Obituary: Peter Jennings

Peter Jennings: Respected and unflappable ABC news anchor

Peter Jennings was the face of America's ABC News, both as anchor and correspondent, for more than 40 years, covering events from the Vietnam war to 9/11.

Together with Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, Canadian-born Peter Jennings was a titan of US newscasting, anchoring ABC's main evening news in two spells: from 1965 to 1968 then from 1978 until announcing that he had lung cancer in April this year.

His smooth, unruffled style, much-imitated, proved immensely popular among viewers, especially when reporting international stories.

Peter Jennings was born in Toronto, in 1938. His father, Charles, was the first person to anchor a nightly national news programme in Canada and later became head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news division.

Fresh-faced

Peter Jennings became a broadcaster at the age of nine, when he hosted a Saturday morning radio show.

Much to his later regret, Jennings dropped out of high school, did not attend college, and began his career as a news reporter at a radio station in Ontario.

Before long, he was an anchorman on Canadian Television but, sent to cover the 1964 Democratic National Convention, he was spotted by the president of ABC News, who immediately offered him a reporting job in New York.

Jennings and Gorbachev: One of many big interviews

As the third-placed news network, ABC had decided to concentrate on young viewers, and the fresh-faced and handsome Jennings was soon promoted to anchor the evening news, where he debuted on 1 February 1965.

He was 26.

But his inexperience, the strength of the competition - which included Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley - and criticism of his Canadian style of pronunciation, saw Jennings replaced as anchor in 1968.

"It was a little ridiculous when you think about it," he later reflected. "I was simply unqualified."

Ratings hit

But this setback proved, in time, to be a huge boon to Jennings' journalistic career.

He reinvented himself as a stylish and thoughtful foreign correspondent, opening ABC's Beirut bureau and distinguishing himself as an award-winning profiler of dignitaries like the then Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat.

And, during the Munich Olympics siege in 1972, Jennings and his team hid in the athletes' quarter of the Olympic village, providing viewers with a unique view of the tragedy.

High-flyer: Peter Jennings with Bill and Chelsea Clinton

A decade after the end of his first spell as ABC's main anchor, Jennings returned, to front a new programme, World News Tonight, covering the ending of the Cold War, the first Gulf War and the Lockerbie bombing.

From being the long-time underdog, ABC News was now dominating the ratings and, though US television audiences became more domestically-orientated during the late 1990s, Jennings' reputation remained undimmed.

During the week of the 11 September 2001, he appeared on air for more than 60 hours, offering continuity to a shocked American public.

Peter Jennings' view of his job was straightforward.

"There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe," he said.

"I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially - sorry it's a cliche - a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive."