Talk:Peter Jennings

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Featured articlePeter Jennings is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 27, 2008.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 18, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
February 22, 2007Featured article candidatePromoted
On this day...A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on August 7, 2019.
Current status: Featured article

Info cut and pasted from another source[edit]

Quite a bit is taken directly from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20050809.OBJENNINGS09/TPStory/TPObituaries/?pageRequested=3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.135.87 (talk • contribs)

Not seeing any direct cut and paste. Could you elaborate? The obituary is used as a source in multiple places, but I don't see any direct copy and pasting; any paraphrasing seems to be cited fine in the article. BuddingJournalist 14:54, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Small right-aligned boxes?[edit]

Hi all, I've added a spoken version of this article right now but noticed that the banner at the top of the talk page is just adding to the clutter. I'm no whiz with templates, so maybe someone experienced with them can use the small right aligned style rather than cluttering up the top with a ton of horizontal banners?¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 04:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely done! Was your pronunciation of Appomattox deliberate in keeping with the context of the sentence? :) BuddingJournalist 05:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well the second pronunciation of lieutenant was meant to match what Peter was quoted as saying "leftenant" was but not that choice phrase :P. I was digging everywhere yesterday and couldn't find the proper pronunciation. This morning I finally struck gold and found one by "the real deal": http://chipdoc.com/LibriVox/Appomattox.mp3 . Going to upload the correct version in a moment. If you notice any other mispronunciations (which there probably are), feel free to leave a note on my talk page :).¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 16:47, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures[edit]

This article has few pictures, and they're all terrible quality. I understand that copyrighted pictures should be low resolution, however it would be nice to have a high-quality picture for his infobox. M.nelson (talk) 01:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural bias[edit]

In the introduction, where it states that Jennings "transformed himself into one of television's most prominent journalists", would it not be better (and more correct) to state that he transformed himself into one of America's most prominent journalists, or even North America? The current version seems to make the assumption that a prominent journalist in one country is therefore prominent in the entire world. I'm sure most people in Sweden have never heard of him for example, but they also must have prominent journalists. 82.36.197.2 (talk) 13:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Someone has edited the article so that it now says "he transformed himself into one of American television's most prominent journalists." BuddingJournalist 18:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

High school dropout sentence[edit]

Where the heck is this in the body? I looked through it again and still can't find it. Aaron Schulz 01:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, I see, "Trinity College School". Aaron Schulz 01:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox[edit]

Why is the normal "infobox person" template used here and not the more specific "infobox journalist"? --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 03:31, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GED? (and other matters)[edit]

How could he have attended Carleton University without some sort of diploma? I searched for info about whether he earned a GED, and the evidence seems skim: [1]. However, he has sponsored GED awards before: [2]. So I doubt there's no good reason that he "didn't complete" his high school education. --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 21:59, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Let me preface my remarks by pointing out that this is an FA, and we should endeavor to maintain the high quality of this article.
  • Perhaps he did earn his GED, but I have a hard time reconciling that with your objection to "high-school dropout". They are not mutually exclusive. That he dropped out of high school is a well-known established fact that is backed up by interviews with Jennings and numerous reliable sources. "didn't complete" <-- why the quotations? That's nowhere in the article.
  • Your addition "After earning his GED," in the graf on his early education is misrepresenting your source; the source gives no information on when he earned his GED. The honorary degrees are probably best dealt with in the Honors section.
  • Your additions of his two stints as host of primary debates break up the narrative flow; are they really that essential and notable? If so, can they be folded into the prose more elegantly? They really make for awkward reading at the moment.
  • Finally, please be more careful to respect the formatting of existing sources. I have done so for the first few; can you take care of the last two? BuddingJournalist 02:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's no problem here at all. Jennings took a single night school course. Many universities (Carleton included) offer relaxed admission standards for people taking one or two courses (sometimes referred to as "special student" status). It wouldn't even be necessary to take a GED. -Dhodges (talk) 20:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK I'll accept that he's best known as "high school dropout". For now it's not verifiable whenever Jennings ever earned a GED, but I still have doubts over how ABC News could've employed someone lacking a diploma/GED. But that's a whole other story. Why do you oppose the use of the citation templates though? --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 21:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't oppose citation templates. I oppose inconsistent formatting of references. The citations in this article don't use citation templates, so any new material/citations should follow whatever citation style is employed for consistency's sake. BuddingJournalist 22:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Got that. Thanks. In the meantime I expanded Jennings' activities in 2000 for more context. --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 23:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Anchored "until his death"?[edit]

