Walter Cronkite-RIP
July 17th, 2009 by Jon Taplin
No contemporary newsman has the courage to call out his government engaged in a disastrous war. Walter Cronkite did and when this broadcast was over Lyndon Johnson told a friend, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdOb_183d1o]
That schtick about Cronkite’s driving LBJ’s decision to quit the contest, BS. As for Cronkite being a Dove, same thing: BS. He was America’s favorite swish, which actually is what I love about him and will miss; he really was devoted to his bygone trade, and was not in the bag for anybody. He certainly had his enthusiasms (notably the space program), but in the main he was a man in the main, always. He became trusted and even beloved not because he called the shots, but because he didn’t. In retrospect I’m sorry that CBS sidelined him, with unfilfilled promises, for so many years after they rusticated him in 1982 in favor of a Wild Hare with a Texas vengeance. That was a multiple waste.
Cronkite definitely stood once for the integrity of broadcast journalism, but so did many people do. He’s just the last of that once great cohort.
That schtick about Cronkite’s driving LBJ’s decision to quit the contest, BS. As for Cronkite being a Dove, same thing: BS. He was America’s favorite swish, which actually is what I love about him and will miss; he really was devoted to his bygone trade, and was not in the bag for anybody. He certainly had his enthusiasms (notably the space program), but in the main he was a man in the main, always. He became trusted and even beloved not because he called the shots, but because he didn’t. In retrospect I’m sorry that CBS sidelined him, with unfilfilled promises, for so many years after they rusticated him in 1982 in favor of a Wild Hare with a Texas vengeance. That was a multiple waste.
Cronkite definitely stood once for the integrity of broadcast journalism, but so did many people do. He’s just the last of that once great cohort.
I trusted him. I miss his voice. It’s like losing an Uncle who was smart and could beat you at cards and made you think.
Goodnight, Mr. Cronkite.
I trusted him. I miss his voice. It’s like losing an Uncle who was smart and could beat you at cards and made you think.
Goodnight, Mr. Cronkite.
I had the pleasure of meeting Walter @ the Edgertown (MA) Yacht Club between college summers & he was a great man. Always admired him as an upcoming journalism major @ UNH. He’ll forever be a wonderful memory for me.
I had the pleasure of meeting Walter @ the Edgertown (MA) Yacht Club between college summers & he was a great man. Always admired him as an upcoming journalism major @ UNH. He’ll forever be a wonderful memory for me.
“And that’s the way it is…”
“And that’s the way it is…”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html
That touches on Hugo’s distress and a lot about what has gone wrong in this country when the journalists surrendered to the profit motive.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html
That touches on Hugo’s distress and a lot about what has gone wrong in this country when the journalists surrendered to the profit motive.
len,
It’s interesting to see Cronkite placed amongst Halberstam and Russert. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to employ a straw pantheon, as I view him as belonging more to Murrow, Severeid, H.K. Smith, Reynolds, Huntley & Brinkley–that ilk. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t been critical of Cronkite upon his death, but I feel that Halberstam was overrated as an historian and Russert as a journalist.
I’m no Lapham, but neither is Greenwald. It’s flat inaccurate to describe the late Sen. Moynihan as a “dissembling politican”, a vassal of a “corrupt legislature”, and it’s similarly unfair to describe future journalists who once worked for such politicians as having served as “bagmen”.
I agree with you that American journalism soured under the influence of the profit motive, but it soured in other ways also. One sad watershed was the crucifixion of Richard Jewell by the Atlanta Journal-Consitution and the New York Times. Those disgraceful cases eviscerated the Public Figure Doctrine at great legal expense to Cox and the Times syndicate. Following those cases there no longer was a clear distinction between the elusive “media” and what the Framers construed as the Press. (The critical difference is that the latter carries obligations, as well as protection, under the Consitution.)
One of the things that makes Cronkite admirable in retrospect is that he was rusticated for so long by the forcing of his retirement and thereby, ironically, escaped much of the selling-out that was to come after ~1982. I would not have enjoyed watching such a decent, earnest man buckle to the forces that ensued.
len,
It’s interesting to see Cronkite placed amongst Halberstam and Russert. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to employ a straw pantheon, as I view him as belonging more to Murrow, Severeid, H.K. Smith, Reynolds, Huntley & Brinkley–that ilk. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t been critical of Cronkite upon his death, but I feel that Halberstam was overrated as an historian and Russert as a journalist.
I’m no Lapham, but neither is Greenwald. It’s flat inaccurate to describe the late Sen. Moynihan as a “dissembling politican”, a vassal of a “corrupt legislature”, and it’s similarly unfair to describe future journalists who once worked for such politicians as having served as “bagmen”.
I agree with you that American journalism soured under the influence of the profit motive, but it soured in other ways also. One sad watershed was the crucifixion of Richard Jewell by the Atlanta Journal-Consitution and the New York Times. Those disgraceful cases eviscerated the Public Figure Doctrine at great legal expense to Cox and the Times syndicate. Following those cases there no longer was a clear distinction between the elusive “media” and what the Framers construed as the Press. (The critical difference is that the latter carries obligations, as well as protection, under the Consitution.)
One of the things that makes Cronkite admirable in retrospect is that he was rusticated for so long by the forcing of his retirement and thereby, ironically, escaped much of the selling-out that was to come after ~1982. I would not have enjoyed watching such a decent, earnest man buckle to the forces that ensued.