When the MacNeil-Lehrer Report first appeared in the 1970s, it was a shiny city on the hill in the wasteland of TV news. They would devote each show to a single issue, with opposing advocates sitting at the same table as they were interviewed by Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer. They were thus forced to make their best arguments because they could be immediately rebutted. The show did not tell the viewers what to think. They trusted the viewers to make up their own minds after hearing both sides of the story.
As the MacNeil-Lehrer Report became the PBS NewsHour and Judy Woodruff took over, she destroyed this once great show. She turned it into a propaganda program. Only one side of an issue is presented, the left wing side. For the weekly roundtable, they hired fake-conservative Jonathan Capehart as the conservative counterpart to liberal David Brooks. Instead of offering conservative arguments, Capehart seems to always agree with Brooks.