Honestly, that's the wrong way to frame his career in the lead. Jennings retired in April, four months before his death, right? Thus, I'm rewording it. --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 00:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, he didn't. He never officially "retired". His intent was to leave the chair to pursue treatment in the hopes that he would be able to return. Please base your changes on facts; do some research if you're unsure. BuddingJournalist 02:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK I was wrong, the NY Times quoted Jennings as saying he still wanted to anchor. --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 06:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We should somewhere explain that Mr. Jennings first began smoking at age 13 or 14 and was a heavy smoker because many readers will wonder why someone who quited 20 years ago got lung cancer.--210.2.177.245 (talk) 05:02, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Jennings FBI File Declassified (never been released before)[edit]

I wanted to send a quick note to the editors of this page. I was able to get the FBI to declassify Peter Jennings' FBI File. The PDF file direct is located here: http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/fbifiles/journalists/peterjennings-FBI1.pdf [61 Pages, 28.4MB] and the archive page, along with many other prominent journalists and their own FBI files, is located here: http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/fbi-files-journalists/

Thought you all might find it of interest.

Avidresearcher9999 (talk) 07:55, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Failed verification for archive link to 9/11 article[edit]

I've added {{dead link}} after the footnote (currently footnote 76) in the subsection Peter Jennings#September 11, second paragraph, after the second sentence, which currently reads: "Jennings was criticized by Rush Limbaugh among others for commenting about President George W. Bush on-air: "Where is the president of the United States? ... I know we don't know where he is, but pretty soon the country needs to know where he is."" The footnote leads to a cite web template with a Wayback Machine archive link as well as the original link to a November 19, 2001 interview with Peter Jennings by Ed Bark of the Dallas Morning News, under the title "Turning the tables". It says the link was retrieved June 24, 2018 (presumably referring to the archive link, and actually meaning June 25, which was the only archive capture of that page from 2018). Currently both of the links are broken, including the archived one. The original link goes to the DallasNews.com's "Page Not Found" screen, and the Wayback Machine link goes to an Archive.org page saying "Hrm. The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL." I noticed on the archive link, the "URL" whose archive it says it's attempting to locate is not actually the same original DallasNews.com link in the footnote. It seems by attempting to query the archive for that DallasNws.com URL, the Wayback Machine inadvertently gets redirected automatically to a new URL: http://signin.dallasnews.com/servlet/UserProfile?fw=http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/STORY.ea437538a6.b0.af.0.a4.d967f.html -- which prefixes the original URL with DallasNews.com's sign-in and account system. The real original URL is just http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/STORY.ea437538a6.b0.af.0.a4.d967f.html. But if you try pasting that directly into the Wayback Machine, it turns up 23 different snapshots of that Nov 19, 2001 interview link -- none of which work. I checked every single one, including the one captured the day it came out (Nov 19, 2001), the 8 others captured that same month (November 2001), the one the editor who posted the archive link presumably retrieved it from (June 25, 2018), and the most recent capture on February 24, 2021 (a date the archive says it has 2 snapshots from, but a link to only 1 - taken at 13:54:23 - is present). Every single one of these archive links either directs to three different eras of DallasNews.com's "Page not found" or "Something went wrong" screens, or to Wayback Machine's "The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL" page (again, now with the searched-for URL now suddenly saying http://signin.dallasnews.com/servlet/UserProfile?fw= at the start, but again, even if you remove that stuff, it still takes you nowhere). I could not find any archived version of this link