Walter Cronkite, the face and voice of CBS news from 1962 until 1981, has passed away.
CBS vice president Linda Mason says Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m this evening with his family at his bedside.
In 1972 Walter Cronkite was voted “The most trusted man in America” and rightfully so during that time.
Mr. Cronkite was the voice most of us heard when we found out that JFK had died. Those of us with television access saw the tears well and fall from his eyes during the announcement. We watched him again as he struggled with MLK, then RFK’s assassinations. Heck, we watched him faithfully even when there was nothing newsworthy.
He commented almost nightly on the Viet Nam War, dared to show pictures and footage. He showed us glimpses of Woodstock, and tried to tell us about the dangers of drugs, particularly heroin. He pulled no punches over Watergate or the Iranian crisis. The man was just there, like a good, protective parent…trying to inform his brood about the concerns of our time.
He had a profound impact on my generation. I will never forget the night in 1971 when he was discussing a possible link between heroin addicted pregnant women and their babies. I was pregnant then, sipping a vodka martini, and after listening to him explain what he knew, I wondered if my baby was getting drunk from my martini. I was stunned when I couldn’t find out the answer that night. But that story sent me on a mission to find out.
( For those very few that don’t know, yes, alcohol gets in your babies bloodstream…don’t drink while pregnant ).
Walter Cronkite signed off each night with “that’s the way it is on”…month…date…year and there was something familiar and comforting in that statement.
Do you have a favorite Walter Cronkite memory/story/ anecdote, that you’d care to share with the young folks that read here? Feel free to tell us.
Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America”, has died . And that’s the way it is, on Friday. July 17. 2009.
Goodnight, Sir. Rest in Peace.
July 17th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Cronkite was a liberal socialist who twisted the news to fit the social and political world-views of both himself and his marxist bosses at CBS. Long before NBC and ABC became known for the liberal bias that characterizes their news coverage today, CBS led the way in creating news insteading reporting on it–primarily because of Cronkite. The man who made his reputation as a pristine journalist was actually a consummate fraud.
July 17th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
To the above poster;
With all due respect… I say bull sh1t!
Go back to the fox channel because we all know “they” always tell the truth. And I have a bridge to sell you too. Cheap.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
A piece of history has died today. Yes he did have some liberal beliefs, but still he was a piece of history. Now I’m just waiting for Carter to kick the bucket.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I was going to rip the guy like ulysses did, but since he just died I’ll let him RIP.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Oh wait we have at least 30 years for Carter to die. I mean he’s in his late 40s and he’s in office now.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
You know is it just me or are these celebrities dropping like flies.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
I guess I’m remembering the only comforting voice to come out of the 60’s and 70’s. No, he wasn’t perfect, but I always felt he spoke the truth, and was one of *us*, even though he was so much older.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
JoAnne, its cool, I understand that. However,I think he sold us out to the VC and is primarily responsible for rabble rousing the public to the point where we held back against the VC when we had them on the ropes. A lot of soldiers died because of that, and that is unforgivable.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Bryan, the draft probably contributed a little more than Mr. Cronkite.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
No no no, ulyssesmsu, Walter Cronkite was a COMMUNIST. No, a FASCIST. No, wait a minute. You’re right. He was a SOCIALIST. Oh heck. I guess he was EVERYTHING.
But there’s one thing I think he wasn’t: as A$$, like you are.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
[...] Newsbusters has major obits Huffpo, just keep scrolling Rightpundits: Cronkite’s Legacy Remarks on Death of Cronkite Radio Patriot: Recalls meeting Cronkite Jon Podhoretz The Swamp [...]
July 18th, 2009 at 5:02 am
Walter Cronkite was certainly left of center and was sympathetic to a one world government. But until very late in life, I can truly say he was a professional, true journalist, and did not, to my knowledge, give us slanted press. He reported what I believe was facts. And much in the FOX network style, He reported and let you decide. A true gentleman and an Icon of my life that was there to report from the onset of electronic media the most important,provacative and apealing events. My life to date had only included WC.Good Day and God bless. That is truely the way it is, this day July 18th 2009.
Brian J.
