I grew up watching ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

[Tommy Carcetti]

Yes, I was a news geek as a kid, and I don't regret it one single bit. It helped me in staying aware of events around me, and gaining a worldview and set of beliefs from that.

It's a damn tragedy to see ABC fall to this pathetic simping level. Pure cowardness. Peter Jennings would be rolling over in his grave.

[hlthe2b]

1. Yeah. I always liked Jennings' story--a really elegant man, but rose despite not having the

typical educational background that others had. One would never have known it.

RIP, Peter. Goodbye ABC. We scarcely knew you. sigh...

[erronis]

11. Money corrupts. As malaise would say: that is all.

[Sneederbunk]

2. You're young.

I can remember Howard K. Smith, Frank Reynolds, Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters

[MarineCombatEngineer]

3. Gee, thanks for reminding me how old I really am.

I too remember all those names.

[A HERETIC I AM]

16. How about the Huntley Brinkley Report? Or was that NBC?

I was thinking about Peter Jennings the other day and one thing about him and the other old hands was, you would NEVER hear them start a sentence with the word "So" unless it was grammatically required.

You would never hear Peter start a sentence by saying "Yeah, no, I mean, like" as I have heard the likes of Chris Hayes and others say on a regular basis.

Now I like Hayes, but he needs to watch more Jennings, and less of whatever else he is watching.

"We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men. Men who were revered." -

Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy in the pilot of the series "The Newsroom".

[Bigerhalf]

28. Salesmen for decency

I don't think they would stand a chance in today's corporate owned media.
Look what they did to Dan Rather. Pbs had McNeil Laird. Now they are so worried about their funding they don't dare take a stand.
We need a platform that will stand up for brave journalists. We need Democratic Salesmen and that is an art that exists!
Look they got Trump and half the country to wear silly little Red Hats!.........Salesmanship!
How humiliating but they do it!

[hurl]

30. Such an amazing message

Thanks for sharing.

[Seeking Serenity]

31. I remember John Chancellor on NBC

And Frank Reynolds on ABC

[Dave Bowman]

4. Yes, he's badly missed. And ABC/Disney can go to hell.

[Walleye]

5. Peter Jennings was a prince of a man, he once interviewed on TV a good friend of mine about gun control. Probably

25 years ago. my friend worked Time magazine, and he had been an NRA member back in the day. He collected guns. But not a crazy looney shooter. The interview was very interesting.

[Sneederbunk]

6. Like Edward R. Murrow, a victim of his own vices.

[underpants]

8. He once did a national prime time TV report on smoking

I’m sure ABC News had to weather pretty brutal intimidation from the tobacco companies.

The opening line of the broadcast was “These (holds up a pack of cigarettes) are the only product that we know of that when used correctly, will kill you”

[A HERETIC I AM]

19. Jennings had quit for a number of years, but the stress of reporting on 9/11 got him started again.

He died 4 years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jennings#Leaving_the_chair

[Sequoia]

20. My Middle East university professor

Knew Peter Jennings when he was reporting from that area in the 1960s. Lots of respect.

[Takket]

7. you took the words right out of my mouth..........

I think Jennings would be horrified to see what has become of the "media" in this country as well. Journalism is dead, now they just let MAGA write articles for them so "access" is not lost.

[chouchou]

9. "Hi..ABC..I'm a powerful Republican and I think " ...."Ah YES SIR..We'll get right on it!"

"ABC, I'm a wealthy Repub...."YES SIR..anything you want to say"
.
Hi..ABC I'm an Award-Winning Journalist and I thought"......"Fuck You...hit the door."

[republianmushroom]

10. The integrity of those days are long gone.

[Ping Tung]

12. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite on CBS. I still remember the look on his face when he tallied about

the futility of the war in Vietnam and the assassination of JFK.

[2naSalit]

13. I doubt he'd be too troubled by it...

He was pretty biased and only gave issues he favored anything resembling a fair shake. That network really took a dive when they sold out to Disney... a peddler of fantasy.

[SouthBayDem]

14. 90s kid here. My late mother would watch Jennings almost every night before dinner.

I was a few weeks away from starting high school when Jennings died and remember feeling sad that he couldn't enjoy a dignified retirement.

