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Tavis: Glad to have you on, actually, can you turn the camera-- get a good shot of this. This is my, you see me wear a pocket square most nights, and it's usually not this fancy. Right before we came on the air, I want you to know that Peter Jennings pulled out my pocket square and personally designed this for me. This is a Peter Jennings creation. Maybe there's some work in there for you. You want to do a lot of pocket squares here?

Jennings: Can I tell you a pocket handkerchief story?

Tavis: Please tell me.

Jennings: When I came back from overseas 20 years ago, you know, I was going out on tour like you did. You went out and talked to local stations, and I went to a local station somewhere in the Midwest. And the guy did the interview about getting the job, and then finally he said, I just have to say something really serious to you. And I said yes, and thought, Oh God, what's he going to ask me about these? And he said. You know, you brought pocket squares back to America. And he pulled out his handkerchief, I laughed like hell.

Tavis: So how did you, how, before we get serious here, how'd you learn to do this?

Jennings: I, you know, I was surrounded by a couple of guys who thought I wasn't well enough dressed when I got into television, so somebody said, 'Just make it cash.' Just stick it in there.

Tavis: Well, let me ask you and I said one silly question, two silly questions. So speaking of attire before we move to the serious stuff, you got to, you do a new show every night.

Jennings: Right.

Tavis: I watch you most nights. And you never appear to wear the same thing.

Jennings: What do you do on the other nights?

Tavis: The other nights--I'm sleeping the other nights. I'm not watching the other guys. I'm always watching you, Mr. Jennings, always watching you. So how do you pick your clothes? I get asked this all the time.

Jennings: Oh, sure.

Tavis: Do you pick what you're going to wear by moods, by days, by, how do you keep a rhythm over the course of 365 days?

Jennings: I sometimes get really bored with clothes, like today I'm wearing Chinos. And sometimes I, you know, I think, if I've got to travel, I want a blazer and a pair or grey flannels. I've been fascinated with these new shirts that you don't have to press. I took a shirt you don't have to press to Baghdad recently. And I hung it up at the end of the first day and it was--it was great. So I wore it again the second day. Man, this shirt looks terrific. I wore it the third day, and I opened it and it was black inside. I don't take it very seriously. Roone Arledge, who was our great boss at ABC, you know, he always insisted that we wear dark jackets, even though we dress, you know, his Olympic commentators in orange.

Tavis: Right.

Jennings: And he always insisted we wear blue. You didn't want to distract people with your clothes. That was the only issue. But you were not in the news business to be dandies, right?

Tavis: When I grow up I want to dress just like you, so I'm glad to know these stories from you about haberdashery.

Jennings: So we've had our silly conversation.

Tavis: We've had our silly conversation, now on to the serious stuff. You've been doing this for a while now. Is this, I mentioned on our show the other night, this convention is 40 years after Fannie Lou Hamer fought.

Jennings: Yeah. I remember the Mississippi (inaudible) delegation.

Tavis: Absolutely, she fought to get those African American members, two of them seated, as part of the Mississippi delegation in '64, and I raise that to you because, this convention 40 years ago, was in Atlantic City, here on the east coast, it was a big Kennedy who was involved in that convention, and, that year, a guy named Peter Jennings, 40 years ago, was just starting at ABC.

Jennings: I realize that.

Tavis: What do you recall about that 40 years ago?

Jennings: Well, I remember that the biggest story of the day, of course, was civil rights. I had just arrived from Canada. I was hardly in New York for 10 minutes, and someone put me on a plane to go to Jackson, Mississippi, where I discovered the Mississippi Freedom Party and, you know, like many, many other reporters when they came to Atlantic City, they were a huge story for us. I think what was enormous, in retrospect from my own point of view, was that it was beginning, the civil rights movement was beginning to be seen on television at the dinner hour. So the whole country was beginning to participate in what was happening in Mississippi and Alabama. A little bit before in Birmingham, '63, and to some extent...

Tavis: Bombingham, as they called it then.

Jennings: Oh, we called in Bombingham in '64 I'll tell you.

Tavis: Right.

