Walter Cronkite Died

[Selene]

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Friday, July 17, 2009 -- 8:40 PM ET

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Obituary: Walter Cronkite, Longtime Anchor, Is Dead at 92

Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of

television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that

he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday at

his home in New York. He was 92.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/us/18cronkite.html?emc=na

[Robert Campbell]

Both Fox News and CNN have broken into their regular programming to run long obituaries for him.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Both Fox News and CNN have broken into their regular programming to run long obituaries for him.

Robert Campbell

I am sure that there will be wall to wall coverage for at least a week just like with Michael Jackson...

oops...sorry just an old dead white guy who was not as smart as the latina chick that will be on the Supreme Court.

If only ole Walter had molested some children, or installed alarms fifty (50') up the hallway leading up to his little room where he

served Jesus Juice, or dangled his child off a railing by their ankle.

Ahh ole Walter was the first one who told me that JFK was dead that dismal afternoon.

Adam

Edited July 18, 2009 by Selene

[Brant Gaede]

If they bury him I'll dance on his grave.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Another really great one from my childhood. It is fitting his death is near the anniversary of the first moon landing. He was thrilled by the space program.

[Philip Coates]

When I lived in New York, I had a chance to sit beside him for a long while waiting for a haircut and talk to him one on one. A class act: Funny, jovial, pleasant, down to earth. Liked to joke. Great sense of humor. Had some humorous little comments about Reagan.

[BaalChatzaf]

And that's the way it is.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[galtgulch]

And that's the way it is.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Et al,

He did his journalist job thing exceedingly well. I expected something more from the better minds whom I grew up listening to on the radio and the TV. Rather disappointing until the day a soft spoken fellow told me that Existence exists and that there are no contradictions in the universe. He let me borrow a weatherbeaten paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged. I wonder if Walter Cronkite ever read it. If it had had the effect on him that it had on me I think he would have found some way to report on it!

www.campaignforliberty.com 18 Jul 4PM 183,982, 7PM 184,008

gulch

Edited July 18, 2009 by galtgulch

[Selene]

Gulch:

"He did his journalist job thing exceedingly well."

No he did not. He slanted and biased his reportage to the point of making me gag.

His reports on the Tet Offensive, which was overwhelming devastating for the Vietcong, was

completely false. He cost thousands of American lives when he declared the war lost.

Johnson, who was at that point completely out of touch with the American people, is reported

to have said...

"Oh my God! If I've lost Cronkite, I have lost middle America."

This prick was a real help to give cover for the despicable way OUR troops were received back.

He an McNamara should share the same spot on the same ledge in one of the bottom rungs of Hades.

You are aware that our troops did not lose one engagement with the Vietcong or the NVA.

I was opposed to the war for two reasons. The draft and the fact that we were not waging war to win.

Adam

[ginny]

Wow, Adam. Down, boy. Was he as bad as all that? It was watching Cronkite on our first TV that I learned to speak proper English. I loved his formal and precise use of the language and used to repeat sentences after him, trying to get the pronunciation just right. Compared to the newsmakers today, the man was a king.

Ginny

[Selene]

Sorry Ginny. I was not happy to come to that conclusion as I truly respected the man. It was his face that told me that JFK was dead.

My 5 friends and one of their fathers drove down to the funeral and spent the next two days in DC. I will never forget it.

Morally yes.

I too grew up on him and loved his coverage of the Space Program. The man was the most trustworthy person on television.

Mellifluous, dulcet voice. The fatherly image of certitude.

He was an Manhattan elitist that had the "hoi polloi", which I just found out came from the ancient Greek, meaning "the many", or to Walter the commoners, the great unwashed, minions, multitude, plebeians, proletariat, rabble, rank and file, riffraff, the common people, the herd, the many, the masses, the plebs, the peons, the working class.

Pompous, effete. The consummate masked liberal. He was a great broadcaster who hurt an immeasurable number of people by not being an ethical journalist.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Apart from the draft, wasn't a major problem with the Vietnam War that memories were still fresh, among senior people in the military, of Chinese troops pouring across the Yalu River?

Looking back on Walter Cronkite's career in TV news, I have mixed feelings about him.

I do recall a novel by L. Neil Smith in which the chief bad guy is named Voltaire Malaise...

Robert Campbell

[ginny]

Hmmmm - I guess he was a liberal. So was everyone else I knew at the time, so it didn't strike me as odd. But still,he sure could deliver the news. I'd have trusted that man had he said the sky was green and the grass blue.

