Peter Jennings

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Peter Charles Archibald Jennings (July 29, 1938 – August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-American journalist who served as the sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 to 2005, suffering from lung cancer.

He dropped out of high school but transformed himself into one of America's most influential journalists. Jennings began his career early, hosting a Canadian radio show at the age of 9.

He began his CJOH-TV in Ottawa in the early years, anchoring the local newscasts and hosting the teen dance competition on Saturday Date on Saturday.

ABC News selected him to head ABC News' flagship evening news show in 1965.

Critics and others in television news ridicule his inexperience, which made his job difficult.

In 1968, he began reporting from the Middle East. Jennings was named as one of World News Tonight's top anchormen in 1978, and he was promoted to sole anchorman in 1983.

He was also known for his marathon coverage of breaking news news, being on the air for 15 hours or more to anchor the live broadcast of events like the Gulf War in 1991, the Millennium Celebrations in 2000, and the September 11 attacks in 2001.

He was the host of several ABC News special reports and moderated numerous American presidential debates, in addition to anchoring.

He was always fascinated with the United States and became an American citizen in 2003. Jennings, along with Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS, who dominated American evening news from the 1980s to 2005, closely followed Brokaw's retirements in 2004 and 2005.

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Life and career

Jennings was born in Toronto, Ontario, on July 29, 1938; he and his younger sister Sarah were children of Elizabeth (née Osborne) and Charles Jennings, a popular radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Jennings began his broadcasting career at the age of nine, as the host of Peter's People, a half-hour Saturday morning, and a CBC Radio show for kids. His father was on a business trip to the Middle East when the show premiered; on returning, Charles Jennings, who expressed a strong dislike of nepotism, was outraged to learn that the network had sent his son on the air.

Jennings began attending Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, where he excelled in sports when he was 11 years old. Jennings transferred to the Lisgar Collegiate Institute after the CBC moved his father to its Ottawa headquarters in the early 1950s. He struggled academically, and Jennings later discovered that it was out of "pure boredom" that he failed tenth grade and dropped out. "I loved girls," he said. "I loved comic books." I was also lazy for reasons I don't comprehend. Jennings appeared at Carleton University briefly before losing out, according to the singer. He also attended the University of Ottawa.

Although Jennings aspired to be a television presenter, his first job was as a bank teller for the Royal Bank of Canada. He had hoped that the company would assign him to its Havana branch but instead, it moved him to Prescott, Ontario, before transferring him to the company's nearby Brockville branch. During this period, he tried acting in a number of amateur musical productions with the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society, including Damn Yankees and South Pacific.

The 21-year-old Jennings, who lived in Brockville, began his career in television broadcasting. CFJR, a local radio station in 1959, recruited him as a member of its news service; many of his stories were picked up by the CBC. Jennings had joined the CJOH-TV staff by 1961, then there was a new television station in Ottawa. Jennings was first an interviewer and co-producer for Vue, a late-night news channel when the station first launched in March 1961. Jennings found himself hosting Club Thirteen, a dance performance similar to American Bandstand, as his clients noticed a youthful attractiveness in him that mimics that of Dick Clark.

CTV, Canada's first private TV network and a fledgling competitor of his father's network, hired 24-year-old Jennings as co-anchor of the late-night national newscast this year. He was the first Canadian journalist to arrive in Dallas after President John F. Kennedy's assassination of the second generation. Jennings was sent by CTV in 1964 to cover the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He met Elmer Lower, then president of ABC News, who gave him a job as a reporter for the American network, which Jennings had initially rejected. "For a guy like me in a tiny city in Canada," Jennings later remembered.

"I thought, What if I screw up?

What if I fail?"

He changed his mind and went to the United States three months later.

Jennings joined ABC's New York news bureau in reporting on ABC. At the time, ABC was behind the more established news divisions of NBC and CBS, and the network was attempting to attract younger viewers. ABC pulled the fresh-faced Canadian from the field and plopped him at Peter Jennings' anchor desk on February 1, 1965. News from the Field followed a 15-minute nightly newscast. Ron Cochran, a fellow Canadian, was fired by him. Jennings, who is now and forever the youngest-ever US network news anchor, was 26 years old at 26 years old. "ABC was in bad shape at the time," Jennings said. "They were able to try anything, and to emphasize the point, they tried me."

