The Legacy of Peter Jennings By Simon Marks Headline writers have described Peter Jennings, who died Sunday night at the age of 67, as 'urbane', 'dapper', 'the face of ABC News', and a 'natural anchor'. Those descriptions are all true, but they fail to encapsulate his most important contribution to the broadcast news industry: a single-minded determination to keep global news developments in front of American television viewers night-after-night. ABC's official biography of its late anchorman notes that he was 'in Berlin in the 1960s when the Berlin Wall was going up', and there again 'in the 1990s when it came down'. It was the Wall's fall that in many ways presented Mr. Jennings' industry with its greatest challenge to date. In the absence of a defining international struggle between East and West, many networks (ABC included) chose to downscale their global news resources. US television network offices that had once dotted the world were shuttered, their correspondents either redeployed or fired, and their local support staff laid off. About a year ago, Peter Jennings mused on-the-air about his youthful experiences as ABC's Rome Bureau Chief. Today, it's hard even to imagine an era in which a US network had a fully-staffed Rome Bureau to lead. The Al Qaeda attacks on America on September 11th, 2001 underscored the short-sightedness of the American networks' approach. But more than any other figure in the broadcast industry, Peter Jennings was already leading a rear-guard battle to keep the global news agenda alive. Challenging conventional wisdom, in 1995 his network devoted more airtime to the war in Bosnia, and less to the trial of football star OJ Simpson, than its competitors. It won the nightly ratings battle as a result, and confounded the claims of those who maintain that the American people are uninterested in foreign news, or find global developments too complex to follow. Through his unmatched talents, Peter Jennings spent an entire career finding ways of making foreign news relevant to American audiences. As a result, he won the trust of those audiences who turned to him in their millions during times of crisis, celebration or great national moment. His recent reporting from Baghdad was unparalelled, and driven by a thirst for knowledge. 'What brings you here?', the BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson asked Peter Jennings in the Iraqi capital in January. 'Oh, the usual', the ABC anchor responded, 'Just trying to find out what's going on'. Peter Jennings offered Americans a continuing opportunity to 'find out what's going on'. His passing presents everyone in the news industry with a challenge: to continue travelling the world in a quest to understand complex stories, and to make sure that night-after-night, week-after-week, the American people get to see them. ---- Simon Marks is President and Chief Correspondent of Feature Story News.