Adam, if you think he's unethical, what's your opinion of the faceless teams on CNN today? I believe they're good with make-up, and they have excellent hairdressers.

[Selene]

Ginny:

Out of respect for xray , the string of filthy curses and prayers for the CNN actor's instant immolation on screen or by pay per view could not come quickly enough.

But then I remember that damn initiation of force stuff from ole Ayn and I put the infra red night scope away.

Believe me you were not alone on Cronkite, he was brilliant and I would left my future son and daughter with him that is how trustworthy he was.

Then I grew up and found out the facts behind his reporting.

If we had the internet and the instantaneous communication then, I believe the war would have been won and quickly, but it was still a horrendous place to have to fight.

The folks who seek to subjugate man rarely pick the beautiful resort areas to pick a fight.

Adam

[Selene]

Apart from the draft, wasn't a major problem with the Vietnam War that memories were still fresh, among senior people in the military, of Chinese troops pouring across the Yalu River?

Looking back on Walter Cronkite's career in TV news, I have mixed feelings about him.

I do recall a novel by L. Neil Smith in which the chief bad guy is named Voltaire Malaise...

Robert Campbell

Voltaire Malaise - beautiful! lol

I would not be surprised that there were some senior military who had that fear, since the last time we came in contact near the ChiComs [Rush Limbaugh's moniker for them] they poured in.

The difference geographically with Vietnam is that there were very few paths from China into Vietnam. I believe there only three narrow valleys that the Red Army could come through. Their tanks would have been useless in that terrain with our control of the air and sea. The problem with Korea was when the Yalu froze.

MacArthur allegedly planned to launch a major frontal assault across the Yalu, they just beat him to the punch.

Adam

[Steve Gagne]

Walter Cronkite? Walllllter Crunk-eyed? Really, not hard to imagine him wasted, slurring his speech, mumbling inanely.

NIMBY in chief. Some liberal. Supported environmental causes? Not on your life. Primary celebrity fighting wind fields south of Cape Cod, because he didn't want it in his backyard, off Martha's Vineyard, even if it wasn't visible, beyond the horizon. But then, maybe liberal. They've never run short on hypocrisy.

I didn't need him to report the space program to me; my old man was one of the engineers, got up close & personal. But to attack him for exposing the failure of McNamara's policies in Nam? Blame the kid for the Emperor's new clothes? Naaah.

As for McArthur, he got fired. For his plans to nuke the Yalu, make Korea an island. Probably should have done it; now we're stuck with "armistice": perpetual war? (Bob -- do you agree?)

A blog with a bunch of links

Edited July 19, 2009 by Steve Gagne

[BaalChatzaf]

I didn't need him to report the space program to me; my old man was one of the engineers, got up close & personal. But to attack him for exposing the failure of McNamara's policies in Nam? Blame the kid for the Emperor's new clothes? Naaah.

As for McArthur, he got fired. For his plans to nuke the Yalu, make Korea an island. Probably should have done it; now we're stuck with "armistice": perpetual war? (Bob -- do you agree?)

A blog with a bunch of links

I think we should have caused N.K. to glow in the dark. Unfortunately the fallout would have done great damage to S.K. Seoul is not that far from the border.

As to Cronkite and Tet, he misjudged the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive was a crie d'coure, a desperation measure that (in military terms) failed. Thanks to the misreading of the operation in the Higher Circles, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory by Wimps in Power. LBJ and RSM did not understand the nature of the war and the public became divided because victory of North Vietnam was not the overriding goal (as it should have been). LBJ and RSM bear the responsibility, not Uncle Walter. I seriously doubt that Uncle Walter was deliberately trying to sap the will of the American public. That will was simply not there. I do not forgive Uncle Walter, but I don't blame him either. The fault was elsewhere.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Robert Campbell]

Walter Cronkite? Walllllter Crunk-eyed? Really, not hard to imagine him wasted, slurring his speech, mumbling inanely.

Is everyone here familiar with the origins of his last name?

It's a respelling of Krankheit.

German for sickness.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Robert:

I just love coincidences like that.

Ba'al:

I disagree with you about Cronkite, but it is an emotional disagreement. His position, as one of three main stream anchors, began to have

real power to control large segments of the public in the late 50's. This burgeoned exponentially in the 60's, but was tightly controlled by the left. The slanting of the news over the three networks, and the medium it was communicated on, was pivotal in shaping the perceptions of the real world towards where we are today.

