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Monday, August 08, 2005

Peter Jennings 1938-2005

Peter Jennings died yesterday, and I am hardly the first to say this but it is truly the end of an era. Much has been made of the explosion in the media since the internet started gaining traction, and how in this new epoch the weight the nightly news broadcasts carries has waned considerably. All of this is true but Jennings carried a sense of gravitas about him, something that is sorely lacking in modern journalism. When you finished watching World News Tonight you felt you had a rough idea as to what happend in the world on that day, and how it fit into the wider picture of the times you lived in. That somehow, in that half-hour, you had learned something and this additional knowledge made you a better person. You did not and could not glean that same feeling after viewing the other national newscasts nor from any of the 24-hour news networks. Jennings spent most of his career overseas in London, Rome, the Middle East, and wherever else the news was breaking. The knowledge he gained in those years beyond American shores came through in his broadcasts, and while many other anchors struggled with equally unpronouncable names and concepts, Jennings cut through the fog and gave his viewers a sense of clarity.

The American media is frequently described as having a narrow and parochial view, this could not be said of anything that Peter Jennings put his hands on. Jennings tried to give his viewiers a picture of the whole world not just of the American nation. He tried to take the experiences of peoples in lands far away both in distance and mind, and apply them to our own lives. He was equally adept at holding a mirror up to the nation itself and giving us a better picture of ourselves and the times that we lived in. It was to his credit that during his tenure at ABC News, World News Tonight consistantly lead the ratings race when poor progamming choices had made ABC a bottom feeder among the broadcast networks. Jennings approached the news not just as a list of the occourances of the day but as a rough draft of history, and a historian of modern times is how he will be remembered.

Not bad for a high school dropout.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good post James!

I think, as you called in gravitas, Jennings had it. He had a spine and would share with you. Not an edited version but his view as a newsman. It never came off fake or scripted, it came off true.

Oh Canada, our home and native land...

7:55 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Dean_Fundraiser.html

What the Democrats need is a platform. With too many divergent ideas of what a democrat is under the same party umbrella, how can we hope to defeat a coherant, if wrong agenda by the Republicans. democrats have no philosophy. If the republicans think we don't like them, remember how contentious we get towards each other.

Aj

7:58 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050811.html
cool sky pic

10:52 AM

 

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