An inexperienced Jennings had a difficult time keeping up with his competitors on other networks, and ABC News, the upstart ABC News, could not contend with Walter Cronkite's venerable newscasts. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC also had a tough time competing with Walter Cronkite. Jennings' Canadian accent offended some in the American audience. At Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential inauguration, he referred to the lieutenant as "leftenant" and misidentified the "Marines' Hymn" as "Anchors Aweigh"; critics dismissed Jennings as a "glamorcaster." Later, he said, "It was a little ridiculous to think about it." "I'm a 26-year-old man trying to play for Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley." I was simply unqualified." Jennings resigned from being a foreign correspondent after three years at the anchor desk.

Jennings set out to establish his journalistic reputation abroad. He founded ABC's Middle East bureau in Beirut, Lebanon, the first American television news bureau in the Arab world in 1968. He expressed his growing sympathy with Middle Eastern affairs with Palestine's Middle Eastern affairs, including Gaza: New State of Mind, a half-hour documentary on ABC's Now news network, which airs on Wednesday. Jennings, ABC's Beirut bureau chief, favoured the Arab cause in the Arab–Israeli war, including the emergence of the Palestinian Black September Movement in the early 1970s. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization's chairman, conducted the first American television interview. Jennings dated Palestinian feminist Hanan Ashrawi, who was then a graduate student in literature at the American University in Beirut, while stationed in Lebanese capital.

By Black September, Jennings covered his first major breaking news story, the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes. His live reporting, which focused on the Arab world's compassion, aimed to convince Americans who were hostile of the Palestinian group. Jennings was able to show ABC an excellent video of the masked hostage-takers by hiding with his camera crew near the athletic stadium where Israeli athletes were being held hostage. He would later be chastised for insisting on describing the Black September members with the words "guerillas" and "commandos" rather than "terrorists."

Jennings began to cover Middle East affairs after Munich's events. He covered the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and then served as chief correspondent and co-producer of Sadat: Action Biography, a biography of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, which would win him his first of two George Foster Peabody Awards. Jennings was named Sadat's top correspondent after the film was based on a documentary. Jennings married Anouchka Malouf, a Lebanese photographer, for the second time this year. Valerie Godsoe, his childhood sweetheart, was his first wife.

Jennings, a predecessor to Good Morning America, returned to the United States at the age of 1974 to become the Washington reporter and news anchor for ABC's new morning show AM America. ABC was hoping that the program, which had invested US$8 million, would compete with NBC's Most Popular Today, which had been hoped for. AM America debuted on January 6, 1975, with Jennings delivering regular newscasts from Washington. The show never gained traction against Today and was cancelled in ten months. Jennings moved to Australia in November 1975, this time as ABC's chief foreign correspondent. He continued to cover the Middle East, and in 1978 he was the first North American reporter to interview Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, then exile in Paris.

Meanwhile, ABC News and its newly installed president, Roone Arledge, were planning a complete overhaul of its nightly news service, which was then known as ABC Evening News and whose ratings had languished in third position behind CBS and NBC since its inception. A dysfunctional pairing of Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters at the anchor desk in the late 1970s has left the network looking for new ideas. Arledge has decided to go with a three-anchor system for the program. World News Tonight debuted Frank Reynolds in Washington, Max Robinson in Chicago, and Jennings in London on July 10, 1978. Jennings' official title was "Foreign Desk Anchor," but the network's chief foreign correspondent continued to work. The broadcast, which included some of the same glitzy presentation as Arledge's previous television show, Wide World of Sports, had risen in the rankings by mid-1979. The newscast had grown 1.9 million viewers from its debut and was now in a dead heat with NBC's evening newscast.

For the third time in 1979, Jennings married fellow ABC reporter Kati Marton. When Marton gave birth to Elizabeth's daughter in the same year, he became a father. Christopher Jennings' and Marton's second child, Christopher, was born in 1982.

Jennings continued to cover major international news, particularly Middle East issues as part of ABC's triumvirate. Some viewers were convinced that ABC News was more committed to foreign affairs than other broadcasts, as his nightly presence at an anchor desk in London persuaded some viewers that ABC News was more committed to foreign news than the other networks. Jennings wrote about the Iranian Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, the assassination of Sadat, the Falklands War, Israel's 1982 war with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, and Pope John Paul II's 1983 visit to Poland. His insistence on reporting major international news himself offended some of his ABC foreign reporters, who began to be concerned with being scooped by "Jennings' Flying Circus" as a result. Jennings, as well as his father, was not entirely happy with his London job. Jennings flirted with the possibility of returning to Canada and working with the CBC on its new nightly newscast, The Journal. However, Jennings' renegotiation requests were not fulfilled by the CBC, and the deal fell through.

