Epic Win: Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite joined CBS in 1962, became the first half-hour long nightly news anchor in September of 1963, informed us of Kennedy’s assassination in November of 1963, and from there, quickly became “a comfortable old shoe” to the American public (as he aptly put it in 1981 when he retired).
Below is a clip of Cronkite announcing President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. We would greatly prefer a return to this, as opposed to the prancing, shouting bobbleheads of today’s media. Cronkite is still alive, so perhaps it’s not too late?
Ah. When journalists actually simply reported the news, and didn’t try to create or influence it.
Uh. Wrong. Back then you only had three anchors. All liberal. They WERE the news. This clown lost the vietnam war by pounding on it for years. No influence, right. Take a history class.
Mr. Cronkite actually was instrumental in creating the problems we have today when he stopped reporting on the Vietnam War, but started editorializing it and presenting it as news.
And then he passed the torch to Dan Rather, who imploded in the 2004 campaign by insisting that documents were real when any reasonable person could see that they had been faked by present-day software and artificially aged.
So early Mr. Cronkite I’d possibly agree. But from Vietnam on, a tragic fail.
I wept when he retired. There has been a massive credibility gap since Mr. Cronkite retired. I often wonder how he would have handled the media blackout that occurred during the BushII regime.
Major epic win.
My favorite memory of Walter Cronkite? When the Apollo 11 lifted off for the moon and he shouted “Go, baby, go!” (I hope I have the mission right, I was in single digits back then but I knew how important this was!) …Are reporters allowed to get excited over good stuff any more?
Oh, god. That clip gave me chills.
You could actually, for one second, hear Mr. Cronkite’s voice crack as if he became choked up.
Can we bring him out of retirement?? PLEASE!!!!!
I think it might be too late for the media. I wish we could bring him out of retirement too. I can’t even watch the news anymore.
I remember watching the movie “Network” in 1976 and thinking of how silly it was – the network news could never become such a parade of nonsense. Turns out the movie was more prophetic than anyone could have imagined. I don’t think that today’s audience could sit still for a half-hour of news delivered by Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley. It would be called “boring”, since it’s not filled with giggling Barbie dolls and sleek, snarky Kens, or pompous, arrogant “experts” telling me how to think. I miss the days when the networks assumed that I had a brain and could form my own opinions about issues.
This is very impressive!
Well said. I’d just like to hear the news without the jackass reporters and their “expert” guests telling me what I should think about it as well.
If it weren’t for that senile commie, the US would have definitively won Vietnam.
You’re free to move there if you’d like to see how well it’s going.
Disrespect for others and looking back with bitterness aren’t going to change a thing. If something wrong happened, then take the lesson forward and stop whining about the past!
Personally, I think compassion and truth in reporting can go hand in hand. Walter Cronkite made the news factual, relevant, important and human all at once, which is more than I can say for newscasters in this celebrity-obsessed, news-starved era.
You are so right! It’s all Cronkite’s fault! I say we string him up and set fire to his hairy balls!
At the end of that clip you could tell that Cronkite was choking up a bit over the news of JFK’s death. If only we could have newscasters like that again.
Just seeing him like that made me tear up. I hate to see men cry – and he was doing a good job of hiding it.
There is a way to get the caliber of newscasters back, write to your local stations, and tell them what you want, refuse to watch the barbies and kens. What would have been really interesting to me would have been his reporting on 911, specifically on the attack on the pentagon. I would be very interested to hear his opinions on it. (and no I am not a conspiracy nut who is convinced that it was a misile and not a plane to hit the pentagon) The interesting thing with the Pentagon is that the section that was hit was the only section that had been upgraded, and the upgrades had just finished, plus in the gas station footage, you don’t actually see what it was that hit the pentagon, just a streak of red.
Ah, the good old days, when the left had a near-monopoly on news. They didn’t influence or create news, except maybe losing Vietnam or impeaching Nixon. Nothing important though. And if you think Cronkite was a centrist, just read his wikipedia page… thank goodness we can finally expose these “kindly, gentle-speaking” snakes for what they are.
rofl. yea, cuz getting the hell out of vietnam and exposing a cheat for what he was were terrible things to broadcast.
then again, maybe we could still be sending our kids off to die in some foreign war far to the east…
D’OH!
Yup, because you know that Wiki is GOSPEL!!!
Wow … because Wiki is GOSPEL, amirite? *eye roll*
Seriously, you think it was a bad thing to impeach Nixon? Really? Would you like a time travel ticket to go back to the era when women had no rights and blacks were still enslaved? Would that make you feel better, pookie?
Nixon was never impeached. He resigned before that could happen. The only two presidents who have ever been impeached by the House of Representatives were Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and both were acquitted by the Senate.
Read his auto-bio. The man’s got a hell of a dry sense of humor that you seldom see in his reporting and interviews.
I’m impressed by that. He was very accurate in reporting the incoming news – no glossing over the details or focussing on the (obviously) sensational possibilities. He was not willing to confirm Kennedy’s death till he was sure and then looked sick at having to report such news. Yes, impressive. I could watch that every night. We had/have some good TV reporters in the UK too but he was obviously a gem.
He cost you the Vietnam war by over-stating the importance of the Tet Offensive, thereby playing right into the hands of the VC as that is what they had planned all along.
I’m afraid the days of ethical journalism are behind us.
Um. Ethical journalism. Oxymoron. There is no such thing as a journalist without an opinion. Walter Cronkite was all opinion all the time. Man you romantics need to take off your rose-colored glasses.
He also went to the University of Texas here in Austin, wrote for the Daily Texan, and the voice on those recent “We’re Texas” UT commercials (my favorite being the “Soul Of Austin” one).
http://www.utexas.edu/inside_ut/tvspot/video/wc_soul_high_ref.qtl
My Gawd!? A liberal Texan? That’s an Oxymoron is there ever was one.
Walter was gentle tot he ears and that is what we remember. While most news is Ultra right, Fox-Media is Ultra wrong as well as the voice of discontent and rumor mongers. We will never have truly unbiased news because we are not and never will be an unbiased audience. I am old enough to remmember when Republicans were liberal and the South was Conservative Democrates and lynching was “acceptable” to most of America.
JFK and LBJ changed that ant the south went GOP when Reagan joned the Red Necks. Walter exposed that.
RIP Walter Cronkite </3
RIP Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)
Whatever your impact has been, as a Media Pioneer- we can all agree that it was a large one.
And that’s the way it is….