hylandrdet
Member
It was a tradition. Everytime I came home from high school, I would wait for the six o'clock news and start changing channels from NBC, to ABC, to CBS, to watch the "brothers three". Dan Rather, the wild radical brother; Tom Brokaw, the uptight conservative brother and then there's the brother in the middle Peter Jennings. I considered all three in my mind as brothers because if you studied the way they reported the news, it seemed like they were fighting like brothers.
My mom would laugh at times as she watch me flip from channel to channel, trying to figure out which one was telling the truth; it was fun.
When I heard that Peter Jennings had died this morning, I was shocked, but not surprised; I knew for a while that he was ill. But still, it ends the legacy of the brothers three, it ends a system I'd used for decades. I would watch all three news shows and would mentally picture these gentlemen as Supreme Court justices. I pictured Dan Rather as the liberal judge, Tom Brokaw as the conservative and Peter Jennings as the moderate. If at least two of the three "judges" reported their news in the same direction, I will believe that side of the story.
But Peter was different from the other two; he always portrayed himself as an open minded person. He really thought things through before he reported the news. When I filp to him, I always felt that Peter was the voice of reason, the great equalizer. Tom and Dan's reporting you can take with a grain of salt, but Peter was always down the middle, always consistent, always reliable.
So as Peter Jennings begins his role as anchor of "GOD's News Tonight", we here on the US side of the earth will, for the third time, ask a network to appoint another anchorperson.
Thanks to Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, I now consider the hiring of an evening new anchor much in the same fashion as appointing a supreme court judge. The networks must chose very wisely, for that person will have the most important job in the world, to report the news in a manner that is both trustworthy and honest.
To Peter, whereever you are, thank you!
My mom would laugh at times as she watch me flip from channel to channel, trying to figure out which one was telling the truth; it was fun.
When I heard that Peter Jennings had died this morning, I was shocked, but not surprised; I knew for a while that he was ill. But still, it ends the legacy of the brothers three, it ends a system I'd used for decades. I would watch all three news shows and would mentally picture these gentlemen as Supreme Court justices. I pictured Dan Rather as the liberal judge, Tom Brokaw as the conservative and Peter Jennings as the moderate. If at least two of the three "judges" reported their news in the same direction, I will believe that side of the story.
But Peter was different from the other two; he always portrayed himself as an open minded person. He really thought things through before he reported the news. When I filp to him, I always felt that Peter was the voice of reason, the great equalizer. Tom and Dan's reporting you can take with a grain of salt, but Peter was always down the middle, always consistent, always reliable.
So as Peter Jennings begins his role as anchor of "GOD's News Tonight", we here on the US side of the earth will, for the third time, ask a network to appoint another anchorperson.
Thanks to Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, I now consider the hiring of an evening new anchor much in the same fashion as appointing a supreme court judge. The networks must chose very wisely, for that person will have the most important job in the world, to report the news in a manner that is both trustworthy and honest.
To Peter, whereever you are, thank you!