Greyness, moral equivalency, situational ethics, xray - a teacher - calmly telling little Billy, now, now little Billy the blood dripping from your nose is not important, nor is the pain you feel, nor your desire to deck the little prick who just took your Mom's birthday gift and smashed it on the ground after he punched you.

That is his objectively subjective philosophy or his subjective objective philosophy which he is entitled to and it is just the same as yours is yours.

Six year old Billy waited and waited, 32 years, untill the bully extorted enough money from Billy's phenomenally profitable philosophy business and hired a bully who blew up the public housing project that the bully built.

As the Arabs say...It was written. Or in a Sanskrit writing..."Coincidences, when traced back far enough, become inevitable." B.F. Skinner just had an orgasm!

Adam

[Selene]

This is a fair analysis:

The Wall Street Journal

JULY 20, 2009, 3:05 P.M. ET

The Cronkite Tragedy

How a great newsman helped undermine his profession’s ethos.

By JAMES TARANTO

Walter Cronkite will be remembered for two things: a career that spanned six decades, during which he personified the 20th-century journalistic ideal of the newsman as an objective and authoritative purveyor of facts; and an incident in which he departed from that ideal, with far-reaching consequences for the country and the news business.

As The Wall Street Journal recounts in its obituary, Cronkite got his start in journalism in the mid-1930s, writing freelance stories while a student at the University of Texas. He dropped out of college to join the staff of the Houston Press and was later hired by the United Press wire service. He covered World War II on the front lines, filing dispatches from Germany, Normandy and North Africa. After the war he worked as the UP’s Moscow bureau chief, returning to America in 1950 to join CBS. He became anchorman of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962, and by the time he retired in 1981, Cronkite was known as “the most trusted man in America,” a superlative that had been confirmed the previous year in a Ladies Home Journal Poll.

But in his own mind--and in the minds of many of his critics and admirers alike--the most important moment in his career came when he departed from the newsman’s role to play editorialist. The occasion was a just-completed reporting trip to Vietnam, where he had reported on the

Tet Offensive:

On his return, Mr. Cronkite presented a withering assessment of the prospects for a U.S. victory, one of the few moments during 19 years in the anchor’s chair when he swerved from his just-the-facts approach. It was said that President Lyndon B. Johnson remarked, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.”

At a 2006 news conference, Mr. Cronkite said, “The editorializing that I did on the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and I think helped speed the end of that war, that was--that I’m proudest of.”

But Cronkite’s editorializing made him into part of the story. And Vietnam was not just any story; it was the central political and cultural conflict in America for several years beginning in the late 1960s. By taking sides, Cronkite compromised his role as a newsman. In the early ’70s, on his own network’s top-rated show, he was called “commie Cronkite.“ To be sure, viewers were meant to take Archie Bunker for a fool, but the makers of “All in the Family” understood that their colleague in the news division had become a combatant in the culture wars.

Judged on his whole career, Cronkite’s reputation for integrity and trustworthiness was well-deserved. He was a great newsman. But his greatness, paradoxically, made the effect of his lapse much more damaging. It sowed confusion among younger reporters about the difference between reporting and commentary. Take this remembrance from Jim Poniewozik of Time magazine:

Despite his comments on the war--or because of them--Cronkite cemented a reputation as a straight shooter. His successors, at CBS and elsewhere, would later be denounced as biased hacks for far less opinionated statements. Maybe Cronkite benefited from working in a time when Americans simply had more trust in authority. But it may also be that he earned that trust--that by calling a quagmire what it was, he showed that a false even-handedness that flies in the face of reality is not the same as honesty.

Being a “straight shooter” means something quite different to a news reporter than an editorialist. The distinction is analogous to that between a judge deciding a case and a lawyer arguing one, or between an umpire and a coach. No one doubts that Cronkite was sincere in his opinion about Vietnam, and the argument over its merits is beyond the scope of today’s column. As a reporter, however, he had a duty to stick to the facts and leave opinions to others.

He almost always lived up to that duty, but the one time he manifestly fell short, it ended up having great and baneful consequences. Do you remember a few years ago when one of the networks declared the conflict in Iraq to be a “civil war”? Neither does anyone else. It was a transparent attempt to do to Iraq what Cronkite had done to Vietnam. It failed because viewers no longer trust newsmen the way they did in 1968. And it is a vicious circle: Without the authority that derives from that trust, reporters get careless about objectivity, weakening the audience’s trust even further.

The glory of Walter Cronkite’s career is that he did more than anyone to earn his viewers’ trust and establish his profession’s authority. The tragedy is that he also did more than anyone else to undermine them.

Adam