Peter Jennings Dies at 67
Peter Jennings
ABC World News Tonight anchor
Peter Jennings, who died Sunday night at age 67 after battling lung cancer, leaves a 40-year legacy of bringing world events into America's living rooms.
"He was as much at ease with a microphone and in front of a camera as anyone I will ever know," said former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw.
Jennings' natural ability as a broadcaster was something to emulate. As a young correspondent, Bill O'Reilly studied Jennings while the more-experienced newsman prepared for a broadcast. "I could see how he handled the camera, used the TelePrompTer, what kind of inflections he made,'' says the Fox News Channel host. "It was important for me to digest that."
He was a demanding boss, too. Once, O'Reilly recalls, he told Jennings he had a piece that was good enough to lead that night's newscast. The anchor's reply: "You'd better be right."
Jennings was just as tough on himself. Ex-wife Kati Marton has said that if she didn't give him a few pointers after every broadcast, he'd say she wasn't watching closely enough.
It seemed like he never stopped compensating for stumbling early in his career. Trying to capitalize on his good looks, ABC made Jennings its evening news anchor in 1964 when he was 26. Veteran colleagues derisively called him "Stanley Stunning." He knew he wasn't ready for the job, so after nearly three years, he headed overseas to hone his skills as a correspondent.
By the time he returned to New York as the network's solo anchor in 1983, Jennings was a seasoned international journalist with a suave presence that was still envied. "He's 10 times better than people have a right to expect him to be because he's so good-looking," an NBC producer told TV Guide in 1983.
"No one in this business understood events overseas better than Peter," said ABC's Good Morning America coanchor Charlie Gibson when he reported the news of Jennings death late Sunday night. "There is probably not a world leader of any consequence in the past 35 years that he did not interview. Whenever there was a major event in the world on which to report, Peter reported it."
As Jennings' star rose, so did ABC News. "Peter and I were only joking 10 or 12 days ago that between the two of us, we shared 83 years at ABC," said the anchor's longtime colleague Ted Koppel. "We were not only able to laugh about, but also relish the fact that when he and I were hired in the early '60s, no other network would have had us. We really grew at a time when the network was not competitive to a time when it became the dominant force in network news. That was a source of enormous joy and pride for Peter and for me."
Jennings had his share of contradictions. He spoke like an aristocrat, but was insecure about being a high-school dropout. A cool customer on screen, he could be emotional off camera, once breaking into tears after covering an airline hijacking. He was married four times, but was named Father of the Year in 1984. Yet when it came to the news, he was remarkably consistent: always calm, thorough and authoritative. It will be hard to watch a big story without him.
