The Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution is an annual event hosted by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and funded by the Annenberg Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Its mission is to help both professional journalists and students who aim to be professional journalists understand constitutional issues more deeply. It is hoped that through that discovery, the Project participants and, in turn, those who are or will be touched by their work, will see that the constitutional discussion is not limited to the domain of the court system, academic exchange, and the introductory experience of high school civics classes. Instead, constitutionalism reaches into the fabric of daily life.
The Project is named for Peter Jennings, the late, long-time anchor and editor of ABC News “World News Tonight,” who was a friend of the National Constitution Center and who, in what would be the last years of his life, developed a deep fascination for the American founding document. It was that fascination which eventually led Jennings, a Canadian native, to become a citizen of the United States at the age of 65.
Before he was struck ill, part of the mission that Peter crafted for himself was to bring the kind of constitutional conversation we describe above to his viewers and readers and to do so in a way commensurate with the enthusiasm he felt for the historic human achievement represented by the American Constitution. It is to that unfinished mission that the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution is dedicated.
