Why People Loved Peter Jennings
There was a remarkable outpouring of sadness last week at the death of Peter Jennings, the last of the major network television news anchors. People clearly felt they had lost someone precious. Maybe it was nostalgia: the fifty-year reign of the famous news personality was over. But the good will was vast for Jennings, compared to competitors Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, also recently departed (though still alive) to polite applause and varying amounts of praise or criticism.
All three had been savvy and hardworking, and did a fine job of conveying the world’s complexity. So why was Jennings first, in both the ratings and the hearts of the viewers?
The answer could be read in each man’s body, face, and speech. Jennings gave all kinds of cues that he was both accessible and affectionate. He talked to us, not at us, and welcomed us to his experience. You could see it on his face. Not so the others.
Brokaw, like Jennings, had a bloodhound drive to get the story. This drive could constantly be heard in his voice and seen in his eyes. In his youth, he'd been an international reporter of legendary stamina. He was a consummate professional. But his posture was rigid, and his clipped Nebraska speech seemed shorn of emotion. There may have been warmth in the man, but it rarely showed. He was the Sergeant Friday of network news: just the facts. As he matured, a tense, rigid glower covered his face. When it broke, you saw a certain weariness, as if he was supremely burdened with the world. Perhaps it says something that he capped his career by writing the Greatest Generation books, which dealt with buried emotions. The package was tough and cool, and said "don't get too close."
Rather came out of hardscrabble Texas, and communicated a very un-Brokaw-like warmth; but it was the heat of vast insecurity. He seemed quietly frantic, as if he feared being dragged back to the sagebrush if we didn't love him. It was Lyndon Johnson all over again. The more he pressed his cadenced, Texas voice into our ears and stared at us goggle-eyed through the camera, the more deceptive and unlovable he seemed. With Rather there was no sense of command, no ease or grace, only endless, anxious petitioning. He got more extreme as he got older: in the last few years he seemed a kind of well-meaning but crazy uncle, weather-beaten, unpredictable, given to odd language and weird behavior.
Then there was Jennings. His biography says little of why people took his death so hard. A Canadian broadcasting executive's son, he quit high school for the family business, did well in his 20’s and came to the U.S., flopped as a pretty boy television host, then "went straight" as an international reporter and found his calling. He was a dashing, Sean Connery/James Bond look alike. He had four marriages; the last one worked.
But why did people like him? First, there was the bearing, his body wide open to us, suggesting genuine involvement, despite his cool, Scots-Canadian background. Beyond elegance, he communicated a sense of relaxed self-control, which made the audience feel more able to experience the days' events without recoiling. His jaw was never clenched, unlike those of his two competitors. Unlike Rather, he was not hunched forward, pleading to be loved: his eyes sparkled warmly, but his body posture said "respect me first, like me second."
Then there was the way he smiled. Brokaw labored to smile, as if removing several layers of facial armor in the process. It never seemed genuine. Rather’s smile seemed anxious and bizarrely disembodied. By contrast, Jennings looked straight at us, from the center of his self, seemingly with caring and warmth. His smile said he liked us. We liked him back.
Jennings' voice was pure music. It kept the viewer soothed through many tough-to-watch stories. He loved jazz, and used his wonderfully timbered voice as an improvisational instrument, constantly changing rhythms, volume, phrasing, pitch, and other factors. It took listeners for a musical ride, uniting them with the content. Everyone got to play in the band. By contrast, the staccato voices of Rather and Brokaw pushed us back, into the role of passive listeners. We couldn't participate.
Finally, there was Jennings' easy sense of engagement with the material itself. He always seemed fascinated with his subjects; they were never pawns in the journalism game, and there was never any intrusiveness or condescension. The pacing, the diction, and most important that passionate involvement with people and their situations gave us true insights, and even more important, the message that Jennings was reporting out of his sweet spot, for the pure joy of it. It made for stories at once universal and personal, professional and fresh - just like good jazz. By contrast, Brokaw and Rather edited their stories with determined objectivity, which felt dogged rather than fascinating, and in the end gave us less insight than dense balls of fact. It was a huge difference.
Maybe Jennings' family knows how he got this deck of good traits. I don't pretend to. Perhaps he matured through personal failures, successes, and a reporter's contact with poverty and pain. Perhaps it was the storied love for his children. What's clear is that with age he became involved rather than withdrawn; sweetened, rather than embittered; freshened, rather than worn. And he shared himself with everyone watching, saying every way but out loud: "here are some good things I've found in myself and in this world. Take as much as you want."
That was rare. No wonder he got the ratings, and the love.