I miss Peter Jennings.

[ScreamingMeemie]

That's all.

[betsuni]

1. Me too!

I think he used a fountain pen because sometimes he had ink stains on his fingers while anchoring the news. He actually wrote his own copy! Peter was a professional.

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. One of my favorite pictures of him is this one.

He truly was, and whenever something truly horrid was going on in the world, listening to Jennings always put me at ease.

[betsuni]

3. He had a great voice.

If my husband and I hear an old ABC News clip on the teevee we yell, "IS THAT PETER?" and get excited.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. A canadian.........

Jennings was determined to build his journalism credentials abroad. In 1968, he established ABC's Middle East bureau in Beirut, Lebanon, the first American television news bureau in the Arab world. The next year, he demonstrated his growing expertise in Middle Eastern affairs with Palestine: New State of Mind, a well-received half-hour documentary for ABC's Now news program.

As ABC's Beirut bureau chief, Jennings soon became familiar with the intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the rise of the Palestinian Black September Organization during the early 1970s.

He conducted the first American television interview with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat.[10] While stationed in the Lebanese capital, Jennings dated Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, who was then a graduate student in literature at the American University in Beirut.[14]


In 1972, Jennings covered his first major breaking news story, the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes by Black September. His live reporting, which drew on the expertise he had acquired in the Middle East, provided context for Americans who were unfamiliar with the Palestinian group. By hiding with his camera crew close to the athletic compound where the Israeli athletes were being held hostage, Jennings was able to provide ABC with clear video of the masked hostage-takers.[2] He would later be criticized for insisting on using the terms "guerillas" and "commandos" instead of "terrorists" to describe the members of Black September.

After the events of Munich, Jennings continued to report on Middle East issues. In 1973, he covered the Yom Kippur War, and the following year, he served as chief correspondent and co-producer of Sadat: Action Biography, a profile of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat that would win him his first of two George Foster Peabody Awards.[2] The documentary established Jennings as Sadat's favorite correspondent.[16] That summer, Jennings marrie
[17] His first wife had been childhood sweetheart Valerie Godsoe.[18]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jennings

[truedelphi]

5. A friend was watching Jennings at a political convention some years before he died.

A band played the American anthem, and Jennings stopped what he was doing, stood up, put his hand over his heart, and joined in with the audience in singing the song.

All the other Talking Heads kept twiddling with their papers and fussing with their microphones.

But Jennings wanted to show his respect for this nation. (And unlike the other news people, he was a Canadian.)

[merrily]

7. He became an American citizen in 2003. I don't know the citizenship of all his wives,

but he had been married to his fourth wife since 1997; and she went to Andover. So, I assume she born in the US.

The people who respected and revered the US most when I was a kid were immigrants. The ones I knew came from poorer and/or more torn up countries than Canada, but they all knew they had done better for themselves and their kids in the US than they could possibly have done in their homelands. Jennings, who had divorced three times before marrying the woman who was to become his widow, left his widow an estate of $50 million.

[hamsterjill]

6. Me, too!

He was a true journalist. A fact finder.

Unlike so many on television newscasts today who are sensationalists.