In these days of dueling banjo journalism, when MSNBC and Fox News present alternative facts to their audiences/echo chambers, when fairness is for the weak, when the political debate has moved to Twitter, somebody like Jim Lehrer may need to be explained. So the younger folks out there will understand.
He was a journalist. He moderated a dozen presidential debates. He guided a long-time news program over the airwaves. And we don't know his political affiliation, or if he even had one.
We might be able to find his political leanings if we spend a few minutes on Google. After all, he was a political columnist for a newspaper in Dallas for a while. Surely his writings back in the 1960s, right after the Kennedy assassination, can be found in the archives. But that's not what Jim Lehrer was known for. He was the longer-lasting part of the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, later the PBS NewsHour.
Maybe it was because he was so fair, so above the fray, that candidates asked him to moderate so many presidential debates. Here's a compliment that only a journalist would understand: We don't remember many of his questions.
Not a gotcha moment in the lot. No Megyn Kelly or Jim Wieghart look-at-me questions. Someone once described Jim Lehrer as the Ed Hochuli of debate moderators. He was the best ref in the business, and things went downhill after he retired.
"He reeks integrity," Tom Brokaw once said of him. (That's how network anchors joke with each other.)
"His idea of fairness is fiercer than anyone's," said Robert MacNeil several years ago. "He has an almost religious respect for being fair. He stays so far out of the political swamps that he doesn't even vote."
And these days we have Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity.
Jim Lehrer died Thursday. He left behind a tremendous legacy. As a journalist. Not a pundit.
Editorial on 01/24/2020