Machan's Musings - Peter Jennings, Not A Champion Journalist
by Tibor R. Machan
It is always sad when a fairly young and well-liked celebrity dies, as was the case with Peter Jennings, the longtime ABC-TV News anchor who succumbed to lung cancer at 67 the other day. Major media editors and reporters tended to like him, as they have liked Dan Rather, in part because of his very appealing demeanor, and in part because he tended to share their left-of-center values. You couldn’t miss it, although it was rarely put into words. Mostly, Mr. Jennings indicated his partisanship by means of body language—his frowns, head shaking, condescending smiles, and similar gestures—so viewers and listeners could hardly miss where he stood when he reported on some politically or socially hot topic.
As The New York Times reported in its Monday, August 8th, edition, "Mr. Jennings was not without his detractors. Some critics contended he was too soft on the air when describing the Palestinian cause or the regime of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro—charges he disputed. Similarly, a July 2004 article in the National Review portrayed him as a thinly veiled opponent of the American war in Iraq."
Despite his denials, there is little doubt of what National Review reported. But never mind—it’s not really malpractice for major or minor reporters to be partisan. They are human beings with values (whether they admit this or not), and holding values cannot but be in evidence, especially in the role Mr. Jennings held.
There is, however, something to be noted about one of Jennings's statements, quoted in the National Review piece, as well as the New York Times article. In denying his on air partisanship, he claimed: "That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public." Is this really so? Was Peter Jennings's conception of his own journalistic duty correct?
First of all, no one designed the role he held—it emerged as a fluke and side-effect of the distorted network news phenomenon, one that was sustained for decades by the FCC’s perverse policy of making the three networks into a broadcast oligopoly. No free, competitive press in broadcasting would have sustained this institution.
Second, and more importantly, no one has designated Mr. Jennings & Co. as the inquisitors of government officials "on behalf of the public." No one could, and it is grossly presumptuous to think that somehow one should fill such a role, no matter how hefty one’s paycheck and popular one’s face before viewing audiences.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with questioning government officials, but that questioning is not on behalf of some fictitious public, but on behalf of one’s producers, oneself, one’s ideas of what is important, and so forth. Certainly millions of Jennings's viewers did not share his framework, within which his questions were the ones he kept asking.
I, for one, would have wanted him to ask something of all government officials, namely: "Why do you believe it is justified to rob Peter and hand the loot over to Paul, as you do routinely in your role as a government official?" No, this question, one that many members of the public would have liked to ask over and over again, was never posed by Mr. Jennings nor, indeed, by most of his colleagues in network TV News. (The one exception is John Stossell, and reportedly Mr. Jennings wasn’t fond of his colleague at ABC TV News.)
It’s time these celebrity journalists recognize that they aren’t messengers of God or the public, but rather professionals who are supposed to do competent reporting. We might get better coverage then. We might also get a frank admission from them that, yes, they, like other people, have values that guide their actions (including their reporting), and that viewers had better watch out for this.
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