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Saturday, July 18. 2009
The Most Trusted Man in America
Walter Cronkite died. Well, he was 92, lived a celebrated life, covered the news for 50 of the 92 years, but still, when an icon passes, especially one I’ve grown up with, it’s yet another reminder of the finality in life. If you’re old enough to remember Walter telling us President Kennedy had died, then more than likely you had a lot of affection for the man.Not everyone of course. There are those who don’t like any news people and will have something disparaging to say about any of them. A friend accused Cronkite of trying to tell us what to think. That was curious. It stemmed from the Cronkite quote that it’s the job of the journalist to tell the people what they need to know. The quote comes from an interview in which Cronkite was explaining the job of the reporter/newsperson, to give the reader/viewer all the information on the story: what the viewer needed to know. Apparently for some, that’s telling us what to think.
In 1968 he told us we were mired in stalemate in Vietnam. Little did he know at the time that three years earlier, in a once top-secret document, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had concluded the War in Vietnam was unwinnable. People liked to blame Cronkite for the U.S. losing that one, but from the very top it had already been decided there would be no satisfactory ending to our involvement in Southeast Asia.
When I watched the launch of Apollo XI and the subsequent landing on the Moon, it was CBS and Uncle Walter I turned to for the events! He got pretty emotional, child-like in his excitement that Neil Armstrong had touched a foot to the surface of a place not of this Earth.
He covered Watergate when it was a lonesome news story by Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post, convinced the two reporters were getting it right, regardless of the denials from government. Who knows, if it wasn’t for CBS and Walter Cronkite, the story may not have gotten the traction it did that eventually led to the Congressional Hearings, the felony indictments of the Nixon aids and finally the resignation of our 37th president.
Such was the effect of Walter Cronkite. When he spoke, people listened. Presidents, senators, congressional representatives, right down to the common folk, middle America as President Lyndon Johnson called us, who comprised the vast bulk of the people who watched the news.
Famously, it is said, when Uncle Walter gave his commentary about Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, saying we were mired in stalemate, Johnson allegedly replied, “If we’ve lost Walter, we’ve lost Middle America.”
Such was Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man in America.
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