anywhere online using any of the alternative archiving services recommended in Wikipedia:List of web archives on Wikipedia, Help:Archiving a source, Wikipedia:Citing sources#Preventing and repairing dead links, or Wikipedia:Link rot (not counting the ones behind a paywall or requiring installation), including Mementos, Archive.today, WebCitation.org, Megalodon, Google Cache, Ghost Archive, WikiWix, CachedView.nl, or Archive-It.org. Now, we know this Dallas Morning News interview did actually exist and was on the internet, since it's quoted at length in the archived blog "CyberAlert" of right-wing watchdog Media Research Center in its post on November 20, 2001, the day after the article came out, and the blog includes a link to the exact same DallasNews.com page present in our failed citation footnote. However, the blog entry does not include the full article, including any mention of Rush Limbaugh, so that doesn't verify our citation fully (since the Wiki article has that citation after "Jennings was criticized by Rush Limbaugh among others") and beside I'm not sure if the MRC's "CyberAlert" blog quoting a newspaper article is a valid trustworthy source on its own, so this is still missing a citation. Now we know that Peter Jennings did make the remarks he's quoted as saying, the remarks alone are cited in several other sources including a PBS Frontline documentary, the Tweets of Bush's old press secretary Ari Fleischer, and a CNN compilation of news clips from 9/11 featuring Jenning's remarks in the video section under 11:17pm, occurring at about 0:18 into the video. So we know Jennings said what he did, we can imagine there was backlash, but other than the now seemingly completely vanished DallasNews.com article, we have now source for that fact, especially anything about Rush Limbaugh, other than a partial quote of the article which doesn't mention Limbaugh or any noteworthy media figures criticizing Jennings. The excerpts do mention Jennings got some negative viewer feedback appearing on WFAA-TV in Dallas around that time, and it has a link to an .RAM video file reportedly showing some of this WFAA segment (which I can't open since I haven't had RealPlayer on my computer in about 20 years) as well as a link to the full WFAA broadcast on their website, which is now a dead link, although that link does appear captured on Wayback Machine (starting with November 26, 2001), it still says "(Real Player Required)" and shows no link. And if you do a simple Google search for Jennings' quote "pretty soon the country needs to know where he is" + "Limbaugh", you'll currently find only 6 results, all of them either being the Wikipedia Peter Jennings article here, copies of Wikipedia's text on Jennings, or the MRC CyberAlert which mentions Limbaugh in the context of criticizing another statement by ABC News president David Westin, but nothing about Limbaugh regarding Peter Jennings. So unless we can find some other sources or achivings, or someone can figure out how to play these RealPlayer files and by some luck they provide all the same information that was in the DallasNews.com article, this is a failed verification. I added {{dead link}} after the closing </ref> tag in the footnote so it will say [dead link] in-line, after the [76] footnote, because if I put it inside the tag it just says [dead link] at the end of the footnote entry itself, which since it's an archived link citation, doesn't convey which of the 2 links it's referring to as dead. To clarify, I added (Dead link) in the web citation itself, at the beginning of the field for the publication title so that it shows up immediately after the archived link, to make it clear which link I'm referring to. This may not have been the proper way to do all this, but it seems to me the clearest and most accurate and practical, so let me know if there is a better way to go about any of this. At the moment the citation looks like this: 

Bark, Ed (November 19, 2001). "Turning the tables". (Dead link.) The Dallas Morning News. Archived from the original on November 20, 2001. Retrieved June 24, 2018.

and the wiki article line in question looks like this: 

Jennings was criticized by Rush Limbaugh among others for commenting about President George W. Bush on-air: "Where is the president of the United States? ... I know we don't know where he is, but pretty soon the country needs to know where he is."[76][dead link]

VolatileChemical (talk) 10:48, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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