Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings CM (July 29, 1938 – August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-American television journalist, best known for serving as the sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005.

He was also known for his marathon coverage of breaking news stories, staying on the air for 15 hours or more to anchor the live broadcast of events such as the Gulf War in 1991, the millennium celebrations in 1999–2000, and the September 11 attacks in 2001.

His father was on a business trip to the Middle East when the show debuted; upon returning, Charles Jennings, who harbored a deep dislike of nepotism, was outraged to learn that the network had put his son on the air.

His producers saw a youthful attractiveness in him that resembled that of Dick Clark, and Jennings soon found himself hosting Club Thirteen, a dance show similar to American Bandstand.

There, he ran into Elmer Lower, then president of ABC News, who offered him a job as a correspondent for the American network, an opportunity Jennings initially rejected.

"[14] An inexperienced Jennings had a hard time keeping up with his rivals at the other networks, and he – and the upstart ABC News – could not compete with the venerable newscasts of Walter Cronkite at CBS and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC.

He pronounced lieutenant as "leftenant", mangled the pronunciation of "Appomattox", and misidentified the "Marines' Hymn" as "Anchors Aweigh" at Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential inauguration; his lack of in-depth knowledge of American affairs and culture led critics to deride Jennings as a "glamorcaster".

[16] The next year, he demonstrated his growing sympathies regarding Middle Eastern affairs with Palestine: New State of Mind, a half-hour documentary for ABC's Now news program.

[2] As ABC's Beirut bureau chief, Jennings favored the Arab cause in the Arab–Israeli conflict, including the rise of the Palestinian Black September Organization during the early 1970s.

[12] While stationed in the Lebanese capital, Jennings dated Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, who was then a graduate student in literature at the American University in Beirut.

[25] Jennings reported on the Iranian Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, the assassination of Sadat, the Falklands War, Israel's 1982 conflict with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, and Pope John Paul II's 1983 visit to Poland.

His insistence on covering the major international stories himself irked some of his fellow ABC foreign correspondents, who came to resent being scooped by what they deemed as "Jennings's Flying Circus.

ABC originally expected a full recovery, and relocated Jennings to its Washington bureau to fill in for Reynolds while he was sick; the move helped buoy the newscast's ratings, though it remained in third place.

[27] On August 9, 1983, ABC announced that Jennings had signed a four-year contract with the network and would become the sole anchor and senior editor for World News Tonight on September 5.

[27][28] The announcement signaled a generational shift in the evening news broadcasts, and the beginning of what the media would deem the "Big Three" era of Jennings, Dan Rather of CBS, and Tom Brokaw of NBC.

The program alleged that the federal government was covertly supporting the Khmer Rouge's return to power in the Asian nation, a charge that the Bush administration initially denied.

[c] After interrupting regular Saturday morning cartoons on January 19 to broadcast a military briefing from Saudi Arabia, Jennings and ABC became concerned about the emotional impact of the war coverage on children.

"[44] After Bill Clinton was elected president in November 1992, Jennings featured the new administration in two of his specials for children; he anchored President Clinton: Answering Children's Questions in February 1993;[45] and Kids in the Crossfire: Violence in America in November 1993, a live special from a Washington, DC, junior high school which featured Attorney General Janet Reno and rapper MC Lyte.

Reviewing the show for The Washington Post, Ken Ringle called it "an ingenue's stroll down the narrow tunnels of academic revisionism" that "purports to discover a post-World War II coverup -- a smoke screen designed to refute any suggestion that the Hiroshima bombing was anything but a military necessity.

[52] Jennings pleased some conservatives though, after his three-year lobbying effort to create a full-time religion correspondent at ABC News succeeded in the hiring of Peggy Wehmeyer in January 1994, making her the first such network reporter.

Worried, Jennings and ABC decided to cut back on international reporting and give more air time to "soft stories", in an effort to emulate the success of Nightly News.

[65] On March 29, 1999, Jennings anchored the first installment of ABC's 12-hour miniseries, The Century; production on the monumental project started in 1990, and by the time it aired, it had cost the network US$25 million.

[69] The success of the program, though, failed to transfer into any lasting change in the viewership of World News Tonight; ABC's evening newscast spent the first week of January as ratings leader, before dropping back to second place.

[71] He hosted the primetime news special The Dark Horizon: India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, which ABC broadcast on March 22, as then-President Clinton began his trip to the region.

On September 13, Jennings received more criticism — this time for hosting a forum for Middle East experts that included Palestinian Authority negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.

"And when we were working on the America project I spent a lot of time on the road, which meant away from my editor's desk, and I just got much more connected to the Founding Fathers' dreams and ideas for the future.

On April 1, 2005, he anchored World News Tonight for the last time; his failing health also prevented him from covering the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II.

On April 5, 2005, Jennings informed viewers through a taped message on World News Tonight that he had been diagnosed with a final stage of lung cancer, and was starting chemotherapy treatment the following week.

[93] Just after 11:30 pm EDT that evening, Charles Gibson broke into local news in the eastern U.S. and regular programming on ABC's western affiliates to announce Jennings's death.

[118] Television critic Tom Shales also noticed a pro-Reagan bias in Jennings's reporting, referring to ABC as "a news organization that is already considered the White House favorite" in May 1985.