Credit: The Moderate Voice
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story,” that’s one of the many famous quotes uttered by the “trusted man in America.” Walter Cronkite kept a nation calm through war, assassinations, presidential scandals, an impeachment, the Moon Landing, the release of American hostages during the Iranian Revolution, among other significant events in history during his 31-year career with CBS.
Columbia University Journalism Professor Todd Gitlin, who is also a sociologist, said it best: “He belongs to a time when there were three networks, three oil companies, three brands of bread. Cronkite mastered enunciation, training himself to speak at a rate of 124 words per minute so his viewers could understand him. (On average, we speak at between 165 and 200 words per minute.) He remained steady while the message he gave was “that things are falling apart.” Truly, he was the one of those journalists that shaped the medium we know today as broadcast news.
The buzz in print, TV, and cyberspace is that journalism has not and won’t ever be the same without him.
In “10 Reasons Why We Will Never See Another Cronkite Again” , Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice, notes how the audience has changed since Cronkite’s “heyday”:
“Many in Cronkite’s audience were of The Greatest Generation and their parents, individuals who experienced the depression and World War II and who took substantive political issues and the need to know about them as a duty of citizenship very seriously. Being ‘flip’ and not taking news seriously was both unseemly and professional to them. Today’s newspapers have flopped in their (weak and at times laughable) attempts to attract younger readers. The younger audience prefers to have an interactive voice now and can through YouTube, Twitter, news website comments and weblog comments. They don’t want news from an ‘uncle’; they want to talk and argue about it with ‘family’ members of the same status.”
Barb Shelly, the Kansas City Star’s editorial columnist, noted on Midwest Voices how Cronkite’s tenure with CBS was at a time when television was the central source of news and information, when American families ritually gathered around it to watch the evening news together. ”Now we’re trolling the internet, or still at work, or watching the cable channel that best echoes our political beliefs… or reading about the death of a legend in a text message or a tweet.”
On Creating Loafing’s Daily Loaf blog, William McKeen, chairman of the University of Florida’s Department of Journalism who wrote Hunter S. Thompson’s biography, “Outlaw Journalist,” spoke of a “grace” and “professionalism” that Walter Cronkite had that journalists largely don’t have today. He recalled meeting him once and how it was “like shaking hands with Mount Rushmore.”
On Huffingtonpost.com, in “Cronkite Coverage That Might Make Cronkite Cringe,” Dan Abrams makes a case for that fact that Cronkite’s name is “synonymous” with the greatness of “an industry that no longer exists.”
“Even in reporting on his death many journalists have violated one of Cronkite’s basic tenets: report the news don’t become it,” Dan Abrams wrote. “How many times this weekend have we heard top journalists memorializing Cronkite with sentences beginning with the word I. ‘I met Cronkite in. . .’ or ‘I remember seeing him. . .’”
Chuck Barney, on the San Jose Mercury News blog, recalled a conversation he had with Chronkite in which he so poignantly asked him what he would want people to say about him after he was gone: “I want them to say, ‘He was someone who lived up to the principl(e)s of good journalism through the fairness and honesty of his coverage, and upheld those principles throughout his career.’”
In the seven months I’ve been the administrator of Bigislandchronicle.com, I’ve expressed my commitment to abide by professional standards and I’ve told you that I consider myself not a blogger, but a journalist with a blog.
“I am dumbfounded that there hasn’t been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the internet,” Cronkite has been quoted saying. ”Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the bible and Playboy magazine.”
While Cronkite did cast a critical eye on the writers and opinion flooding cyberspace, he ultimately came to embrace this new medium like the rest of us. In recent years he made a few contributions to Huffingtonpost.com.
“As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: ‘And that’s the way it is.’ To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue,” Cronkite wrote in the first paragraphs of a poignant March 1, 2006 blog entry about the failed war on drugs. “Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire – least of all in a time of war.”
Maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I refuse to see Walter Cronkite’s death as a reminder of a bygone industry. Yes, journalism and news reporting have changed, the information superhighway is busy and fast paced. But the principles of the profession remain the same: seek truth and report it as fully as possible; minimize harm; and act independently.
(See Poynter Institute and Society of Professional Journalists web pages for more details about journalism ethics and principles. Also, in “16 Things You Learn In J-School – Lessons From Journalism School,” the “Journalistics” listed are: name your sources; protect your sources; be objective; offer balance; avoid conflicts of interest; don’t censor; get it right; don’t plagerize; report the facts; don’t be nasty; don’t believe everything; keep good records; don’t write in a stream of consciousness; find your voice; never stop learning; and have fun.)
Simply put, Cronkite’s death as a journalist is a reminder to stay classy.
July 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
When you see what passes for journalism today, it’s hard to believe there ever was someone this professional. Perhaps Universities should have students read professional reporting. Watch Walter Cronkite and remember they are supposed to give the facts not invent a story.
July 18th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
As much as some of us respected him, remember he was called a “pinko” by Agnew, who was convicted of crimes and left office in shame; and by Nixon, the impeached and resigned President.
Plus he is considered to have derailed LBJ with his Vietnam summary. He may have been fair and balanced to many of us, but he was not a universally well liked person.
By the way he dropped out of college to chase the news.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Excellent article, “Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did” – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html