[Infowarrior] - Walter Cronkite Dies At 92
Richard Forno
rforno at infowarrior.org
Sat Jul 18 02:07:09 UTC 2009
July 17, 2009
Walter Cronkite Dies At 92
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/17/eveningnews/main5170556.shtml?tag=breakingnews
Legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite has passed away in New York at
the age of 92. His journalistic career covered such historic events as
the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the assassination of JFK and the
first man on the moon.
Walter Cronkite, who personified television journalism for more than a
generation as anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News,"
has died. CBS vice president Linda Mason says Cronkite died at 7:42
p.m. Friday with his family by his side at his home in New York after
a long illness. He was 92.
Known for his steady and straightforward delivery, his trim moustache,
and his iconic sign-off line -"That’s the way it is" - Cronkite
dominated the television news industry during one of the most volatile
periods of American history. He broke the news of the Kennedy
assassination, reported extensively on Vietnam and Civil Rights and
Watergate, and seemed to be the very embodiment of TV journalism.
Special Section: Walter Cronkite: 1916-2009
"Cronkite came to be the sort of personification of his era," veteran
PBS Correspondent Robert McNeil once said. "He became kind of the
media figure of his time. Very few people in history, except maybe
political and military leaders, are the embodiment of their time, and
Cronkite seemed to be."
At one time, his audience was so large, and his image so credible,
that a 1972 poll determined he was "the most trusted man in America" -
surpassing even the president, vice president, members of Congress and
all other journalists. In a time of turmoil and mistrust, after
Vietnam and Watergate, the title was a rare feat - and the label stuck.
"For decades, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted voice in America,"
said President Barack Obama in a statement. "His rich baritone reached
millions of living rooms every night, and in an industry of icons,
Walter set the standard by which all others have been judged."
Mr. Obama said that Cronkite calmly shared the world's news while
never losing his integrity.
"But Walter was always more than just an anchor," Mr. Obama said. "He
was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important
issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was
family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down.
This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly
missed."
Cronkite's achievements were remarkable for a man whose beginnings
were anything but remarkable.
Walter Leland Cronkite was born in St. Joseph, Missouri on November 4,
1916, the only child of a dentist father and homemaker mother. When he
was still young, his family moved to Texas. One day, he read an
article in "Boys Life" magazine about the adventures of reporters
working around the world - and young Cronkite was hooked. He began
working on his high school newspaper and yearbook and, in 1933, he
entered the University of Texas at Austin to study political science,
economic and journalism. He never graduated. He took a part time job
at the Houston Post, left college to do what he loved: report.
After working as a general assignment reporter for the Post and a
sportscaster in Oklahoma City, Cronkite got a job in 1939 working for
United Press. He went to Europe to cover World War II as part of the
"Writing 69th," a group of reporters who found themselves covering
some of the most important developments in the war, including the D-
Day invasion, bombing missions over Germany, and later, the Nuremburg
war trials. In 1940, he married Mary Elizabeth Maxwell - known as
"Betsy" - and for the next six decades she was the dutiful reporter’s
wife, enduring sometimes long separations while he covered the world,
and raising three children. Cronkite once wrote about her: ''I
attribute the longevity of our marriage to Betsy's extraordinary keen
sense of humor, which saw us over many bumps (mostly of my making),
and her tolerance, even support, for the uncertain schedule and
wanderings of a newsman."
While working for the UP, Cronkite was offered a job at CBS by Edward
R. Murrow - and he turned it down. He finally accepted a second offer
in 1950, and stepped into the new medium of television. In the early
'50s, it was a medium many of the "serious" journalists at CBS and
elsewhere viewed with skepticism, if not disdain. Radio and print,
they contended, were for real reporters; television was for actors or
comedians.
At first, it seemed an unlikely fit. Walter Cronkite, with his serious
demeanor and unpretentious style - honed by his years of unvarnished
reporting at UP - was named host of "You Are There" in which key
moments of history were recreated by actors. Cronkite was depicted on
camera interviewing "Joan of Arc" or "Sigmund Freud." But somehow, he
managed to make it believable.
The young director of the series, Sidney Lumet said he picked Cronkite
for the job because "the premise of the series was so silly, so
outrageous, that we needed somebody with the most American, homespun,
warm ease about him."
