I was lucky to have served as a young foreign service officer in London concurrently with a group of American journalists which included Len Downie of the Washington Post, Alan Otten of the Wall Street Journal, and Peter Jennings of ABC. My tenure as Embassy London's press officer in the late '70's was dominated by the Iran hostage crisis. Peter Jennings' dogged coverage of the takeover of Embassy Tehran and the 444-day captivity of American diplomats (including three USIA colleagues) stood out in the broadcast media.
He was determined not just to provide the facts but to provide a deeper context for understanding the facts. Peter had a sense of history, a understanding of change, an appreciation of tides and cycles that shaped the presentation of events. When his questions were adversarial, the tenor was not to trump but to ensure that both context and fact were got right for his audience.
Our friendship was enriched by a shared interest in and appreciation for successor generation leaders. When I left London to undertake an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship, Peter and Alan Otten advised me to do the Fellowship with a young Senator from Colorado, Gary Hart -- one of the few Democrats to have survived the Reagan landslide of 1980. Once back in Washington, Peter asked me to facilitate a get-together with Hart two years before the 1984 election, on the prescient basis that he could be the greatest potential threat to Walter Mondale for the '84 Democratic presidential nomination. Peter was interested in those who were pushing the envelope, not just politically but creatively and intellectually, at home and abroad.
When I left Washington for a five-year period to work in Phoenix, I was asked by the Phoenix Sister Cities Commission if there was any way Peter Jennings would come and speak to their annual gathering to raise money for international student exchanges. Knowing that this was highly unlikely, I asked anyway -- and got a positive response and a keynote speaker who made clear his appreciation for the beyond-the-East-Coast interest in international affairs and America's role in the world.
At a time when loud, glib and non-stop have come to substitute for important, insightful and contextual, Peter Jennings must be remembered as a broadcast journalist who understood the difference. On a day when the instantly-known pay tribute to a peer and a colleague, I would like to add this brief note of respect and thanks to a friend. Peter, you broke through the noise and gave us all a better understanding of often-incomprehensible acts and events.