On Walkter Cronkite

Last Friday an old journalist died. Truthfully, I’m not sure why this bothers me. When Walter Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News for the last time on March 6, 1981, I hadn’t yet celebrated my second birthday. Hell, when he covered The Battle of the Bulge for the United Press my own grandfather was only sixteen. It just seems odd to me that I am even thinking about it. Sure, for the world at large, he was an icon, but my world was Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings. Uncle Walter didn’t visit me as often as he had my parents and grandparents.
Sure I suppose he was still there, contributing to CBS occasionally, as well as NPR, CNN, and The Huffington Post, though truthfully, I’m not sure that he has been on CNN (with the exception of maybe being a guest on Larry King Live) since I’ve watched it, and his appearances in print and radio media just aren’t quite the same. Honestly, my feelings on The Huffington Post are mixed, and while NPR is probably a better place to get your news than CBS, can you imagine how different Cronkite’s report of Kennedy’s assassination would have been over the radio rather than on television?
Sure we would have still heard the the emotion in his voice, but to actually watch the look on his face as he read, “From Dallas, Texas. The flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1:00 pm, central standard time.” The visuals of seeing the removal of his glasses after this, as he looked up at someone working in the newsroom. You can tell at that moment, he was at a loss for words. “2:00 eastern standard time, some thirty-eight minutes ago.” Then putting his glasses back on, he looked down at the papers on his desk. For a moment, he can’t even look at his audience. He looks as if he is going to cry but fights to maintain composure.
“Vice President Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has preceded,” he said, while nervously playing with his glasses. This was a time when there were only two other television networks for people to get this information from. Imagaine the pressure on him that evening, in having to report the death of a very popular President. His glasses almost seemed like a defense mechanism for him. It was as if they were a way for him to temporarily hide his face from the audience watching across the nation. Uncle Walter had to seem strong for America. He, even more than Vice President Johnson, had the ability and the power to make Americans feel as if everything was going to be okay at that moment. It was Cronkite’s job to look calm for an entire nation, and while he was visibly shaken by the news of Kennedy’s death, he maintained his composure. Finally, he removed his glasses, and said, “But presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the thirty-sixth President of the United States.” Of course, the most striking thing about watching this video, is how unsensationalistic it seems. Cronkite’s coverage of Kennedy’s death should be used a text book model for how to cover a story like this.
Since Cronkite’s death, we have heard about how President Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America,” after Cronkite declared the Vietnam War unwinnable on the February 27, 1968 broadcast of the CBS Evening News. We no longer live in a world where journalists have the power to keep our politicians in check. Since Fox News premiered in 1996, we have heard their talking heads scream and cry foul at every move made by Presidents Clinton and Obama, and we have heard the hysterical rants of Keith Olbermann concerning President Bush on MSNBC. Cronkite’s power was that he remained mostly non-partisan. His job was to to report the news, fairly and accurately, and his skill at doing this is why his special commentary on Vietnam held so much power.
I guess this sort of begs the question for me of how would the current generation have reacted to Walter Cronkite if he were still sitting behind the news desk today? Would we have abandoned him as an obsolete model and changed the channel to watch Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann with their cameramen positioned outside of the offices of Michael Jackson’s doctor? Would Cronkite have even spent as much time covering the Jackson story as the modern media has? How much time would he have given to Anna Nicole Smith or O.J. Simpson? The modern news world is not the same game that Cronkite played.
On a recent appearance at The Daily Show, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams said that when he was a child, he wanted to be Walter Cronkite when he grew up. Type some variance of the phrase “wanted to be Walter Cronkite” into Google, and numerous blogs and magazine articles will pop up, with their authors essentially saying the same thing. I suppose that if you think about all of the novelists who claim that they want to be the next Updike or Faulkner, or all of the bands who claim to be highly influenced by The Beatles, it sort of makes sense why no modern journalist has been able to do what Cronkite did. Journalism is, after all, an art, like music and literature. How can anyone be expected to top what has been set as the standard of the best? Still, with all of the conservative and liberal bias that runs rampant through the modern media, it would be nice to see our modern journalists at least try.
When Cronkite was once asked if he had any regrets, he said, “Well, I regret that in our attempts to establish some standards, we didn’t make them stick. We couldn’t find a way to pass them on to another generation.” That, unfortunately, is the way it is.