Jennings: And it was a frightening city. Atlanta was a fairly frightening city, though not as frightening as the outskirts of Atlanta. And Jackson, strangely enough, was one of the places reporters felt most comfortable, and there were a lot of us around, and perhaps some of the Mississippians were more accustomed to us. But when the Mississippi delegation came and tried to be seated in Atlantic City, it was, it was just so, such an intense struggle for the Democratic Party. So to see Miss Barnes here at this convention 40 years later is just to, to be allowed to recognize that, dammit, the country did change, though it took a heck of a long time to do so.

Tavis: Yeah. Speaking of change, you knew we couldn't have this conversation without me raising this issue. Forty years ago there was news at that convention. Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the biggest stories, there was news 40 years ago, a lot of folk argue, there ain't much news coming out of these conventions these days. And that's why you all, the big three networks, don't spend a lot of time covering these things. What do you make of the fact that these conventions don't make news the way they used to?

Jennings: I think they bring out our split personality to some extent. They don't make much news. They're not designed to make that news. The news is made in a much more democratic way as you know as well as I do, in the caucuses and the primaries. And in some respects, that's very good for the political system. So when people call these, as they sometimes do, infomercials for the candidate, it's not such a bad description. But those of us who are inculcated with the love of politics and of the democratic process want to come here anyway. I walked down the floor the other night. You know, it just looks mostly like any other convention we've been to, but you breathe it in quite deeply, and you say, oh, that's why I'm here. At the same it is an opport--yes it is a target of opportunity for us to try to define the Party, to try to define the candidate, to see how the Party wants to define itself and the candidate. So, in other words, you can make news here, we can discover news here, even if the Party's intention is not to make any news, except that which is celebratory for their candidate.

Tavis: One can argue I think, I don't know whether one would be right or wrong in making the argument, but one, it seems to me, could argue that the networks are bored with these conventions, my word not yours, clearly. Bored with these conventions, given the fact that they spend less time covering them. I raise that because, I want to ask you, whether or not as one who does the covering, you are bored covering these things 40 years later. Are you still excited about these conventions, I mean, because they are so scripted?

Jennings: Well, of course, I'm excited about it, and I'm very lucky at ABC because, this year, we've tried this revolutionary experiment to go gavel-to-gavel but to do it on digital television.

Tavis: Yeah, a lot of folk are tuning in.

Jennings: And to put it on the Internet. So I'm, in some respects, doing what I did with David Brinkley for several years, before David died sadly. Sitting there and anchoring a convention in the fullest sense of the world as Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley did before us, and we did until, you know, fifteen years ago. I don't think the networks are bored about it. I just think they have different realities. I mean, and they've been reaffirmed to some extent this time. The audiences on the network television this week, for this convention, is lower than it was four years ago, quite significantly lower than it was four years ago. Even though people are telling the polls all the time, this is the most significant election of their lives, and that 70 percent of the people are following the election campaign very closely. I don't quite get that.

Tavis: Right.

Jennings: So I'm not sure 'bored' is the right word. I think the networks just have a sense of commercial reality, and it's sometimes inconsistent with those of us in the news division, and such is life. It's not the first time and not the last.

Tavis: This is not a fair question to you, but forgive me for asking it with that preface, I'm going to ask it anyway. Juxtapose for me, if you can, though, the fact that many of the people who run these networks think that people are less interested--or certainly less news is being made--but I saw the ratings the other day, just in an article. I don't follow ratings, but I read this article that pointed out that PBS' ratings, Jim Lehrer is doing three hours a night, PBS ratings were up 30 percent night one, from where they were four years ago. So somebody is tuning in obviously, to these things.

Jennings: Oh, I think, oh I didn't mean to suggest for a second that people aren't tuning in.

Tavis: I'm not suggesting you were suggesting that, but anyway.

Jennings: They're tuning in to other places.

Tavis: Right.

Jennings: I mean, there is a very committed political audience in the country today, which will go where it can get gavel-to-gavel coverage, which makes good sense for them to go to C-SPAN, to go to public television, where they know they're going to get this at length. I think it's one of the reasons we've had, to my great surprise I must say, such a huge turn-in to our coverage on the Internet. I really did think I might be talking to eight people and a goat. The truth of the matter is, there's been a big turn-in. So I don't want to say the networks got it wrong, because somehow our audience doesn't suggest that we've got it wrong. But there is some confusion out there in the land about who's interested and who's watching, and I don't fully understand it.