By 2008 I first read the in-depth Wikipedia article about Jennings. That's when I truly appreciated what he'd done for journalism, especially his willingness to stand up against popular trends in media for example, pushing ABC to focus less on "infotainment" like OJ Simpson and more about substantive international news like the Bosnian War, so "World News Tonight" truly lived up to its name.

[Dwild]

15. George Stephanopolus

George Stephanopoulos should say it again

[Quanto Magnus]

17. Mainstream media is

really only for the wealthy now as all the talking heads are just as wealthy, so are more than happy to protect their own interests by pretending to be for the 'little guy'.

[milestogo]

18. Me too. I watched him on 9/11.

Later I heard that he started smoking again on 9/11 and that is what did him in.

He was the last anchor with gravitas on MSM.

[BadgerMom]

21. Main stream media is corporate media. And that makes them untrustworthy.

We’re lucky to have the sources we do.

I’ve needed a new Thomas Paine to write a new Common Sense to wake people up.

[IbogaProject]

22. Now part of Disney

I hate hour their holiday programming is all Magic Kingdom nowadays.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. Peter Jennings, Max Robinson, and Frank Reynolds (the latter my mother called "turkey neck" )

But don't forget Baba Wawa.... (Barbara Walters) & Harry Reasoner.

[Grammy23]

24. My dad died in 1967 one day before

my 19th birthday. He was a news junkie and kept up with everything happening in the news. Walter Cronkite was on nightly. And he subscribed to numerous news magazines. He is rolling in his grave for a lot of reasons of late but what is happening with our news sources is right at the top. 🤔

[Uncle Joe]

25. The way I see it. The decline in network news began in the aftermath of

Walter Cronkite coming out against the war in Vietnam.

It was a stupid and unjust war but the oligarchic powers that be decided that conscientious jouralism shouldn't stop us from waging war justified or not in the future.

So they used a multiprong attack.

1. In the years afterward, the news media was primarily blamed for stupid and ill thought out political/policy decisions. "Rambo" exemplified this mentality with his machine gun that never ran out of bullets as he sprinted through the swamps of Vietnam like he was at a track meet. "We wouldn't have lost Vietnam without the news media" meme took hold, not so much that we should never have been there in the 1st place.

2. Requiring that the news should be a network's money maker.

3. Eliminating the Fairness Doctrine coupled with continuous consolidation, and thus being owned or controlled by ever fewer hands.

Rupert Murdoch became the 1st corporate media oligarch just barely pretending to even call Fox "news." Nothing but blatant propaganda just appealing to the people's emotions over their reason. They were successful at it too, so the other corporate conglomerate networks followed suit only to a lesser degree.

As the democracy enhancing Internet and information revolution took hold today's oligarchs; are taking note, they want to control it just as they do with the one way, top down mildly hypnotic mass communication tech of T.V. so as to put everyone back to sleep, that's why they hate "woke," that's why Musk bought Twitter, and that's the way it is.

Thanks for the thread Tommy Carcetti

[Gingermolly]

26. Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings

Were my heroes. I watched them every night and I trusted them. And they knew how much we trusted them as the watching public.I actually think that David Muir is a fairly decent successor to them.

[wryter2000]

27. I grew up with Walter Cronkite

He told me President Kennedy was dead. I don’t know if CBS has fallen as low as ABC, but no network news is as good as it was.

[BlueTsunami2018]

29. I had a 9' satellite dish when I was a kid.

And you could pick up the raw feed from ABC and other channels on it. Jennings would be smoking cigarettes during commercials and once he fell off his chair. He got up and looked around to make sure no one saw it. We saw it. 🤣

Has nothing to do with your point which is, of course, correct but anytime someone references him I’m put in mind of watching the dish.

[electric_blue68]

32. And Ted Koppel for Nightline. Also (died too young) Frank Reynolds.

Last edited Mon Dec 16, 2024, 10:39 PM - Edit history (1)

I started watching the news, or more likely reading the then liberal NY Post when I was 14 (1967), then added the TV.

Columnists back then for The NY Post -
Pete Hamill, Mary McGregory, Jimmy Breslin, Murry Kempton