Reynolds became ill with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer that often affects the bones, in 1983, and was forced to stop anchoring in April. His absence contributed to a drop in the ratings for ABC's nightly newscast. ABC expected a complete recovery and moved Jennings to Washington, Washington, to fill in for Reynolds while he was sick; the move helped lift the newscast's ratings, although it remained in third place. Reynolds died unexpectedly after suffering acute hepatitis on July 20, 1983.

Jennings had signed a four-year contract with ABC and would be the sole anchor and senior editor for World News Tonight on September 5. Jennings will direct the program from New York City, the program's new base of operations. The news marked a generational change in evening news broadcasting and the start of what the media would describe as the "Big Three" period of Jennings, Dan Rather of CBS, and Tom Brokaw of NBC, but neither was a NBC. Rather than being promoted to anchor in 1981 after Walter Cronkite's retirement, Brokaw of NBC Nightly News was supposed to be the sole anchor on the same day as Jennings. Jennings expressed fear that the raging competition among the three newsmen was going to become superficial at the time. "I know that there will be three pretty faces" with me, Brokaw, and Rather." "That's an inevitable byproduct of television." However, if that is what it comes down to in terms of our overall strategy, we will all have made a mistake."

Jennings' debut on September 5, 1983, ABC News' most coveted position in the charts, with a steady climb. In preparations for the 1984 presidential election season, he spent his first year at the anchor desk instructing himself on American domestic affairs. Jennings, a journalist who later admitted that his political knowledge was limited at the time, co-anchored ABC's coverage of the Democratic National Convention with David Brinkley in June 1984. "I had not covered an election in 16 years," Jennings said, "so here was I going to co-anchor with David Brinkley in 1984, and he wasn't even sure who the faces were related to." Jennings and ABC were chastised for suddenly suspending coverage of the convention for 30 minutes and airing instead a rerun of Hart to Hart.

Despite a rocky start at the anchor desk, Jennings' show started to rise in the rankings. When Jennings anchored ABC's coverage of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster for 11 hours in a row, he was lauded for his service during the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. By 1989, competition in the three nightly newscasts had risen to a fever peak. When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco Bay, media pundits applauded Jennings and ABC News for their prompt on-air reaction while criticizing Tom Brokaw's delayed reaction. Brokaw regained power by scooping other networks for reports of the Berlin Wall's demise. It was World News Tonight, but it came at a time when the year came to an end; ABC's evening newscast spent the year in first place, and CBS' average ratings for the entire year exceeded CBS for the first time.

Jennings' on-air success grew in 1990, and World News Tonight took the top spot in the ratings polling. He anchored the first edition of Peter Jennings Reporting in January—an hour-long, prime-time ABC News special dedicated to a single subject. His inaugural campaign in America on gun violence received acclaim. "From the Killing Fields," Peter Jennings' second installment, focused on US policies against Cambodia. The initiative alleged that the federal government was covertly supporting the Khmer Rouge's return to power in the Asian nation, a charge that the Bush administration denied at the outset. The White House declared on July 18 that it would no longer recognize the Khmer Rouge.

Jennings began a marathon anchoring stint in 1991, covering the first 48 hours of the war on television and leading ABC News to its highest-ever ratings. Jennings and ABC became worried about the emotional consequences of the war coverage on children after interrupting regular Saturday morning cartoons on January 19 to broadcast a military briefing from Saudi Arabia. Out of that fear, Jennings produced a 90-minute special titled War in the Gulf: Answering Children's Questions the next Saturday morning; the show featured Jennings, ABC correspondents, and American military forces, who answered phoned-in questions and outlined the war to young viewers.

ABC News had to halt normal Saturday morning programming on October 12, 1991, due to breaking news. Jennings was once more conscious of his audience, anticipating the coverage of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas' remarks for children in the Senate confirmation process. "You may hear some inappropriate words," Jennings said. Thomas and his accuser, Anita Hill, "have a tense disagreement about certain activities she says the man did to her when they were working together," he said. ...You can ask your parents to teach you more." Jennings continued to produce special programs aimed at young viewers, anchoring Growing Up in the Age of AIDS, a frank, 90-minute discussion of AIDS in February 1992; and Prejudice: Answering Children's Questions, a discussion about racism in April 1992.

