The Most Trusted Man in America

“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” – A.J. Liebling, American Journalist and writer for “The New Yorker”: 1904 - 1963

Walter Cronkite (b. 1916), the gold standard for journalistic integrity for half a century, died this month in New York City aged 92. The inspiration for a generation of broadcast journalists that includes Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Brian Williams and Tim Russert, Cronkite was the epitome of professionalism and steadiness during a career that represented an “incredible window into 20th century America”.

After dropping out of college, Cronkite joined the then United Press (later UPI) in 1937 and went on to become one of America’s most respected journalists during WWII, covering key campaigns in Africa and Europe, and later the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals. After a stint in the USSR as UPI’s Moscow chief, Cronkite was recruited to join the fledgling television division of CBS News by another giant of the industry, Edward R. Murrow, himself a pioneer of broadcast journalism. At CBS, Cronkite spearheaded the network’s newly initiated television coverage of the 1952 Democratic and Republican party conventions. In fact, the term “anchor”, now part of the lexicon, was coined specifically to describe Cronkite’s role in covering political rallies and election analysis.

Cronkite’s iconic status in America and his influence on the ebb and flow of political discourse and his ability to capture the mood of the nation was cemented during his nineteen year tenure as the host of the CBS Evening News, a role he assumed in April 1962. As anchor, Cronkite covered a wide variety of historic stories that included breaking the news to the American people of the death of President Kennedy, the Apollo moon landing, the Watergate hearings and the Iran hostage crises of 1980. At the height of his influence, in 1968, Cronkite went to Vietnam to assess the war for himself. His reportage was devastating for the administration of Lyndon Johnson and brought the reality of the stalemate of the Vietnam War into every living room in the country. Cronkite’s editorial report of February 1968, in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, laid bare the reality…”To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists that have been wrong in the past. To suggest that we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could”.

At the White House, responding privately to Cronkite’s reporting to close advisors, President Johnson said “…if I’ve lost Cronkite, I have lost Middle America”. A month later Johnson announced he would not seek re-election and began a secret back channel dialogue with the Vietnamese to negotiate a peace settlement (an initiative that was compromised by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger immediately before the 1968 election).

After retiring in 1981, Cronkite went on to become a much sought after special correspondent for a number of news organizations, covering a variety of international political and cultural events as well as becoming an instantly recognizable narrator of documentaries and period pieces. Asked once what his biggest regret was, Cronkite mused…”What do I regret? Well, I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn’t make them stick. We couldn’t find a way to pass them on to another generation”. This may be the most damning indictment of the current crop of broadcast journalists, many of whom (although not all, Seymour Hersh and Keith Olbermann being among the few exceptions) are willing pawns in propagandizing the agenda of government, the Pentagon and the other vested interests that drink from the gravy trough in Washington.

Lewis Lapham, long time editor of Harper’s Magazine once wrote, “Long ago in the days before journalists became celebrities, their enterprise was reviled and poorly paid, and it was understood by working newspapermen that the presence of more than two people at their funeral could be taken as a sign that they has disgraced the profession”. Well Cronkite didn’t disgrace his profession. The difference between Cronkite and many of today’s celebrity journalists is that he dared to go places, journalistically speaking, that most of these 21st century “journalists” won’t even consider.