He partnered with Jim Lehrer to create the landmark public television news program The Robert MacNeil Report in 1975.

[6] After shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, MacNeil, who was with the presidential motorcade, followed crowds running onto the grassy knoll; he appears in a photo taken just moments after the assassination.

[7] As he was reporting for NBC, MacNeil was at times in relatively close proximity[8] to his future co-anchor and partner Jim Lehrer, also covering the Kennedy visit and assassination for the Dallas Times Herald, but the two did not meet until several years later, covering the Senate Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. for PBS.

[5][11] MacNeil rose to fame during his coverage of the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings for PBS, for which he received an Emmy Award.

[1] In director Michael Almereyda's 2000 modern-day adaptation of Hamlet, MacNeil portrayed the Player King, reimagined as a TV news reporter.

[3] In 2007, MacNeil hosted the PBS television miniseries America at a Crossroads, which presented independently produced documentaries about the "War on Terrorism".

[17] In a Sesame Street Special Report, muppet parody of the Iran-Contra scandal, MacNeil investigated a "Cookiegate" incident involving the Cookie Monster.