July 18th, 2009 at 6:00 am
“I was pregnant then, sipping a vodka martini, and after listening to him explain what he knew, I wondered if my baby was getting drunk from my martini.”
It took Walter Cronkite to get you to think about if drinking affects your unborn baby? My mother smoked while I was down there, and she says things like “we didn’t know that smoking was bad” and “we didn’t know that it would affect the baby”. Where do you think that the baby gets it’s food from, a little ShopRight that grew in the placenta? I know that it was a different age, but I didn’t know that you were cavemen! So, yeah! The baby eats what you eat.
Jeez.
July 18th, 2009 at 6:13 am
“The most trusted man in America” and rightfully so during that time.
Ummm… Not so much.
Cronkite worked very hard at portraying himself as an objective journalist, and deceived millions of us for years.
Only later in life did he let his STATIST politics out of the bag in anything like an honest manner. Prior to that, of course, many of us had figured it out for ourselves, all the while being told that there was no bias in the broadcast monopoly.
Trusted…? NO. Not honest, not trustWORTHY…YES. Essentially, like most STATISTS the man was a liar.
July 18th, 2009 at 6:31 am
hope this takes the spotlight off the dead pervert that wears one glove
July 18th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Gawd, what absolutely clueless and nasty vitriol coming out from right wing morons about Cronkite. You history-ignorant schmucks either have forgotten or don’t want to remember how much both the US public and news media was lied to by the US government and especially the Pentagon about anything and everything Southeast Asia related during those days. While the Tet Offensive indeed ended as a big military defeat for the Viet Cong, that they were able to launch such a huge, bold offensive made a complete lie of what the US military had been telling people. That made Cronkite and other news people justifiably skeptical about the whole killing-fields, clusterf*ck enterprise, and they ended up being much more correct in the end about what was really going on than the bitter boneheads now calling Cronkite a traitor or worse.
July 18th, 2009 at 6:54 am
From the Washington post this morning;
“In 1968, after the surprise Tet Offensive of the Communist North Vietnamese, Cronkite went to Southeast Asia for a firsthand look at the war. His reports on the “Evening News” and in a half-hour special were instrumental in turning the tide of American public opinion against U.S. policy.
“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past,” he said, casting doubt in the minds of millions of Americans on official versions of the war. Cronkite’s viewers were certain that he would never lie to them, and the White House and the Department of Defense did not command that level of credibility.
President Lyndon B. Johnson was widely quoted as having told aides, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
What’s-his-name wants to shoot the messenger..
By now you’d think even the most ignorant republican would understand that the U.S. policy about Viet Nam was flawed, to say the least. It was all about the money folks. The powers that be didn’t give a rusty rats ass about the people, either the poor souls dieing in the rice paddies, or those of us watching the bodies arriving back home on TV, untill they began to swell the tides of angry citizens marching in the streets in cities and towns everywhere. The war ended when the politicians remembered there were more of US than there were of them.
The republican rhetoric now, against our president, makes me wonder about the IQ level of my fellow Americans. Such a short attention span, did they all ride the short bus to school? Don’t they understand that it was the Bush administration that screwed the country while they lined their own pockets? It’s all about the money. War is big business.
World war II was the last legitimate war. I am old enough to remember Cronkite on the radio reporting on Korea. And that’s the way it was.
No one in news reporting can hold a candle to the man today. We only hear what the government wants us to hear. Who really cares about the sex lives of politicians? That is between husbands and wives. I want to know where the money is spent. I want to know in depth why our sons and daughters are being maimed and killed in foreign lands. I want to know why people in MY country are homeless and hungry. I seriously want to know why AIG can give six figure bonuses, paid for by tax dollars, while schools/education system is suffering for lack of funds. I want to know how the medical system in this country is so screwd up? Oh, Wait, I forgot, it’s all about the money. Ask me about my friend Rita who’s bone cancer was cured in Europe for free… and she didn’t have to lose any limbs either.
FYI check out Germanys medical system. It may be the very best in the world.
July 18th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Walter Cronkite is dead and I extend my sympathy to this relatives and friends who grieve. As for me, I cannot find it in myself to mourn his passing. I watched his version of the news constantly, recalling his famous closing line “and that’s the way it is.” The problem is, as I learned later, that’s not the way it was.