During his early years at CBS, Cronkite was also named host of "The
Morning Show" on CBS, where he was paired with a partner: a puppet
named Charlemagne. But he distinguished himself with his coverage of
the 1952 and 1956 political conventions and as narrator of the
documentary series "Twentieth Century." In 1961, CBS named him the
anchor of the "CBS Evening News" - a 15 minute news summary anchored
for several years by Douglas Edwards.
At the time, the broadcast lived in the long shadow cast by NBC’s
Huntley-Brinkley Report, the most popular television newscast in the
country. Expectations for the Cronkite newscast were not high. But in
1963, the broadcast was expanded to 30 minutes - and Cronkite won a
title for which he had long campaigned, Managing Editor. The added
time gave the broadcast more depth and variety, and the title gave
Cronkite more influence over the content and coverage.
And it came at a significant time. In September of that year, Cronkite
launched the expanded program with an extended interview with
President John F. Kennedy. Two months later, it was Cronkite who broke
into the soap opera "As The World Turns" to announce that the
president had been shot - and later to declare that he had been killed.
It was a defining moment for Cronkite, and for the country. His
presence - in shirtsleeves, slowly removing his glasses to check the
time and blink back tears - captured both the sense of shock, and the
struggle for composure, that would consume America and the world over
the next four days.
Cronkite’s audience began to grow - but not quickly enough for network
executives who, in 1964, decided to try an anchor team at the
conventions - Robert Trout and Roger Mudd - to rival Chet Huntley and
David Brinkley at NBC. Cronkite was not happy about the change, and
viewer reaction was swift. Over 11,000 letters poured in protesting
the switch. Network executives never tried that again. In 1966, The
CBS Evening News began to overtake the Huntley-Brinkley report in the
ratings, and in 1967 it took the lead. It remained there until
Cronkite’s retirement in 1981.
They were years filled with astonishing change - and indelible
history. In 1968, Cronkite returned from visiting Vietnam and declared
on television:"It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody
experience of Vietnam is a stalemate." President Lyndon Johnson, on
hearing that, reportedly said, "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost
America." Not long after, Johnson declared his intention not to run
for re-election. That same year saw the assassinations of Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy - two more shocking moments
that bound the country together through the medium of television. Once
again, as he had five years earlier, Cronkite was the steadying force
during a time of national sorrow.
"It's a kind of chemistry," former Johnson aide and CBS News
commentator Bill Moyers once said. "The camera either sees you as part
of the environment or it rejects you as an alien body, and Walter had
'it,' whatever 'it' was."
One of Cronkite’s enthusiasms was the space race. And in 1969, when
America sent a man to the moon, he couldn’t contain himself. "Go baby,
go!," he said, as Apollo XI took off. He ended up performing what
critics described as"Walter to Walter" coverage of the mission -
staying on the air for 27 of the 30 hours that Apollo XI took to
complete its mission.
Cronkite even managed to have a surprising influence on world affairs.
In 1977, he interviewed Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat, who told
Cronkite that, if invited, he’d go to Jerusalem to meet with Prime
Minister Menachem Begin. The move was unprecedented. The next day,
Begin invited Sadat to Jerusalem for talks that eventually led to the
Camp David accords and the Israeli-Egyptian treaty.
In 1981, Cronkite announced he would retire at the age of 65, to make
way for a new anchor in the chair, Dan Rather. A commentator in the
New Republic said it was like "George Washington leaving the dollar
bill." There were so many requests for interviews, eventually all of
them were turned down.
In retirement, Cronkite kept busy with other projects - a short-lived
magazine program on CBS called "Walter Cronkite's Universe," a few
documentaries, plus a seat on the CBS board of directors. He spent a
considerable amount of time at his summer home in Martha’s Vineyard,
sailing the boat he named for his wife, "The Betsy." And he wrote his
autobiography, "A Reporter’s Life," published in 1996.
In 2005, Cronkite’s wife Betsy died after a battle with cancer. His
two daughters and son survive him.
While Cronkite kept a lower profile in his later years, he did make a
significant contribution to the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric":
it is his voice that has been used during the opening of the broadcast
since its debut in 2006, bridging generations and signifying the
newscast’s strong link to its storied past.
As Cronkite said on March 6, 1981, concluding his final broadcast as
anchorman: "Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away, they just keep
coming back for more. And that's the way it is."
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