Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, sometimes known as Robin MacNeil, was born in Montreal on January 19, 1931 and grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After leaving home to attend boarding school, he returned to Halifax in the late 1940s and enrolled in Dalhousie University. Spurred by ambition to become an actor and playwright, MacNeil withdrew from school and found employment as a radio actor with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as well as working in commercial radio as an announcer and disc jockey. After doing summer stock in New York for several months, MacNeil returned to Ottawa where he completed his degree at Carleton University while working at a commerical station and the CBC. Upon graduation in 1955, MacNeil sailed to London, intent on giving one more chance to his dramatic ambitions. Disillusioned with his prospects there, MacNeil joined the Reuters News Service and worked as a rewrite man until 1960. During this period he also served as a stringer for the CBC.
In January 1960, Reuters gave MacNeil his first assignment as a correspondent by sending him to cover a UN conference in Tangiers. The experience convinced him that reporting was preferable to a desk job, and he signed on with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) as a roving foreign correspondent. MacNeil subsequently covered many of the major international news stories of the early 1960s including the Algerian Civil War, the Congo, and the construction of the Berlin Wall. During the Cuban Missile Crisis MacNeil was in Havana briefly, but was apprehended and deported.
In 1963 MacNeil was transferred to NBC's Washington Bureau. After covering the civil rights movement, he was assigned to cover the White House. As a result, MacNeil was riding in President Kennedy's motorcade at the time of the assassination in Dallas, and MacNeil was thought by some to have encountered Lee Harvey Oswald in the lobby of the Book Depository as he (MacNeil) searched for a telephone to file the story.
MacNeil spent most of 1964 covering the Goldwater campaign. In May 1965 he transferred to New York and was assigned the job of anchoring WNBC's evening news. Later in the year he teamed with Ray Scherer on the network Saturday evening news, while still maintaining his position as anchor on WNBC. Increasingly disappointed with network television, MacNeil resigned from the two anchor positions in mid-1966 and from NBC in early 1967. During this period he began work on his first book, The People Machine: The Influence of Television on American Politics (1968), a criticism of television's ability to shape and manipulate the electorate's perceptions and behavior.
Early in 1967 MacNeil became a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television series Panorama, which many consider to be a forerunner of 60 Minutes. In addition to conducting interviews with important figures and providing coverage of events on both sides of the Atlantic (student and worker uprisings in Paris and the 1968 National Democratic Convention), MacNeil also began his association with American public television as a London-based correspondent for Public Broadcasting Laboratory's The Whole World is Watching (1968) and International Magazine (1969-1970).
In September 1971 MacNeil left the BBC in order to accept a position as a senior correspondent for the Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS’s) newly-formed National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT). There MacNeil was teamed with Sander Vanocur on A Public Affair/Election '72 and also served as moderator on Washington Week in Review. In early 1973 he appeared on the weekly news magazine America '73. Later in the year he began his long term association with Jim Lehrer during PBS's coverage of the Watergate hearings. Shortly thereafter, MacNeil was re-hired by the BBC and based in the United States.
In 1975 MacNeil returned to PBS for a third time when he was hired by WNET, the affiliate covering the New York metropolitan area, to develop and anchor his own news analysis program. This show, airing for the first time in October and carried by WETA in Washington, D.C. as well, served as the prototype for the MacNeil/Lehrer Report (later the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour) which began in 1976. Although MacNeil retired from NewsHour on October 20, 1995, he has continued to work with PBS on several projects including America at a Crossroads (2007-2009).
In addition to his work as co-anchor on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, MacNeil has produced and narrated several PBS serial documentaries including The Story of English (1986) and Do You Speak American? (2005). In 1982 he published his professional biography, In the Right Place at the Right Time. He has also written several books, many on his experiences and career as a journalist including: Wordstruck: A Memoir (1989), The Way We Were: 1963, The Year Kennedy Was Shot (1988), and Looking for My Country: Finding Myself in America (2003). He has also written several novels including: Breaking News (1998), Burden of Desire (1992) and The Voyage (1995).
