For three years starting in 1964, MacNeil made a weekly report, "MacNeil on Congress," for the Eastern Educational Television Network, a program enlarged in 1967 into "Washington Week in Review" on National Public Television.
He wrote three books: Forge of Democracy: The House of Representatives, 1963; Dirksen: Portrait of a Public Man, 1970, and The President's Medal 1789-1977, 1977, a study of presidential inaugural medals.