Cuban Missile, MacNeil, Television, Writers ’ Conference Locations: New York, America, Montreal, Canada, Nova Scotia, London, Washington, DC, Dallas, WETA, United States