2 Obituaries of Peter Jennings

Peter Jennings' gifts

Kevin Newman Global National

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Kevin Newman, anchor of Global National, spent seven years working for ABC News alongside Peter Jennings, who died of lung cancer on Sunday.

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There is a triangle-folded American flag in my Canadian cabin. It is, in fact, the only thing overtly American in a log and stone structure my wife and I have stuffed with Canadiana and our most cherished family memories.

It is a flag that once flew atop the Capitol Dome in Washington, and it was a gift from Peter Jennings.

I am in the cabin tonight, having just been told that Peter has lost his fight with cancer.

Peter presented the gift to me on my final day at ABC News, suspecting something I didn't fully appreciate until he put it in my hands: that I had come to love America in my seven years living and working there, just as he had in his quarter century. After he handed it to me he said, "take this home, treat it with respect, and remember to never take the easy road of defining your Canadian identity by denigrating this great country." He had enormous affection for Americans, and that made him an even greater Canadian.

Even though he pretty much left the country in his twenties, he clung to Canada. When I met him for the first time in 1994 as part of my job interview at ABC, he was quick to pepper me for my perspective on Canadian politics, the various personalities and the cultural shifts taking place. He was always current and caring.

We would sometimes conspire to get Canadian stories on World News Tonight. When the new millennium arrived, he ensured Newfoundland with its half time zone would share his 24-hour broadcast with Paris, London and Moscow. When debates were raging in Congress over health care, campaign finance reform or any number of other issues, he would often ask me to file a piece on how Canada found a slightly different solution to the same set of problems. When the PQ almost won the referendum, he was front and centre in explaining to Americans why they should care. My American colleagues would sometimes roll their eyes when Peter "went Canadian," but all the Canucks he inspired to work alongside him would quietly celebrate the power he had to keep Canada on America's agenda.

Peter worked incredibly hard. Too hard. But his curiosity just wouldn't let him rest. As a young man who never completed high school, I sometimes had the impression he felt an extra obligation to be a student the rest of his life. An astonishing insecurity, actually, considering all he accomplished. Everything he became -- his eloquence, his passion, and his unmatched ability to see the force of history in a tragedy unfolding under his feet -- all of that was self-taught. He was a remarkable scholar.

And an even greater teacher. By watching him, I learned how to search for context and meaning and not be satisfied with simply discovering "fact." I watched him carefully guiding viewers through times of tragedy, sorrow and fear, all the while remaining measured in tone and reminding viewers of the limits of his knowledge. He was a tough editor, but the good ones are.

I met his children only once. They were polite, interesting and adventurous -- not at all like the children of privilege I imagined they would be. Peter would rarely admit to taking pride in things; his children were the exception.

In some ways, Peter has been godfather to every Canadian television journalist who has worked in the United States, if not directly for him. He set the standard that allowed so many of us to be welcomed as serious journalists and storytellers. I'm luckier than most because I have a crisply folded American flag to remind me of Peter Jennings, and the memories of his lifetime of wisdom.

Obituary of Peter Jennings.

Peter Jennings lauded for stellar TV news

career

Claimed by cancer: Canadian anchor 'set the bar high,'

colleague says

National Post news services

August 9, 2005

NEW YORK - Peter Jennings, the Canadian anchor at ABC who brought Americans the news for more than two decades, was lauded yesterday by friends and colleagues after his death on Sunday from lung cancer.

"Peter was a friend as well as a competitor for 40 years," said Tom Brokaw, former anchor at rival network NBC. "As a competitor, he set the bar high and expected everyone around him to measure up. He made us all better."

Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, called him "a fierce competitor, while Barbara Walters, who worked with him at ABC, remembered him as a "superb writer," adding, "No one could ad-lib like Peter."

Tributes also flowed in from politicians. George W. Bush, the U.S. President, said he was saddened by Mr. Jennings' death.

"A lot of Americans relied upon Peter Jennings for their news," he said. "He became a part of the life of a lot of our fellow citizens, and he will be missed. May God bless his soul."

For two decades Mr. Jennings, the prime-time anchorman for the ABC network, and his rivals from NBC and CBS defined the importance of a story by their very presence.

With his Canadian intonation and urbane manner, Mr. Jennings was the smoothest and, if ratings are the judge, most successful of the Big Three.

The peak of his broadcast's popularity came in the 1992-93 television season, he drew an average audience of nearly 14 million people each night.

It was during this period that he forced Bosnia to the forefront of Americans' attention, paving the way for then-president Bill Clinton to end U.S. vacillation and intervene in the Balkans.

Born in Toronto on July 29, 1938, Mr. Jennings began learning the ropes from his father, Charles Jennings, a leading journalist at Canadian Broadcasting Corp. He became a newsman at the age of nine, hosting a boyhood radio show.

He dropped out of high school to work in broadcasting and by 1962 was co-anchoring the CTV national news.

But his debut in the United States was rocky. A good-looking man with a sharp wit, he first became the ABC evening news anchor in 1965, when he was just 26.

Going head to head with such fierce competitors as Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley proved difficult. Lower-than-expected ratings and mistakes stemming from inexperience with U.S. realities raised a few eyebrows and led to his temporary replacement in 1968.

Undaunted, he went to Beirut, establishing in 1968 the first U.S. television news bureau in the Arab world. He also covered the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes whom they had taken hostage.

In 1975, he moved to Washington to become the news anchor of ABC's morning program A.M. America. Three years later, he was named foreign desk anchor for World News Tonight and moved up to full anchorship of the program in 1983.

Mr. Jennings still managed to travel the world, bringing the main international stories to American viewers. During the week of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, he spent more than 60 hours on the air. The coverage garnered awards and critical acclaim. TV Guide called him "the centre of gravity."

Like all the Big Three anchors, Mr. Jennings was not without his detractors. Some critics accused him of being too soft when describing the Palestinian cause or the Communist regime of Cuba's Fidel Castro, charges he disputed.

Similarly, a July, 2004, article in the National Review portrayed him as a thinly-veiled opponent of the U.S. war in Iraq.

"That is simply not the way I think of this role," he told the magazine. "This role is designed to question the behaviour of government officials on behalf of the public."

Through all these years, Mr. Jennings retained his Canadian citizenship and only acquired a U.S. passport in May, 2003.

Obituary of Peter Jennings.