On the Road, Seeking American Values

More than a year before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings went “In Search of America,” his latest TV and book collaboration with Todd Brewster.

As a follow-up to their “The Century” project of 1999, the two had settled on “reviewing basic American values as set out by the Founding Fathers,” examining their relevance today, said Jennings, an immigrant Canadian.

But it was the project that gained added relevance in the wake of the attacks, and the ensuing months of American debate over issues such as patriotism, civil liberties, racism and the limits of religious tolerance.

The six-part series runs for five nights beginning Tuesday at 10 p.m., with the final two episodes airing Saturday night. Tuesday is also the publication date of the companion book put out by Hyperion, which, like ABC, is a unit of Walt Disney Co.

Books by the Big Three network anchors have become big business in recent years, ever since NBC’s Tom Brokaw touched a chord with readers with his “Greatest Generation” volumes chronicling untold American World War II stories. But this project lands at a time when the airwaves are already starting to be saturated with programming reflecting on America in the year since the attacks.

Jennings insisted that “In Search of America” is “not a 9/11 project,” adding that “we felt very strongly that the project should not be changed” in the wake of Sept. 11. But neither could the implications be ignored. Producers returned to some subjects for updating.

Jennings’ team winnowed the broad topic to six themes, explored through current-day stories. There’s a look at the debate over the teaching of evolution in Aiken, S.C., and an examination of patriotism seen through the eyes of the high school actors in a Boulder, Colo.-production of “Hair,” a musical about rebellion against authority. The Midwest is represented not through a stereotypical look at rural farmers, but by a story on Gary, Ind.’s legacy of African American governance. The controversial reintroduction of gray wolves in Idaho provides an opening to examine the debate over centralized government versus individual rights.

Just reporting the project had its complications after Sept. 11, when ABC News management insisted that Jennings not travel anyplace he couldn’t immediately return from by car. Eventually he was able to get out, and the countrywide reporting also helped inform his perspective on the national mood for his job as anchor of “World News Tonight.” Going to California, he said, made it clear that, unlike in New York, “our preoccupation with ground zero and the Pentagon was not theirs.”

On a trip to Texas, Jennings laughingly recounted how he asked someone in line for a Dallas Cowboys game if he had any gripes about the country, and the man replied, “Only you.”

Apparently, his ABC bosses disagree. After a summer of contract negotiations, Jennings, 64, is nearing completion of a new pact to remain ABC’s lead anchor for several more years. He declined to discuss details.