Walter Cronkite was labeled – I don’t know by whom, probably the marketing department at CBS News - as “the most trusted man in America.” He, and many others, used that trust to create an aura around the news business that it has taken literally decades to reveal as a false front. At a time when information was one-way and media outlets were severely limited in number, the version of reality that was reflected by Walter Cronkite shaped public opinion so massively that opposing opinions stood no chance. That is why it was Walter Cronkite who ended America’s quest for victory in Viet Nam.
When Lyndon Johnson said that “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” He recognized a political truth. Consider this.
In mid-February, in the immediate aftermath of the Tet Offensive, both Gallup and Harris noted a surge in American support for the war. Both pollsters said 61% of Americans favored a stronger military response against the North Vietnamese Army. 70% of Americans favored increased bombing of North Vietnamese targets, which was up from 63% in the previous December.
Then came Cronkite’s February 27 commentary.
To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest 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.
In early March, just a few days later, 49% of Americans said it was a mistake to have entered the Vietnam conflict. Only 35% believed the war would end within two years. 69% now approved of a phased withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.*
The political power Cronkite wielded was acknowledged not just by Lyndon Johnson - who effectively ceded control of America’s war policy to a news commentator - but is acknowledged by his cohorts in the news business:
It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” CBS News president Sean McManus said in a statement. “More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments.”
Repeat that in your mind: “He guided America.” And employee of CBS news “guided America.” This is not a brief for Lyndon Johnson or the literal crooks and clowns who inhabit the house and senate, but the power that Cronkite wielded over America is troubling to me.
From the same article we are reminded that Cronkite had a team. And who was on that team? Eric Severeid, Daniel Schorr, Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Mike Wallace. See anyone there who you would recognize as a Conservative voice? Neither do I. Today Daniel Schorr delivers diatribes against the Right from his sinecure at NPR and Dan Rather maintains that it was those damn Right Wingers who smeared him by exposing his phony Bush papers story.
Cronkite, it was said, “did not editorialize often.” Well, let’s put it this way, he did not come out and say “this is my opinion.” But his way of editorializing is the same craft that the media used in his time and ever since: selective use of facts, the omission of this story, the emphasis on that story, all used to weave a version of reality that people believed about the world around them beyond the reach of their five senses.
Walter Cronkite gained immense power and, in my opinion used that power badly to advance his personal wealth and his personal ideology. There’s a lot of money to be made if you are the “most trusted man in America.” And you can convince a lot of people that “that’s the way it is” if they believe you.
The healthiest thing for American democracy has been the internet, having broken the death-grip that the mainstream media have had on American perspectives of reality. Had Walter Cronkite lived with the internet, his title and his sign off line would have been laughed at.
Rest in peace.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
This clown lived about 50 years longer than he should have. Bryan is right-the a$$hole got American soldiers killed. And that’s the way it REALLY is.
July 18th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
BC - so you are saying that John F. Kennedy shouldn’t have gotten us into that war and that Lyndon Johnson shouldn’t have escalated it and then left our guys there to maintain a war without the intention of the then democratic government to win it.
I couldn’t agree more. We should never put our Soldiers in harms way unless we intend to win the war. That was so poorly handled by those two democratic presidents that its an embarrassment to our country to this day. It wasn’t until Richard Nixon was in office that we finally had a president who was willing to do what had to be done. By that point, the American public and the politicians had lost the war. Leaving our Soldiers over there to just fight without the objective of winning was untenable.
Unfortunately, when we pulled out, 3 million were killed for assisting the U.S. they were abandoned. That was the first time in history that other countries realized they couldn’t trust the United States. We’ve paid for that every since and we are still paying for that - the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan are hesitant to help our troops for fear they won’t be protected against the islamic fundamentalists who will kill them if they give our Soldiers information.
I don’t know how long it will take to win back the trust of the world. But having a president who is all words and no action isn’t going to do it.
Yes - Cronkite was a traitor and he exacerbated that situation. He helped turn the American public against what our Soldiers were doing, making it an impossible situation for them. He did get Soldiers killed. He’s having to answer to his maker for that now, I would imagine.