In 1992, politics dominated television news. Jennings moderated the final debate among the Democratic presidential candidates in March, and anchor Peter Jennings anchored it. Who Is Ross Perot? In June, Perot and a studio audience will appear in a 90-minute town hall. ABC revealed on September 9, 1992, that it would change the style of its political coverage to emphasize staged sound bites. On World News Tonight, Jennings told viewers that "we're aware that a number of you are turned off by the political process, and that many of you put at least some of the blame on us." "We'll only pay attention to a candidate's daily routine if it is more than normal." Staged appearances and sound bites that are specifically for television will be less prominent. Since Bill Clinton was elected president in November 1992, Jennings featured the new administration in two of his children's workshops; and Children in the Crossfire: Violence in America in November 1993, a live special at a Washington, D.C. junior high school starring Attorney General Janet Reno and rapper MC Lyte.

Jennings' early 1990s was also marked by a string of difficult experiences and public humiliation. In Newsday, Jennings and Kati Marton revealed their separation on August 13, 1993. Marton and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen had been married for four months before Jennings discovered that they were having an affair with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. He locked horns with his executive producer on World News Tonight, Emily Rooney, in January 1994. Rooney's public firing made national news, and put Jennings on the defensive.

Despite winning a Peabody Award, Peter Jennings Reporting: Hiroshima: Why the Bomb Was Dropped, a weekly broadcast on July 27, 1995, a week before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, drew scorn. Ken Ringle, a Washington Post reporter, called it "an ingenue's stroll down the narrow tunnels of academic revisionism" that "purports to reveal a post-World War II cover-up" that "allows to find a post-World War II cover-up," a smoke screen designed to defame any suggestion that the Hiroshima bombing was anything but a military necessity." Any of the documentary's viewers mailed bus tickets to Jennings, advising him not to return to Canada.

Jennings enthrended some conservatives after his three-year lobbying campaign to find a full-time religion reporter for ABC News resulted in the recruiting of Peggy Wehmeyer in January 1994, making her the first female network reporter. ABC expanded its coverage of religious subjects, and Peter Jennings anchoring Peter Jennings Reporting: In the Name of God, a well-received documentary about the changing appearance of American churches, Jennings anchoring Peter Jennings anchored him in March 1995. Jennings expressed regret for his ABC radio remarks on the 1994 midterm elections at a taping of a "town meeting" segment for KOMO-TV of Seattle in February 1995. "Some believed I had disrespected their sacred role, and others believed I should return to Canada," he said. "I hope I don't make the same mistake twice."

Any television commentators lauded Jennings for his insistence on not allowing the O. J. Simpson murder case to swamp the newscast in the mid-1990s. Rather, Jennings devoted his energies to covering the Bosnian War, hosting three hour prime time specials and one Saturday-morning special aimed at children. The conflict was covered on ABC more time than any other network from 1992 to 1996. In large part for his enthusiasm for the story, Jennings was given the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard Kennedy School. Jennings was also praised for raising the profile of another international story, the 1995 Quebec referendum. Some members of the Canadian press in particular praised his in-depth coverage of the issue, and he was Canada's only television presenter.

Despite these ad-profits, World News Tonight's ratings are gradually falling. Strong viewership of its coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games and heavy coverage of O.J. Simpson's case, as well as NBC's Nightly News, dominated the ABC newscast for two weeks in late July and early September. NBC gained traction in the ratings after this brief boost. In an attempt to imitate Nightly News' success, Jennings and ABC decided to cut back on international reporting and give more air time to "soft stories." Regular viewers retaliated after the changes, and ratings plummeted. "We did a good job with it," Jennings said. "The audience booed us in the teeth." Although World News Tonight made changes to refocus on key issues and avoid hemorrhaging, Nightly News became the nation's most popular evening newscast in 1997.

The decline in the ratings coincided with some jargon at ABC News. Plans to build a cable news channel were shelved by the corporation. David Westin succeeded Roone Arledge as president of ABC News on May 29, 1998. Both denied that World News Tonight's dismal ratings results contributed to the decision. After talks between the union and ABC ended, a 24-hour strike by the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians disrupted ABC's coverage of 1998's November elections. Several Democratic candidates declined to endorse the union in interviews.

