NEW YORK – Long-time and well-respected ABC News anchor Peter Jennings died of lung cancer just before midnight on Sunday at his home in New York. He was 67.
Jennings was anchor of ABC World News Tonight for 22 years and spent 41 years at ABC. He was diagnosed four months ago, and vowed to keep working as long as he could, even behind the scenes and took a great interest in the program right up until the end, reported abcnews.com.
It was “a virulent, terrible form of lung cancer that Peter faced,” said Jennings’ fill-in, Charles Gibson, in announcing his death late Sunday night on ABC.
Toronto-born Jennings’ father Charles was the first voice of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation when it was established in the mid-1930s. At age nine, Jennings hosted "Peter’s People," a short-lived Saturday morning children’s show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, says cnn.com.
Late Sunday evening and into early Monday morning, CNN ran numerous tributes to the man, who was hugely respected by fellow journalists and loved by viewers. ABC World News Tonight was often the ratings leader in the supper hour news slot. (For whatever reason, ABC’s affiliate out of Buffalo, WKBW, did not carry the Jennings report and tributes late Sunday night.)
“Peter really believed in the ‘world’ portion of World News Tonight,” Tom Foreman, a CNN reporter who was with ABC for 10 years, told CNN. “This is the loss of someone very important to journalism.”
Jennings was on the ground for so many of the world’s major news stories of the past four decades, including the 1972 Munich Olympics, the construction – and then the destruction – of the Berlin Wall. He covered the Vietnam war, the American civil rights movement, Poland’s independence movement, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and was lauded for his steadying presence during coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He and World News Tonight won just about every broadcast journalism award there is.
“No one understood the world better than Peter,” said CNN senior correspondent Jeff Greenfield live on CNN very early Monday. “This was a giant.”
In announcing Jennings’ death to his ABC colleagues, news president David Westin wrote, which appeared on abcnews.com:
"For four decades, Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways. None of us will be the same without him.
"As you all know, Peter learned only this spring that the health problem he’d been struggling with was lung cancer. With Kayce, he moved straight into an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. He knew that it was an uphill struggle. But he faced it with realism, courage, and a firm hope that he would be one of the fortunate ones. In the end, he was not.
"We will have many opportunities in the coming hours and days to remember Peter for all that he meant to us all. It cannot be overstated or captured in words alone. But for the moment, the finest tribute we can give is to continue to do the work he loved so much and inspired us to do."
“I know this sudden loss has deeply affected the broadcast community on both sides of the border," added Canadian Association of Broadcasters president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell in a statement released Monday. “Though he spent much of his professional career in the United States, Peter often professed his pride in his Canadian roots, and he was very attentive and encouraging to young Canadian talent who sought his career advice. I know I speak for Canada’s private broadcasters when I say that we are extremely proud of the professionalism and pride Peter demonstrated throughout his broadcast career. Peter Jennings is a true broadcasting icon; he will be missed. The CAB offers our sincere condolences to his family.”
Jennings is survived by his wife, Kayce Freed, his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23, and his sister, Sarah Jennings.
