Peter Jennings (1938 – 2005)
Canadian-American journalist, a news anchor for the ABC network beginning in 1978 and the sole anchor for World News Tonight from 1983 through April 2005.
It was, in the end, the kind of blow that the calm, seasoned, assuring voice had always softened for us, always relieved of its sharp edges and its tragedy -- the kind of mitigation with which the years abroad had gifted him. But the perseverance of 57 years in front of a microphone could not restore the calm, seasoned, assuring voice. There was now, it seemed, no one to soften and relieve this shock ... The calm, seasoned, assuring voice has been stilled. And for now, at least, there are no others.
He seems to me like the last, best example of a tradition that had already started to vanish long before his death — the tradition of Martha Gellhorn and Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite, people who went and found out what was really happening before they started to talk about it.
We have been criticized, a little bit to my surprise, by people who think I was not enough pro-war. That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public. I think people who have done this and all jobs in journalism have believed that.
There's a whole industry of conservatives saying, "Ah, it's those damn liberals," and a whole group of liberals saying, "It's all those damn conservatives"... If you tailor your news viewing, as some people are now doing, so that you only get one point of view, well of course you're going to think somebody else has got a different point of view, and it may be wrong.
Peter Jennings was a gentleman. Even when asking the tough, insightful questions, he did so in a gentlemanly fashion. He was able to find the weakness in an argument and point it out, but in a constructive way, not in a "gotcha" way... On Sept. 11, Peter's journalistic ability, coupled with his humanity, informed and helped comfort us. Like all those watching that day, he too was in pain over the destruction wreaked on his beloved city, but he soldiered on and did so with compassion and eloquence. While that clear, calm voice is silent now, the memory of his articulate and thoughtful presence will live on in our hearts forever.
I didn't always agree with Peter but I deeply admired his hard work, experience and integrity.
When I first made the move from print to broadcast journalism, I remember watching him for long periods of time — simply to glean some tips.
When I came to the states in the mid 1960s — 1964, 1964 — I didn't think I'd be here maybe a couple years, going to have a great experience in the United States and then go back to Canada. Well, here we are 40 years later.
I don't think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are a left-wing or a right-wing organization.
Good evening. We begin tonight...
Inside that tall, handsome, elegant and eloquent exterior — inside that beat the heart of a fierce, but principled competitor... The last person you wanted to see coming on a story, particularly a big story, was Peter Jennings. … How much did I keep an eye on him? Constantly. All the time.
I have never spent a day in my adult life where I didn't learn something, and if there is a born-again quality to me, that's it.
On 9/11, those of us who do the jobs that I do, flew without a net for hour and hour and hour after end. And then you hope and pray that you've had the experience to be up to it. Because then you're editor, analyst, reporter, correspondent, ringmaster, the whole thing.
I will always remember his insight, his ability to explain the most complicated issues in the clearest form, and his grace and style. He was a tough interviewer but he was always fair... Peter Jennings put his own brand on broadcast journalism. He will be greatly missed.
Peter especially, I think, summarized for all of us the feelings that Dan and I have—the three of us have—when people often ask, "Are you friends?" And Peter said, "Yes, we are friends because we don't see each other that often."... And then he went on to say that we've all made each other better.
Peter Jennings will be remembered as one of America’s most inspirational and distinguished journalists of our times. Peter Jennings covered many of the most defining moments in the world’s post-war history: he witnessed the Berlin Wall coming up in the 1960s and down in 1989, the struggle for equality in South Africa, the Gulf War and most recently, the September 2001 terrorists attacks.
He was so natural; so good live... He knew how to talk to everybody.
I don't think the public realizes how much soul-searching goes on in news organizations about what is the right thing to do.
There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially — sorry it's a cliche — a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.
"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective," Jennings said.
Jennings said that everyone — even journalists — have points of view through which they filter their perception of the news. It could be race, sex or income. But, he said, reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible.
"And when we don't think we can be fully objective, to be fair."
Seems like yesterday; seems like forever—all at the same time. It's sort of, how do you measure it? Do you measure the fact that I'm 20 years older? No. I think I measure it by the events. You know, I came just as the Cold War was coming to an end. When you think about the events that we've been through, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to, I guess you'd say, 9/11 being the culmination at the end of that — of that scope — what extraordinary changes there have been.