Remembering Walter Cronkite
There are thousands of voices delivering the news today, but there once was a time, not long ago, when one voice mattered most:
"Good evening from CBS News Control Center in New York.
This is Walter Cronkite reporting."
"There is no way you can analyze it. You can't send it out to 'CSI' and say, 'Alright, look at the DNA of Walter Cronkite and how do we replace that or replicate it?'" newsman Ted Koppel said of Cronkite's unique journalistic abilities.
"There was a time when someone, one person could say, 'That's the way it is.' And we all trusted it was true," said Diane Sawyer, co-anchor of ABC's "Good Morning America" and "Primetime Live."
Of Cronkite's reports, Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" said, "It gave such a global-village feel to things. No one moved. America gathered… this was the gateway to the American evening."
"I'm the son of a newsman, and it's a huge part of my life," said actor/producer George Clooney. "I grew up in a newsroom… I know Walter very well. We did a live television show… It's fun to be around somebody who's actually been part of real historical events. You know, the guy who held our hands through some of the biggest changes in our country's history."
"In Dallas, Texas. The flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, Two o'clock Eastern Standard Time. Some 38 minutes ago."
"We didn't know whether John F. Kennedy had died. Walter was the one who told us," ABC's Barbara Walters said of Cronkite's memorable live report of President John F. Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963.
"There is something that is so quintessentially American about Walter Cronkite… his honesty and candor in difficult times," said Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News."
President Bill Clinton said, "to me, he represents the best of the First Amendment. The best of the freedom of the press."
Clinton on Cronkite
"He understood how to translate things to the television medium and make them work," said Charlie Gibson, anchor of ABC "World News."
Dan Rather, former anchor of the "CBS Evening News," said "Walter Cronkite didn't just play a reporter on TV. He was a reporter."
"It's amazing to see the man. For me he's such an icon. Meeting him was the best thing. He almost feels like an uncle to me," said actor/comedian Robin Williams. "At that point in American history, he was the voice - a voice that people believed and trusted."
Sawyer said, "I think he is the most wonderful combination of a certain steel of integrity, but absolute humanity."
Drummer Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead invited Cronkite to a performance. "He said, 'I love your music.' He was a freedom fighter and he was an honest, truthful guy that used his power while he was here on earth well. He was for the good."
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. "Good evening from CBS News Control Center in New York.
This is Walter Cronkite reporting."
"There is no way you can analyze it. You can't send it out to 'CSI' and say, 'Alright, look at the DNA of Walter Cronkite and how do we replace that or replicate it?'" newsman Ted Koppel said of Cronkite's unique journalistic abilities.
"There was a time when someone, one person could say, 'That's the way it is.' And we all trusted it was true," said Diane Sawyer, co-anchor of ABC's "Good Morning America" and "Primetime Live."
Of Cronkite's reports, Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" said, "It gave such a global-village feel to things. No one moved. America gathered… this was the gateway to the American evening."
"I'm the son of a newsman, and it's a huge part of my life," said actor/producer George Clooney. "I grew up in a newsroom… I know Walter very well. We did a live television show… It's fun to be around somebody who's actually been part of real historical events. You know, the guy who held our hands through some of the biggest changes in our country's history."
"In Dallas, Texas. The flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, Two o'clock Eastern Standard Time. Some 38 minutes ago."
"We didn't know whether John F. Kennedy had died. Walter was the one who told us," ABC's Barbara Walters said of Cronkite's memorable live report of President John F. Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963.
"There is something that is so quintessentially American about Walter Cronkite… his honesty and candor in difficult times," said Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News."
President Bill Clinton said, "to me, he represents the best of the First Amendment. The best of the freedom of the press."
Clinton on Cronkite
"He understood how to translate things to the television medium and make them work," said Charlie Gibson, anchor of ABC "World News."
Dan Rather, former anchor of the "CBS Evening News," said "Walter Cronkite didn't just play a reporter on TV. He was a reporter."
"It's amazing to see the man. For me he's such an icon. Meeting him was the best thing. He almost feels like an uncle to me," said actor/comedian Robin Williams. "At that point in American history, he was the voice - a voice that people believed and trusted."
Sawyer said, "I think he is the most wonderful combination of a certain steel of integrity, but absolute humanity."
Drummer Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead invited Cronkite to a performance. "He said, 'I love your music.' He was a freedom fighter and he was an honest, truthful guy that used his power while he was here on earth well. He was for the good."
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1/5
Please let me know how I can get a copy!
Thanks very much!
Elizabeth
In recent years I often wondered where my Uncle Walter went and I missed him being there for the answers I so desperately needed. I have grown away from the TV news for the truth and looked at our modern news reporting more as a soap opera dramatizing events to gain ratings instead of reporting the news as it really was. Uncle Walter I will miss your voice of wisdom and most of all the security that your life brought to my life. I miss you, I love you but I know that God has called you to heaven to help him make sense out of this chaotic.