Tavis: What's your sense of, I've heard a couple of swipes made at the news media, those of us in this business since I've been here.

Jennings: Has anybody told you to 'shove it' lately?

Tavis: I get told that everyday by somebody.

Jennings: Likewise, so I do not think, I do not think when Mrs. Kerry tells someone to 'shove it,' that's it's a big surprise.

Tavis: You've got to come a whole lot stronger at me, than telling me 'shove it.' I get a lot worse than that everyday. But what do you make of the criticism leveled at the media, since the issue of Iraq has been raised a number of times at this convention, that the media really gave the Bush administration a pass, that those of us in this business didn't ask the right questions, didn't ask tough enough questions, didn't ask, quite frankly, enough questions to get at the real heart of this story about what the President knew and when he knew it and what the information was, that we just really dropped the ball on this?

Jennings: Well, I'm going to give you a very self-serving interest, because I don't think ABC news is included in that criticism. We gave the Bush administration a very difficult time before the war in terms of asking very deliberate questions on a very regular basis both on 'World News Tonight' and certainly on 'Nightline.' And it is interesting that, at the time, we were described quite widely in the country as being unpatriotic. In general terms, I think, even though I'm very proud of what we did at ABC, in general terms, I think it's fair to say that we were not curious enough. We didn't push enough. We didn't take, for example, and again, I think we did this, I'm trying to generalize now, that we didn't take Colon Powell's speech at the United Nations and examine it as closely as we should have. And we examined fairly it closely. So yes, I think every time the media looks back, in general, at some great event in which the country has become involved, I think we almost invariably find that we can do better.

Tavis: What is, if there is one, what is the biggest difference you've noticed over 40 years in covering Democratic Conventions versus Republican Conventions, and that's deliberately a vague question?

Jennings: Man, this is going to take us back to the foolishness from whence we began.

Tavis: Okay.

Jennings: Republicans dress...

Tavis: Great place to end.

Jennings: Republicans dress sharper. There's just no, I was thinking.

Tavis: They've got more money. They can afford nicer threads.

Jennings: I was just, you said it, I was just saying, thinking it on the floor last night. I was also thinking of the Democratic Convention here in Boston, they are trying so hard to be together. They are so bound by their, by their antipathy to George Bush, and so bound by their determination. But the Democratic Party, I like the Democratic Party when it's really messy. You know, reporters like Democrats better than Republicans only in one respect. Democrats leak more than Republicans...

Tavis: They talk more, huh. They talk more and...

Jennings: They are working hard at this convention in Boston, or they were working hard at this convention in Boston, to be together.

Tavis: Yeah, let me, let me, let me close with this. What do you still like most; this is a soft ball, what do you like most about doing this, all these years later? And I ask that because the competition at the network news level is so stiff now that any given day, ABC can win, or NBC can win, and it's so stiff. What do you still like about this and what specifically, I mean, I'm trying to figure out, you know, other than the personality sitting in the chair, how do you win on one night versus, or one week, or one ratings period versus another ratings period? What makes that difference?

Jennings: Well, I don't really think I know the answer to that. I think you win or lose over long periods of time. As you pointed out, I've been doing this for twenty years, and I think, over 20, 30 years in some cases, now people come to trust in a news organization, not just a single person. I think people trust ABC news because we're something of a collective and have sort of a collective responsibility. What I love about doing it everyday is getting to be, you know, truly, truly middle age, and realize I still have something to learn and be excited about it every day. And it's, you know, I get to go and I get a seat in the front row, everyday. Here we get to have a seat in the front row. I mean, can you think of anything else you'd rather do?

Tavis: No.

Jennings: Can you think of anything else you're qualified to do?

Tavis: No.

Jennings: That's also part of my problem.

Tavis: Well, I'm glad you're still there. I'm glad you're still doing it 20 years later, and you're teaching the rest of us young guys how to dress appropriately. So thank you Mr. Jennings.

Jennings: Nice to see you Tavis.

Tavis: Nice to see you. That's our show for tonight here in Boston. That's our show for this week in Boston. We had a great time covering this convention. We'll be, of course, at the Republican Convention with our Republican friends later this month, in August. Thanks for watching. Good night from Boston. We'll see you back next time in Los Angeles and, as always, keep the faith.