None of the shake-ups helped Jennings regain the nightly ratings crown, but World News Tonight continued to deliver fierce competition at second place. Jennings and the network began preparing for extensive retrospectives of the twentieth century as the millennium came close. The anchor teamed up with former Life magazine writer Todd Brewster to pen The Century, a 606-page book about twentieth-century America. The book, which was designed as a companion book to ABC's forthcoming documentary series of the same name, debuted in December 1998, just over a month after it debuted. Jennings hosted the first installment of ABC's 12-hour miniseries The Century on March 29, 1999; production on the monumental project began in 1990 but by the time it was broadcast, it had cost the network US$25 million. On the History Channel in April 1999, Jennings also anchored The Century: America's Time.

Jennings appeared on ABC's huge millennium eve special on December 31, 1999, for 23 hours in a row. At least 175 million people have registered for at least a portion of the scheme, according to an estimated 175 million people. Jennings' American primetime audience, which has a whopping 18.6 million viewers, is well ahead of rival networks' millennium coverage. Television commentators praised the service, while TV critics characterized it as "superhuman." Despite the fact that production costs totaled $11 million (compared to $2 million per square foot for NBC's and CBS's millennium projects), ABC was still earning $5 million. Despite the program's success, it didn't translate into any meaningful improvement in World News Tonight's viewership; ABC's evening newscast spent the first week of January as the nation's highest-ranked program before falling to second place in second place.

Jennings had some more political reporting duties this year as a result of another presidential election in 2000. Jennings moderated the Democratic primary debate, which was held at the University of New Hampshire on January 5th. The Dark Horizon: India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, which ABC broadcast on March 22, as then-President Clinton began his trip to the region. Jennings was the only American news anchor to travel to India for Clinton's trip. In April, Paul A. Slavin became the country's new executive producer.

Jennings anchored ABC's coverage of the September 11 attacks for 17 hours in a row, which television commentators described as "Herculean." He was widely praised for leading Americans through the disaster, as other television news anchors. After receiving phone calls from his children, Jennings lost his composure. "We don't often make recommendations for people's behavior from this chair," he said. "But if you're a parent, you have a kid in some other part of the country." "Observations of a trade."

His coverage was not without controversy. Rush Limbaugh and others chastised Jennings for predicting on the television that President George W. Bush is "where is the president of the United States?" ... We don't know where he is but the world needs to know where he is headed right now. More than 10,000 e-mails and phone calls had flooded ABC. Jennings received more criticism on September 13, this time for staging a Middle East conference that featured Palestinian Authority negotiator Hanan Ashrawi. Jennings and ABC refused to allow Toby Keith to open their coverage of July 4 with "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," triggering outrage from Keith and country music fans who emphasized the anchor's Canadian citizenship.

The events of September 11 gave In Search of America, the project Jennings and Brewster's collaboration began after the success of their previous collaboration. The two authors began writing the book in early 2001; after the terrorist attacks, they revisited many of the people they had interviewed to see how the incidents had affected them. The anchor and World News Tonight began a 50-state tour of the United States in April 2002 as part of a year-long initiative, 50 States/One Year. In September 2002, Jennings anchored a six-part television series that bore the same name as the book. In spite of the book's publisher's strong success and heavy advertising, In Search of America failed to generate much interest or sales.

Jennings' book In Search of America and the September 11 attacks aided in his decision in 2003 to become a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. "I think the 9/11 attack and the subsequent travel I did in the country made me feel connected in new ways," he said. "I spent a lot of time on the road, which meant away from my editor's desk, and I'm getting much more connected to the Founding Fathers' hopes and aspirations for the future." His work had prepared him well for the citizenship exam, which he passed without trouble. "Can you imagine if I, who just completed a whole series on America and had been an anchorperson on an American broadcast, would have failed?" He asked. "It would have been horrendous." The anchor's formal pledge of allegiance took place at a regular citizenship function in Lower Manhattan on May 30. The event overwhelmed him. "I knocked on the front door and came out the front door." They were normal people. They were very touching. And I cried a little bit, but my children didn't cry, but I cried a little bit, but I'm a pretty emotional person anyway."

