Peter Jennings Dies of Cancer At 67--News Media Cannot Agree On What He Was

According to FoxNews, Peter Jennings was a"Newsman" and a "News Anchor." According to BBC, Peter Jennings was a "News Reader." According to CNN, Peter Jennings was.....well....was "Peter Jennings."

At least that was the way he was presented on their respective news headlines today.

In a way, each of those "titles" reveals a different side of this good man (and you do not have to agree with a man's politics for him to be a good man).

As a "newsman" he spent his life researching, gathering, compiling and editing information and news from every corner of the globe.

As a "news anchor" he was the center of the ABC News team for over 20 years...nearly 30 if you include his prior status as "co-anchor"with and .

As a "news reader" he was the one who verbally conveyed the news to the American public.

As "Peter Jennings" he was Canadian citizen who, in 2003, quietly became an American citizen as well, taking pride in both his native and adopted countries.

As "Peter Jennings" he was also a husband to Kayce Freed, and a father to his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23.

While I must admit that I rarely listened to network news for the past 30 years, I always enjoyed the human-ness that I felt in Jennings approach to the news. He was never cold or distant. His gentle, elegant voice often made even the mundane seem somehow elevated and worth my attention. As a foreign correspondent he had "earned his stripes" with ABC and I always respected him for that, too.

Of the three network news divisions, Jennings and ABC always seemed to me to be the least overtly biased, politically. He will be missed.

Ironically, in the three articles cited above, only the BBC actually referred to him as a journalist, as in, "one of the most powerful and influential journalists on television in the US."

From what I have read of Peter Jennings, he would have been all right with that. He saw himself as a lover of news who had the privilege of investigating it, digesting it and reporting it. Sometimes, as the BBC put it, he simply "read" it. If being a journalist was part of what he had to do the that was just fine. He did it and did it well.

I think, if I were asked to write his epitaph, I would write this:

Peter Jennings: A Good Man Who

Loved and Shared the News