Peter Jennings, You will be Missed

I waited a week to collect my thoughts about Peter Jennings. I worked for ABC and it affiliates for about 15 years. I met Peter Jennings twice. He was personable. He was larger than life. He was a professional, but more importantly, he connected with the viewers.

For those of you who are keeping score, all three of the main anchors from "Network News" are gone now. They are replaced by pretenders, "posers" as the kids call them. The best of the lot is Charlie Gibson, in my opinion. As he filled in for Peter, he still signed off for his colleague. That was a classy act. More than that, Gibson is solid, seemingly un-biased (a trait Jennings' competitors could never share) and a consummate professional like Peter. It's all too bad that "Network News" is dead. It died, finally, with Peter. Even former ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson proclaimed that network news is “dead,” replaced by the 24-hour cable news networks. Donaldson appeared at an NAB panel with two other TV journalists, Jeff Greenfield and Charles Osgood back in April shortly after Jennings retired. Now there is little chance of it returning to brilliance.

What I will miss about Peter Jennings is his intelligence. For a man who never graduated from High School he was the best in the business at extemporaneously adding to conversations live on the air. As someone who has been on live television for extended periods, I can tell you it is not easy. You can run off at the mouth, sure, but to say something pithy and meaningful is the difficult thing. Peter did it with ease and without making his co-hosts or interviewees look foolish.

I respected his ability to be a "citizen of the world." As a Canadian he had a unique perspective on the United States. The most conservative of Americans criticized him because of his heritage, but the more intelligent among us saw his strength. He has experience. That experience led to perspective and thaperspectiveve was revealed live on television for millions to see.

Peter's track record at ABC allowed him to gain that experience. I could not imagine being the host of the national news broadcast on ABC at the ripe old age of 26 - you probably couldn't either. He was fired and he traveled the world as a correspondent. He was, in my opinion, one of the best Middle East correspondents of all time. He scored big interviews and gave perspective. No one will ever foget the perspective he gave Jim McKay in 1972 when Black September killed the hostages in Munich.

What the news folks are going to miss in the upcoming love-fest is this intelligence and the fact that you can learn all your life. You can make a difference if you look at all sides and try to stay a-political. What we will see is a litany of shows on cancer, smoking, the impact of smoking on the public etc. What we will miss is the real story: What Peter meant to Journalism.

Since Jennings left, ABC has become the most liberally biased Network news Broadcast. Its stores took and anti-Bush or pro-liberal stance a whopping 70% of the time. The next closest network was CBS at just under 50% according to the conservative media watchdog group the Media Research Center. During Jennings's tenure, CBS was always way ahead with Dan Rather un-apologetically reporting from the left, and NBC coming in second.

The bottom line is this picture shows the end of an era - one that will never return.

Much to the chagrin of Journalism regulars like the NY Times, Boston Globe, CNN and NPR, Fox News is the highest rated network on cable with Bill O'Reilly replacing every anchor as the most watched combined. The O'Reilly Factor is the number one show on Cable period - entertainment, news, information, music - you name it.

The times have changed. Peter, you will be missed.