Walter Cronkite: A Dose of Reality

It doesn't make sense to say that Walter Cronkite's passing, at the age of 92, marks the end of an era.

The era of TV news Cronkite-style ended decades ago.

By the time "Uncle Walter" retired in 1981, he was already a dinosaur.

TV was changing. Technology was advancing. CNN and cable news were altering the landscape.

Cronkite belonged to a brief and bygone era. Nevertheless, it was a groundbreaking time, and his contributions to television news and his impact on the nation are undeniable.

From the New York Times:

It’s almost impossible to convey the place Walter Cronkite held in American life for the 19 years he spent as the anchor of “The CBS Evening News.” It wasn’t just that he narrated the spikes in modern history, from the Kennedy assassination to the civil rights movement to the election of Ronald Reagan.

People tuned in to his program even on routine days when his broadcast — Senate subcommittee hearings, gas prices, détente talks with the Soviet Union — was as dull as toast. Mr. Cronkite’s air of authority, lightly worn and unquestioned, was unusual even then, but nobody comes close to it now.

Mr. Cronkite retired in 1981 at 64 and spent much of his remaining years giving charmingly self-deprecating interviews for tributes and retrospectives with titles like “Cronkite Remembers.” In one he explained his legendary status by saying, “Everything we did was for the first time.”

For viewers, however, it sometimes seems as if everything Mr. Cronkite did was for the last time, that his outsize tenure bracketed a bygone era when America was, if not a more confident nation, certainly a more trusting one.

...Viewers mostly associate him with calamity, but he liked to align himself with good news, shedding his famed neutrality to express boyish enthusiasm for what he called, somewhat quaintly, “the conquest of space.” (His first words when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, were “Oh, boy.”)

But he didn’t turn into “Uncle Walter” overnight, and his last name didn’t become synonymous with television news until well into the 1970s. For many years “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC had higher ratings and more pizzazz; CBS caught up only after Chet Huntley retired in 1970.

When Mr. Cronkite was No. 1, the nightly news mattered. College students nowadays get their information from blogs and Comedy Central, not CBS. Families don’t gather in the den to eat dinner in front of “World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.” Brian Williams and Katie Couric wouldn’t dare sign off with the words “and that’s the way it is.”

The television news business long ago lost that kind of prestige and importance; the audience for evening newscasts has so dwindled that this year there were more viewers on an average night for “American Idol” than for the programs on CBS, NBC and ABC combined.

The emergence of TV news and its importance in American culture came at a time of great political and social upheaval and change.

TV was asserting itself as a cultural force. Cronkite helped to define the role of anchorman on a newscast.

I think much of Cronkite's iconic status was a direct result of the turbulent, triumphant, and tragic times that he covered.

JFK's assassination and Apollo 11 were monumental events in American history. As the storyteller, Cronkite became associated with the happenings themselves.

I think his stature also was magnified by the mere fact that there were just the Big Three TV networks in the news market. They reigned. There wasn't a lot of competition like today. He wasn't just another face in a seemingly bottomless well of personalities.

The Baby Boom Factor also accounts for Cronkite being considered such a towering figure. Baby Boomers grew up with Cronkite. Almost automatically, he becomes significant. Cronkite has a place in the collective memory.

When Walter Cronkite ended his newscasts by saying, "And that's the way it is," plenty of Americans believed him.

In the Wall Street Journal, Susan Toepfer seems to suggest that Cronkite was infallible. He deserves to be worshipped.

She writes:

Uncle Walter. Think about that for a minute. Who would we address that way today? Uncle Keith? Uncle Chris? Uncle Bill? Or how about ratings-desperate, perpetually puzzled Aunt Katie? If they’re like family to you, can you spell dysfunctional?

...We’ve entered a time, of course, when objectivity–whatever that is, exactly–is not a sellable product. What we want instead is opinion. Talking points. Or vulnerability. Certainly, there are some who struggle to keep their tone civil, their reports tethered to truth, not to the political tides that crash through MSNBC and Fox News. Old-line network stars like Brian Williams and Charles Gibson gaze solemnly forward, without pausing for personal asides. CNN, despite the challenges of instant, dubiously reliable Internet news flashes (how could TMZ declare Michael Jackson dead before doctors did?), continues to put on a globally neutral face, even as its anchors’ faces become more glamorous by the day.

But the whole Anchor-as-Immobile-God persona started to crumble back in 2001, when Dan Rather-–always the most volatile of the Big Three evening newscasters—dissolved into tears on David Letterman’s show, talking about the 9/11 attacks. A few years later he was gone, along with Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.

In 2005, Anderson Cooper, overwhelmed by the body count of Hurricane Katrina, broke down on the air. Then, in 2008, came the sudden death of Tim Russert. The loss of this admirably affable newsman, who never showed his hand, may well have marked the end of the politically neutral broadcasting for which Cronkite once stood as stolid symbol.

Not that I personally object to the proliferation of blatantly biased news–I’d rather have journalists flaunting their political preferences than sneakily (or subconsciously) slanting their reports. And I do confess a fondness for the overblown Olbermann, with his boorish cries of “Fascist!” “Liar!” “Treason!,” just as O’Reilly and Rush have their supporters. O’Reilly once threatened to “boot right off this set” that mild-mannered talk show host from another era, Phil Donahue.

...Uncle Walter did not engage in such antics. Nor did he brandish his political beliefs, or reveal the full extent of his anguish, joy or grief. He was first and foremost a reporter, a stalwart announcer of the day’s events.

When Cronkite ended his CBS broadcasts with his trademark sign-off, “And that’s the way it is,” you could be sure that’s the way it was.

...For that self-control, that now-extraordinary ability to keep his feelings and alliances to himself, he is to be remembered, respected…even revered.

While Toepfer makes some good points, I think she's off the mark about Cronkite's objectivity. The notion that he never brandished his political beliefs is absurd.

Cronkite wasn't politically neutral. His reporting on the Vietnam War was not unbiased. Yes, he maintained his composure and displayed a degree of self-control that's often lacking from today's broadcasters. He didn't yell and stomp on the air and have goofy feuds with his competition. But let's not pretend that Cronkite was neutral.

I'm not suggesting that there was anything sinister about Cronkite and his newscasts. He did his job and, for the most part, he did it well. I just think we need to be realistic.

According to Toepfer, "When Cronkite ended his CBS broadcasts with his trademark sign-off, 'And that’s the way it is,' you could be sure that’s the way it was."

No, you couldn't.

People believed "Uncle Walter" was serving up truth rather than facts mixed with an agenda. As a result, he wielded a great deal of power.

I'm glad that such power is no longer in the hands of so few.

Consumers of news aren't nearly as naive as they once were.

There could never be an "Uncle Walter" today. That's a very good thing.
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Obama's statement on Cronkite's death:

For decades, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted voice in America. 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.

He was there through wars and riots, marches and milestones, calmly telling us what we needed to know. And through it all, he never lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland.

But Walter was always more than just an anchor. 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.

Obama wasted no time issuing a public statement on Cronkite's passing.

That's something Obama did not do with Michael Jackson.

Apparently, Obama sees no downside in publicly heaping praise on the iconic Cronkite. In Jackson's case, Obama wrote a private letter to the family, but released no official statement.

The politics of death.