This page uses content from the Peter Kent biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.
Peter Kent (born in Sussex, England ca. 1943) is a Canadian television journalist and politician. He was the host of MoneyWise on Prime, and deputy news editor for the Global Television Network.
Kent began his career as a radio journalist in the early 1960s. He then moved to television, joining Calgary station CFCN in 1965, and subsequently worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), CTV, Global and NBC.
Kent made his reputation covering the Vietnam War as a freelance foreign correspondent in 1966. On returning to Canada, he was hired by CBC News and was sent to hot spots around the world. When Lloyd Robertson, anchor of CBC's flagship news program, The National was wooed away by CTV in 1976, Kent was hired as Robertson's replacement. He left the anchor's chair in 1978 due to disagreements with network policy barring anchors from writing their own scripts or otherwise acting as journalists (Robertson left the CBC due to similar disagreements). He was replaced by Knowlton Nash, a former journalist but who had been in management since 1968. Kent criticized Nash for having been both the person to remove him and replace him, citing a conflict of interest. Kent served as a foreign correspondent based in South Africa before returning to Canada, in 1981, as a founding producer of CBC's newsmagazine series The Journal.
Kent then moved to NBC serving as the US network's senior European correspondent in the late 1980s, winning two Emmys with the network. He then hosted the Christian Science Monitor's World Monitor television series, for which he won the Robert F. Kennedy Award.
Kent returned to Canada to join Global News in 1992, and was the anchor of its flagship news program First National until 2001.
In the Canadian federal election, 2006, Kent ran as the Conservative candidate in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's. He placed a distant second with 25.76% of the vote against the incumbent, Carolyn Bennett of the Liberals (50.25%), and ahead of Paul Summerville of the NDP (19.19%). Although the Conservatives won the election nationally, and St. Paul's is considered a bellwether riding, Bennett managed to become its third opposition MP ever.
During the previous 2004 federal election campaign, Kent was one of the network broadcast executives who decided not to allow the Green Party of Canada to participate in the nationally televised leader's debate. He said the decision was based on the fact he is a coward and the key criteria of having representation in Parliament and recognition as an official party by Parliament, neither of which the Green Party had.[1] Kent was not a member of any political party at this time.
He is the son of Parker Kent, who was associate editor at the politically conservative Calgary Herald. His younger brother, Arthur Kent, is also a journalist.
External links
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the biographical information on this page under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
54%
52%