In loving memory your nephew Joseph
I am almost 50 and have grown up with You, Walter and 60 Minutes.
Tonight was the first time I have ever known You to be at lose for words.
Thank you my friend, no words can articulate such a loss.
Volumes can be said by silence.
Respectfully
Annemarie M Kucner
I was born almost exactly a month after the assassination of President Kennedy and still wasn't quite old enough to understand what was going on when he reported the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Those reports were required viewing later in life, however, part of the official record of the those events.
I made a decision at an early age to become a writer & journalist and Walter Cronkite has always been the standard by which all other work in this field has been and will be judged.
And that's the way it was....
fade to black.....
WHAT A JOKE!!!
FIRST THE NEWS IS REPORTED--THEN A PANEL DECIDES WHETHER THEY LIKE IT--AND THEN THEY TAKE A POLL!!!
I REMEMBER WHEN THE NEWS WAS JUST "THE NEWS"!!!
DOES ANYONE REALIZE THAT OUR INFORMATION IS BEING DRIVEN BY TWITTER--BUZZ--FACEBOOK ETC???
NO WONDER PEOPLE CAN'T THINK STRAIGHT!!!
We call them national treasures, those handful of Americans we have in mind when we say they don?t make ?em like that anymore. Walter Cronkite was one of those people.
If Alexander Graham Bell was there to witness two cans getting strung together, Walter was no less pioneer-in-chief when the first television camera began broadcasting its blurry black and white image into our homes.
He was the voice from Middle America, the man who, although every region wanted to claim him, had an almost undetectable accent and whose political views were equally as undetectable.
Growing up in a North Louisiana in the early 60?s, our antenna could only get three TV channels so we had to choose each evening between Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley. We chose Walter.
When the world seemed on the brink of something historic, our family especially turned to Walter. He had a calming effect.
Like the meteorologist you prefer to watch when the weather is beginning to turn bad, getting the news from Walter Cronkite was like getting the skinny from a kindly old grandfather who could pat you on the knee and say, ?Due to a malfunction, the astronauts are trapped in their space capsule and are in danger of not being able to make it home again. But don?t worry. I?ll be here to keep you informed if there?s any new news to report.?
We studied Walter?s face and knew he would do just what he said. You don?t get to be known as ?the most trusted man in America ? for nothing. We trusted him because he never gave us a reason not to.
If you are old enough to remember when Walter removed his glasses long enough to compose himself during his reporting of John F. Kennedy?s death or as he rubbed his sweaty palms together upon hearing the eagle had landed, you too got a peek inside of who the man was, just enough of glimpse to know that Walter was one of us.
As an experienced World War II United Press war correspondent, Walter had seen war up close. He covered battles in North Africa and Europe including the famous Battle of the Bulge. He had seen first hand what little glory there is for those who fight our wars.
In Viet Nam during the 1968 Tet Offensive, Walter donned a helmet and flak jacket to cover what was to be one of his toughest assignments.
After years of reporting to us that we were winning that war, he returned home to tell us the hard truth:
?To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion?But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.?
After hearing the broadcast, it was later reported that President Lyndon Johnson said, ?If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.?
Now not just Middle America, but all of America, has lost Cronkite.
Since he retired, we?ve had a sampling of those who have followed in his footsteps and, with the possible exception of Tom Brokaw and his work with the Greatest Generation, it seems few have the potential of filling his journalistic shoes, few of his successors have the potential to become a national treasure.
So that?s the way it is, Uncle Walter. We?ll just have to live with the fact that they just don?t make ?em like you anymore.
May you rest in peace.
Along with millions of other viewers, your program treated us to delightful glimpses of Walter Cronkite?s life and a wonderful chronology of world events over much of the last half of the 20th Century. But for me it was more than a review of his many contributions to reporting the news.
In this 60 Minutes we saw a perspective of the very American experience of world events through the eyes and voice of a non partisan reporter. The program portrayed a range of the human experiences we felt as the events of those past days unfolded - the deeds and emotions, mankind?s good and evil mixed with the joy and grief the news produced. Walter showed us the emotions he felt, not telling us how we should feel. He understood his role to provide us with the highest quality information on what he felt to be the most important events of the day, letting a better informed public make their own decisions about how to deal with it.
I believe we saw the powerful value of a free press, news presented in a very personal way, setting a very high bar for television journalism. Walter Cronkite understood the value of trust, both in his personal and professional life, earned over a lifetime with the potential of being lost in an instant. While his audience benefited from and was comforted by his reporting style, let us hope the ?Fourth Estate? reflects and uses his body of work as their standard.
My congratulations to CBS for supporting Walter Cronkite?s approach to reporting the ?way it was? and for commemorating him with this extraordinary piece.
Your Regular Viewer,
John M. Leap