The only good ratings news for ABC was that it World News Tonight
with Peter Jennings had led the other nightly news programs for the
third week in a row, edging out NBC Nightly News by about 300,000
viewers.
Anchoring the World News Tonight newscast Monday night
from Dallas, where he participated in a local forum on TV news over the
weekend, Peter Jennings showed a clip of an interview with a fan at
Sunday’s Cowboys football game.
“Can you tell me how the mood is in
Dallas these days?” Jennings asked.
“Nobody likes you,” the man
responded, claiming that the media’s reporting on the war on terrorism
was unpatriotic.
Jennings commented: “Our conversation then got pretty
drained away. But I wonder how he might have felt if we’d sat down and
had a beer. My sense was that he was so angry about life that it might
not have made any difference. But it would have been interesting to
try.”
