PBS-Politico Debate Hub

“Our job in my view, the job of The NewsHour, is to report – period – and as appropriate to provide analysis to invite others on the program to express opinion,” said PBS anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff at the annual Corporation for Public Broadcasting dinner where she was the guest of honor at the The Carnegie Institute Science building in Washington, DC. “In the end, it is up to our viewers and our readers and our followers to make up their own minds, not for us to tell them what to think. That makes us a little like dinosaurs in the current very opinionated news environment, but we believe that many Americans want exactly that. In fact, we have seen our audience grow and we think it’s because many Americans do want straight news. They want straight reporting. Not everybody wants opinion.”

“What sets us apart from our friends in commercial radio and television is that we are committed to covering the entire country to covering issues that are not the hot story of the day,” Woodruff added. “We pledge every day to hold up a mirror to our communities, our state, our nation, and the world and to make sure they are not forgotten and we pledge to try to cover every day, every week, every year, year in and year out. It’s what motivates me. It’s what makes me so proud to work at The NewsHour with a great team. In the end, we all know we don’t have a strong democracy unless people are informed. It’s as simple and challenging as that.”

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Woodruff will be taking that pledge to the sixth and final Democratic primary debate of 2019 to be held at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles co-hosted by PBS NewsHour and POLITICO at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 19. Seven candidates—Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang— have qualified for the debate. “All seven have threatened to skip the event while campus workers are locked in a labor dispute. The Democratic National Committee said it expects all parties involved in the dispute to “promptly” return to the negotiating table. Until then, all candidates have pledged to not cross the picket line.” ABC News