CTV's Murray Oliver recently spoke with Paul Sparrow, director of the Newseum, a journalism museum in Arlington, Va.  Following are excerpts from that interview in which Sparrow talks about Peter Jennings' contribution to TV journalism.

Murray Oliver: Looking back on Peter Jennings, is it possible to have another anchor like that?

Paul Sparrow: The age of the big anchor is over. I think the powers of the anchors -- Rather, Brokaw and Jennings -- will never be seen again; partly because the business has changed, partly because the nature of television news has changed. Peter was the crown prince of an empire that once ruled the world. But it's a crumbling empire. When Jennings first started, 75 per cent of the viewing public watched one of the nightly newscasts every night. That number is now down to 20 per cent. They don't have the same power, they don't have the same reach, and they'll never have the same impact that those three anchors had.

Oliver: Was there something that made Jennings different?

Sparrow: I think Peter Jennings' unique strength was his knowledge of international events. He was based in Europe and the Middle East for many years. He was truly an expert on the culture and history of the Middle East, and he brought a knowledge, a working knowledge of international relations to his position that neither Brokaw nor Rather had. Both had been traveling correspondents, both had been working very hard, but neither of them had the working knowledge that Peter had. He was accused, occasionally, of having an anti-Israeli bias. I think it's a mistake to think that knowledge equals bias. He understood how the Middle East worked, he lived there and I think that knowledge influenced him and made him more effective at communicating what was going on there.

Oliver: Clearly, he touched a chord with people. There was something about him that some people liked. What was it that connected with people?

Sparrow: Peter had a quality that's very rare, which is that he could appear on television and be compelling. You had to watch him when he was on. I think all three of the anchors had it, but they had different characteristics. Whereas Brokaw was the Midwestern, warm, friendly type, and Rather was the aggressive hard-hitting journalist, Peter was the intellectual. He was smart and he understood what was going on in the world. And people liked to turn to him because they felt that he knew was he was talking about, and he was going to deliver the news in a way that he could understand, and that would enlighten them about what was going on in the world.

Sparrow: He wasn't warm, he wasn't fuzzy, he wasn't the Diane Sawyer, the Jane Pauley, the type of sort of morning host. He tried to do the morning shows—it wasn't successful. He's a hard-hitting 'Here's the way it is' newsman, and I think that that was one of his great strengths.

Oliver: One of things that struck me about Peter is that he was always calm. He didn't project hype.

Sparrow: It's hard for anyone to understand what it's like being on camera during a breaking news story. All around you is chaos, people screaming, people running, not knowing what's going on, and you're there in front of 20 million people haven't to portray a calm, authoritative voice. Peter was a MASTER at that. If you look at his coverage on 9/11, it was truly phenomenal. He was on the air for 17 or 18 hours continuously. NEVER had prompter copy, EVERYTHING was off the top of his head. People were feeding information to him through his IFB [earpiece], he was getting sheets of paper handed to him that he was trying to read, they was trying to track an incredibly complex and emotional story that was happening right outside his front door, and yet he maintained an amazing calm throughout the entire thing. I think it was one of the highlights of his career.

Oliver: Peter has also been portrayed as a man of some physical courage. He went to Bhagdad and did a story right at the scene of the hotel bomb. He was at the marketplace in Sarajevo right after the scene of a bomb. Was he a man not afraid to go where the news was even if it had some physical danger to it?

Sparrow: Courage is an invisible trait of all of the anchors. Peter had a reputation of being in the field. He really didn't like being at the anchor desk. It grated on him. He wanted to be out in the world. He wanted to be reporting. He'd much prefer to be on the front lines in Baghdad, than at the cushy desk in New York. It was one of the paradoxes of his early career that it was unsuccessful was that he hated it! He didn't want to be it, and when they made him an anchor he resented it, and eventually everyone agreed that maybe he should go out in the field for a while and enjoy that life. When he was finally called back from his posting in London, he didn't want to go! He loved being in London, he loved being the international correspondent. He'd prefer to be on the front lines than in the studio.

Oliver: One thing about this Sarajevo thing, one thing that I read, he did help change American policy. He did help bring American intervention into the Balkan conflict at that time. Is that accurate?

Sparrow: I think it's accurate to say that the intense media coverage of the crisis in Sarajevo contributed to the change in American policy. I think a number of journalists though, played a role: Sylvia Poggioli, for NPR with her revelation of ethnic cleansing; I think Christiane Amanpour and her repeated coverage of what was going on there; Peter Jennings' coverage… it was not ONE individual, but it was the chorus of voices. But clearly in that chorus, Peter had a very loud voice.

Oliver: In 20 years, will people look back and say that this man was really part of our culture and look back and see anything in him that was somehow a signal of our historical change or anything?

Sparrow: I think it's accurate to say that Peter Jennings is one of a handful of TV journalists that will be remembered 50 years from now. His contributions are very significant, but more importantly, he was last of a dying breed of "super-anchors". We'll never see his like again. His career traced the evolution of television news, from its heady days of civil rights, and the Kennedy assassination and moon landing to its troubled days today when it's simply a business unit of a giant corporation. You'll never see the likes of Peter Jennings again.

Oliver: Was there anything particularly Canadian—some Canadian quality that came across on air?

Sparrow: Well you know in the early days, Peter Jennings was under great criticism for some of his pronunciations: LEFT-tenant for example; he mispronounced 'Anchors Away!" once when he was taking about the Marine marching band… pronunciations in the early part of his career that really irked middle Americans. I think when he came back as a more mature foreign correspondent, it was more that he was worldly and cosmopolitan more than that he was necessarily 'Canadian'.

The Canadian 'calmness', the Canadian 'reasonableness' did come though with Peter, and you saw that when he was under the most stress, he'd be the most calm. And I think that's a quality most Americans associate with Canadians. They don't get as excited, as worked up over things as Americans do. We're a very volatile people, we're very emotional, we're very partisan, we're divided. And despite the intense differences you have in Canada, with things like the Separatist movement, Canadians tend to be a lot a lot more reasonable in the way that they discuss things, in the way that they argue, and I think that reasonableness did come through with Peter.

Sparrow: He used humour to try to pop the bubble of his pomposity. I do think that his arrogance differentiated him from some of the other anchors, but was one of his weak points. I think that people who didn't like Peter Jennings found him imperial, found him a little condescending, a little arrogant; other people found him authoritative and reassuring. So I think that there's a certain population really responded to his voice, to his presence. But some people were grated on, the same way that Dan Rather grated on some for his 'Texas homilies' and occasional grated edges.

Oliver: …And unbelievable intensity.

Sparrow: Yes. Sometimes it just made you nervous watching him. In person Peter was much more intense than Rather... People who worked with both of them would certainly say that. You know, he's a very friendly guy. You know, he wouldn't wield his power in the same way Peter does either.

Sparrow: Peter Jennings had more power at ABC than Walter Cronkite ever did at CBS. Not only was he the managing editor, but he was the persona of ABC News. Power was really unusual in the early days of television, where the producers were really king, and the anchors were important, but controlled. These days, the anchors are king… Peter in particular. That was his broadcast, his news division, and if he wanted something, it happened. He made more money in his last three years of his career than Walter Cronkite ever made in his entire life.

Compiled by Lauren Consky