Peter Jennings, RIP

So the last of the big three is officially not coming back to anchor a newscast.

I was never a big fan of Peter Jennings, more because I was a big fan of Tom Brokaw. But I will admit, Jennings had a soothing, calm presence in the worst of times, and was a staple of the American landscape for a long time.

Ironic, I find, that in a time where the newsmedia are under constant attacks by partisan forces hell-bent on warping news to fit their views (wonder how fact suddenly became history?), that we've lost three big names who made their mark during journalism's golden era (Vietnam and Watergate) to various forces, not least of which is simple time.

Was it Gibran who wrote, "The moving finger, having writ, moves on"? Nope, it was Omar Khayyam. Still, this is a passage of time, a marker, whereby the face of journalism will have to change.

It's sad, too, because news is news, and you can't change facts anymore than you can change the stars in the sky. All you can do is spin and slant and manipulate the dialogue. But the truth is there, and the truth comes out, just as it has for millenia.

Peter, if you're watching the world, please know that you tried your hardest and did your best and while you may not have lived to see the world come back to sanity, when it does (as it has to), your voice had something to do with it.

Requiesat in pace.

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