Peter Jennings

Peter Jennings , 2002

Peter Charles Jennings (* 29. July 1938 in Toronto , Ontario , † 7. August 2005 in New York City , USA ) was the leading news anchors ( anchorman ) of the US channel ABC . He has hosted the main newscast ABC World News Tonight since 1983 and was one of the most prominent news journalists in the world.

Life

Peter Jennings was the son of Charles Jennings , a senior journalist for CBC and a correspondent for CTV in Canada . Charles Jennings was a Canadian citizen and also became a US citizen on May 30, 2003. He went to Lisgar Collegiate Institute , Carleton University and Rider College , although he never graduated from high school.

Jennings followed Frank Reynolds after his unexpected death in 1983. The president of ABC News, Roone Arledge , first elected Tom Brokaw , the White House Correspondent of NBC , for the post of main presenter . But Brokaw turned down the offer and became the sole host of NBC Nightly News . Jennings was then selected, and by August 9, 1983, he became an influential television star. On December 31, 1999, more than 175 million people watched his last installment of Millennium Eve special ABC 2000 ( ABC 2000 Today ).

Jennings have sometimes been accused of liberal tendencies by certain conservative groups , including the Media Research Center . Jennings supporters also found time and again that his most critical reports contained inaccuracies and quotations that were taken out of context. One of its critics was former ABC News reporter Peter Collins . He accused Jennings of having changed parts of his contribution to the tenth anniversary of the Sandinista takeover in Nicaragua . The original statement has been replaced by a more positive one.

Jennings ranked second behind Tom Brokaw in viewership for many years .

During his 40-year career at ABC, Jennings has won a variety of awards, including fourteen television Emmy awards . Almost 30 years after Jennings had reported on the construction of the Berlin Wall , he was there for days live in Berlin when it fell again in 1989. He was mainly used in the so-called Eastern Bloc countries , South Africa , Vietnam , Cambodia and many other countries.

He appeared in the 1992 documentary The Consensus Factory. Noam Chomsky and the Media (Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) .

On April 5, 2005, Jennings videotaped viewers to announce that he had lung cancer . He quit smoking in 1988 but started smoking again after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks . He also announced at the time that he was going to undergo chemotherapy and would continue to host World News Tonight if possible. Charles Gibson and Elizabeth Vargas have represented him since his announcement.

Jennings was married four times. He left behind his wife Katie Freed and two children Elizabeth and Christopher from his previous marriage to Kati Marton .

Web links

• Detailed biography of Peter Jennings (en.)
• ABC on the death of Peter Jennings (en.)
• Peter Jennings in the Internet Movie Database (English)