Jennings moderated the 2004 Democratic presidential primary debate, which was held at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, as he did in 2000. Clark was cited as criticizing General Wesley Clark over Clark's silence in the case of filmmaker Michael Moore's controversial remarks, a backer of Clark. George W. Bush, then-President George W. Bush, was dubbed a "deserter" by Moore.

Brokaw had resigned from his anchoring duties at NBC by late 2004, ceding the reins to Brian Williams; rather, he decided to step down in March 2005. Jennings and ABC had a chance to increase viewers and launched a press campaign promoting the anchor's international reporting skills. Despite almost always reporting from the scene of any major news story, Jennings was sidelined by an upper respiratory disease in late December 2004; he was forced to anchor from the ABC News Headquarters in New York during the Asian tsunami aftermath, when his rivals travelled to the area. The situation was agonizing for Jennings.

During evening newscasts in late March, viewers started to notice that Jennings' voice sounded uncharacteristically squeamish and unhealthy. For the final time on April 1, 2005, he hosted World News Tonight for the final time; his failing health prevented him from reporting Pope John Paul II's death and funeral. Jennings told viewers on World News Tonight that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was beginning chemotherapy treatment the following week. "I have found lung cancer in the last few days, as some of you may have noticed," he said. "Yes, I was a smoker before about 20 years ago, and I was young and I smoked as a result of 9/11." However, whatever the reason, the news does slowed a little." Although he said he planned to continue anchoring as long as possible, the message was not intended to be his last appearance on television.

Throughout the summer, Charles Gibson, co-host of Good Morning America, and Elizabeth Vargas, co-host of 20/20/20, served as temporary anchors. Jennings sent an email on ABCNews.com on April 29, 2005, giving thanks to those who had given him their warm wishes and prayers. Jennings paid a visit to ABC News headquarters in June and praised staff members in a dramatic scene in the World News Tonight newsroom; he thanked Gibson for ending every broadcast with the phrase, "for Peter Jennings and all of us at ABC News." During his stay, however, his coworkers noticed he was ill to the point where he could barely talk. On July 29, 2005, his 67th birthday, he wrote another short letter of thanks.

Jennings' death from lung cancer occurred less than a month after Jennings' 67th birthday, just after 11:30 p.m. EDT, Charles Gibson broke into local news in the eastern United States and regular ABC's western affiliates' western affiliates on August 7, 2005. He read a short family tale and told his readers that Jennings had died in his New York apartment with his fourth wife, two children by his marriage to Kati Marton, and sister at his side. Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and Ted Koppel, among the anchor's ABC colleagues, shared their thoughts on Jennings' death. On the morning news, Brokaw and Rather fondly recall their former adversary. On Today, Brokaw wrote, "Peter, the three of us, was our prince." "He seemed so timeless." He had such élan and style." With the news of Jennings' death and the remembrances from their "big three" anchors, Peter Mansbridge at CTV, Lloyd Robertson of CTV, and Kevin Newman (himself a former Jennings colleague at ABC) at Global, Canada's television networks carried off their morning news shows.

To the world, American President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin made a public statement of condolence.

ABC aired Peter Jennings: Reporter, a two-hour special on August 10, 2005, with archived clips of his reports and interviews with coworkers and friends. More than nine million viewers watched the special, which was the most watched television show of the night. For the first week since June 2004, World News Tonight ranked number one in the ratings polls for the first week since his death.

Kayce Freed, Jennings' widow, and her family held a private service in New York. Jennings was cremated, but his ashes were split in half. Half of his ashes remained in his Long Island home, while the other half was placed in his summer house in the Gatineau Hills, near Ottawa. On September 18, 2005, the 57th Primetime Emmy Awards were presented to Jennings by Brokaw and Rather. Two days later at Carnegie Hall, Jennings was held as a public memorial service. Journalists, political figures, and other Jennings supporters attended. Jennings left a US$50 million estate, half of which went to Freed, and the bulk of the money was split between his son and daughter. ABC announced Vargas and Bob Woodruff co-anchors for World News Tonight on December 5, 2005, after much rumors and nearly eight months after Jennings stopped anchoring.

Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life was published in 2007, co-edited by his widow Kayce Freed and his ABC colleague Lynn Sherrr. The book was based on an oral history gathered from a variety of interviews. The book, according to Publishers Weekly, is "predictably optimistic" and "reminding readers of the commanding presence Jennings retained over broadcast journalism." It was described as "browse-able" by Parksville Qualicum News, but it had "only a few holes remaining."

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