Guess I Wasn’t Alone

Peter Jennings didn’t receive such heavy coverage when he died — ABC doesn’t own a cable channel.

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on my entry about the coverage of Tim Russert’s death. A few friends who wanted to chime in, but quietly, sent emails and links.

One link was this column by Hal Boedeker in the Orlando Sentinel. His opinion is very close to mine. Among his more interesting points:

Is there a sense of proportion? Peter Jennings didn’t receive such heavy coverage when he died — ABC doesn’t own a cable channel. And he was in our homes, night after night, for 20 years. MSNBC kept Russert front and center through the weekend.

It’s probably time to move on from this story now.

One thought on “Guess I Wasn’t Alone”

  1. Geoff,

    One redeeming element of the coverage was that it surpassed and pre-empted the non-stop life-in-prison / to catch a predator programming on MSNBC for the weekend.

    It was out of proportion, I agree, for a person of similar accomplishment even in the same field, leaving us with the same suddenness.

    I suspect that this was due to the unbelievable number of friends and the strength of friendship / leadership that drove the degree of coverage. Thomas Edison, essentially the founder of GE, probably would not have received the same amount of coverage from his own company.

    Peter Jennings left us a bit more slowly- we were prepared b/c we knew of his tragic illness- that may have softened the horrific blow from losing that great man.

    I quickly thought of Bart Giamatti when this happened and how shocked we all were. He was only 51 when he died.

    Bart, Peter, Tim, RIP.

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