Walter Cronkite dead at 92.
Ben Bradlee in Newsweek
Julie Gulden at Daily Kos
The media today is much more fragmented and the audiences are much more demanding, generally a positive development. I don’t know whether Cronkite’s “old school” style of broadcasting and newsgathering would be tolerated; Cronkite’s politics — Middle American liberalism — would probably be more important his style, grace or skills. Cronkite began his career as a print guy, and he brought print standards (wire service standards!) to broadcast journalism. He was mentored by Edward R. Murrow but no one taught him how to be classy; he was a classy guy. Authentically classy. Authentic, too. He did not fake his gravitas, and he did not — and I think this is very important — he did not mask his emotions (man lands on the moon, and he says (Oh Boy!) or his feelings (he was the first modern anchor to tear up on camera, and did so regularly). He knew how to merge voice and words to create a story. He invented modern anchoring.
I’m too young to have direct memories of watching Cronkite on television, although the famous bulletin announcing the death of President Kennedy transcends all age cohorts. I’ve been fortunate to work with several TV legends who considered Cronkite their mentor and teacher, most notably Rick Kaplan, the current executive producer of CBS Evening News and Susan Zirinsky, now the executive producer of 48 hours.
John at Atrios
Cronkite was a key figure in many ways, but foremost among them, perhaps, was the fact that he cleared the way for the mainstream media and the Establishment to join what Lionel Trilling called “the adversary culture.” Cronkite, the gravelly voice of accepted American wisdom, whose comportment suggested he kept his money in bonds and would never even have considered exceeding the speed limit, devastated President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the 1968 Tet Offensive by declaring that the United States “was mired in stalemate” in Vietnam—when Johnson knew that Tet had been a military triumph.
This on-air editorial, spoken during the most-watched newscast in the country when that meant 30 million people were watching (as opposed to 7 million today, with the nation having added more than 100 million in population), was a transformational moment in American history.
“If I’ve lost Cronkite,” Johnson was reputed to have said, “I’ve lost middle America,” and shortly thereafter he announced he would not run for reelection. This was a mark of Johnson’s own poor political instincts—a president who thought a rich and powerful anchorman living the high life in New York city was the voice of the silent majority was a man out of touch with reality—but it was a leading indicator of how the media were changing. Cronkite didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to Tet, as the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his colossal expose of the scandalous media coverage of the battle, Big Story. But he knew that among the people who mattered to him, and who were the leading edge of ideological fashion, Tet was a failure because the war in Vietnam was bad, and he took to the airwaves to say so.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes at Moderate Voice:
Walter Cronkite who covered the landing at the beaches of Normandy, who covered the Nazis’ final crumbling at the Nuremburg Trials, who announced the assassination of President John Kennedy… Mr. Cronkite lived in the midst of the most compelling, horrible, and expansive times of the last hundred years.
You’ve left the world with ever so many stories to tell– for, as you used to say about reality… “that’s the way it is.”
Well done dear old storyteller of so many people’s nightly memories…
and fare well …
Huffington Post has put together the blog posts he did for them. That’s right; Walter Cronkite blogged.
Alex Koppelman in Salon
I can only hope the death of Walter Conkrite spurs some self-reflection on the part of the national media…but I doubt it will.
The whole notion of the “trusted news anchor” is certainly a thing of the past in the age of Charles Gibson and Brian Williams. And with Williams in particular, it’s plain to see, IMHO, that he’s all about picking up the Fox News demo (he’s called into Limbaugh more than once), journalism be damned. Maybe I’m viewing the past through rose-colored glasses, but can you imagine Walter Conkrite sucking up to a radio bloviator?
I’m not old enough to know if I’m right about this at all, but my sense is that there was a time when guys like Conkrite thought they were big enough that they didn’t have to kiss anyone’s ass. And that they were more interested in being accurate than in lining up a book deal or putting a friend or relative on wingnut welfare.
Maybe that’s just naive nostalgia, though. I don’t know.
Cronkite lived to a ripe old age and his health had been failing, so this is hardly a shock. I wasn’t old enough during Vietnam for his controversial remarks to cloud my judgment of his career, which mostly came in the last five or so years of his time as anchor and then as elder statesman.
It’s often said that there will never be another like someone who has just passed on. In Cronkite’s case, it’s not hyperbole. He was universally respected but shuffled out the door far too early, just toward the end of the period when people were simply expected to go away when the reached a certain age. At roughly the time same, David Brinkley, Harry Reasoner, and John Chancellor were moved along, too, with then-youngsters Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw brought in to fill their chairs. All of them did so with distinction but they never occupied the same central role that the previous generation had. And none will be anywhere near as powerful as even they were. Katie Couric could well be the last anchor at CBS News; in any event, no one will much care.
And that’s the way it was, Friday, July 17, 2009.
Charles Johnson at LGF
Todd Gitlin at TNR
Duane R. Patterson at Townhall
Tom Shales in WaPo
UPDATE: Jesse Walker in Reason:
If the country had to have a collective father figure, he was well suited for the job.
The problem was that we didn’t need a national father figure. The very phrase “the man America trusted” makes me uneasy. Surely it’s good that the country has grown too skeptical to put so much faith in a single newsreader.
[...] Cronkite’s influence was a product of the three-network era, a time we should be happy to have put behind us. I’m sorry to see the man die, but I’m glad no one was able to fill his shoes.
David Kurtz at TPM
My own memories of Cronkite, who went off the air when I was 11 years old, are tangled up with memories of my dad: the excitement of him coming home from work, the smell of his pipe (Cronkite smoked one, too), sitting with him on the sofa watching the CBS Evening News while mom bustled about in the kitchen. Cronkite was embedded in the routine of the day like the family dinner was. We always ate at 6 p.m., because that’s when the news ended.
But what I remember most was watching my dad looking out on the world through the window that Cronkite offered, courteously pulling aside the curtains for us. I was, and remain, enchanted by the notion that there were big things happening out there beyond the horizon, exciting things, important things.
Doctor Zero at Hot Air:
Cronkite’s career saw the rise of advocacy journalism in the modern sense, along with the birth of terror warfare. The two developments are not unrelated. Terrorism benefits from access to a media that sees itself as international and “open-minded,” rather than aligned with the patriotic interests of its mother country. Journalists of Edward R. Murrow’s day would have named al-Qaeda killers as vermin, without hesitation, and applauded American soldiers for exterminating them. Cronkite decided the vermin were invincible. His descendants give interviews where they proudly state they would not warn American troops of an impending terror attack, pass along terrorist propaganda and doctored photographs as news, and dispatch reporters to search for signs of defeat when victory is imminent… provided a President of the wrong party sits in the White House, of course. Say this much for Cronkite: he didn’t care that Johnson had a (D) after his name. To Keith Olbermann, nothing else would matter.
At one point, Americans trusted him more than the president and vice president put together — of course, it was 1972 and the president and vice president were two of the sleaziest hucksters in World History, but still. Farewell, fellow Unipresser.
John Dickerson in Slate
UPDATE #2: Glenn Greenwald
UPDATE #3: Robert Wright at Sully’s place
John Hinderaker at Powerline
UPDATE #4: Jack Shafer in Slate
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July 17, 2009 at 11:32 pm
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