Portrait of the Journalist as an Anchorman

An Appreciation of the Broadcast Pioneer and the News Role He Created

(CBS)  He was the broadcaster for whom the word "anchorman" was coined. Veteran CBS Newsman Walter Cronkite died Friday evening at the age of 92. He played a role in our national life like no other broadcast journalist . . . and all the rest of us are still following in his footsteps. Martha Teichner offers this appreciation:

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For nearly twenty years one man told Americans "the way it is" . . .

. . . and they believed him.

"What made Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite? I could no more tell you that than I could tell you what made Spencer Tracy, Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant, Cary Grant," said Don Hewitt, one of Cronkite's earliest producers and the creator of "60 Minutes."

Years before there was such a thing as a TV anchorman, while Cronkite was still a combat reporter in WWII working for a wire service, it was already clear he had something.

"I'm just back from the biggest assignment that any American reporter could have so far in this war, covering the occupation of North Africa by American troops," he said as recorded in an old movie newsreel.

"It was my first time on camera," Cronkite remarked later, chuckling, "I just fell into whatever I do naturally. I never took any elocution lessons, no diction lessons. I might have been a pretty decent broadcaster if I had, but what you see, I'm afraid, is what you get."

Special Section: Walter Cronkite: 1916-2009

What Edward R. Murrow got in 1950, when he asked Cronkite to work for CBS News, was a first-rate reporter . . . a newspaper man with some radio experience, just as television news was being born . . . a time when radio was still dominant and, as Cronkite explained to Charles Osgood in 1997, "the really good people that we had didn't want to do television.

"They actually felt that it was below them, that it was some kind of show business, which it was and is, but they weren't going to play the game at all. And then they found out that it was important, that it had an impact beyond what they had expected.

"But by that time, I'd got myself fully nailed down in television. They didn't have a chance, not because I was better, but because I was there."

Cronkite was always there . . . wherever the biggest story in the world happened to be. And like a father or uncle, he seemed to be there for us.

Such as when he told people what happened on November 22, 1963. For a flicker of a moment that day viewers glimpsed the man as well as the consummate journalist, and sensed they could trust Walter Cronkite to tell them the news even when it was the most terrible.

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather covered the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.

"I think the day President Kennedy died was the day that television news as we know it was born for all intents and purposes, and Walter Cronkite was a very important part of making it so," Rather said.

Charles Gibson, anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight," said "It was an establishing moment. It established that when momentous events occur and the country is deeply shaken, they gather at the television set. This is sort of the national meeting place."

As John-John saluted his father's funeral procession, Cronkite notes that "Anchormen shouldn't cry" - and he never did on the air. The dignity and composure he brought to his job, the gift of plain-speaking, his honesty, eventually gave Walter Cronkite the power to change history.

"In the early stages of our involvement in Vietnam, basically I felt that our course was right," Cronkite reported. "My concern grew with the concern of the American people."

Cronkite's personal papers, which he gave to the University of Texas, make clear just how quickly his concern took shape. Historian and CBS News consultant Douglas Brinkley showed us a speech given by the newsman for the Houston World Affairs Council in January 1965.

"He's not doing this on television," Brinkley said, "but here he's calling Vietnam a 'seemingly bottomless pit,' the 'insoluble quandary of Vietnam.'"

Brinkley is writing a biography of Cronkite.

"I don't want to make him seem as if, you know, in '65 he was an anti-war person per se."

He went back to Vietnam in 1968 after the Tet offensive. Cronkite, the meticulous reporter, came home convinced the war was unwinnable, and he said so . . . on television.

"It was a major moment in American history," Brinkley said. "It was CBS News saying 'Enough's enough' to the president of the United States."

"It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then would 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," he said on air.

Cronkite himself said later, "I simply told people what I thought about the state of the war in Vietnam, and it was that we better get out of this."

"Lyndon Johnson was sitting at a television set that night and said, 'If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost the American people," recalled Hewitt.

"Johnson kind of melted in sorrow when this happened and realized that his presidency had failed, and that Cronkite had called him out," said Brinkley.

In 1968 the American people got a lot of bad news that year, and Walter Cronkite broke it to them: The killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. … and Robert Kennedy Jr. . . . and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer, when all hell broke loose, and Walter Cronkite let his anger show.

"I lost my temper at that moment," he recalled. "Sometimes I think it's perfectly legitimate for an anchor person or a newsperson on the air to let people know he's got a few feelings of his own."

It was his euphoria that Cronkite let show the following year when the Apollo XI astronauts went to the moon.

It's impossible to think of NASA and the space program without thinking of Walter Cronkite.

"I think that our conquest of space, as it were, is one of the great stories of the 20th century, and it did become, I'm happy to say, my story," Cronkite said.

"Was it disappointing to you that you never actually got to go into space?" Charles Osgood asked.

"The greatest disappointment in my life!' Cronkite said, when he was 80.

"If they offered me a chance to go tomorrow, if I thought I could pass the physical, I'd go. But I'd still see the opportunity as a glass half-empty. I wasn't getting to go to the moon."

In just about every other way, his life was a glass filled to the brim. When he wasn't doing the work he loved, he was sailing.

He adored his wife of sixty five years, from the moment he laid eyes on her in 1936 at a radio station in Kansas City. Her name was Betsy Maxwell.

"I was for some strange reason, rather shy about meeting her," Cronkite said. "And the two of us were suddenly cast in a commercial. The producer said, 'You're the boy, you're the girl, here, let's go.'

Walter: "Well, angel, what heaven did you drop from?"
Betsy: "I'm no angel."
Walter: "You look like an angel."
Betsy: "That's because I use Richard Hudnut cosmetics."

"The spark took," Cronkite said. "We went together for several years and finally married in 1940."

Betsy Cronkite died in 2005.

For fifteen of the 19 years that Cronkite anchored the "CBS Evening News," he demolished the competition in the ratings.

In poll after poll, he was voted the Most Trusted Man in America. There were even suggestions that he run for president. Cronkite said it wouldn't be appropriate.

Cronkite was so much more than what we think of today as an anchorman. It seemed inconceivable that he would ever retire, but he did, in 1981.

"I had dinner with him that night," recalled "60 Minutes" correspondent Morley Safer. "And he said, 'I think maybe I'm making a terrible mistake.'"

Or maybe not. He left on a high, just as the snug three-network realm he presided over was beginning to fracture into the multiple choice mayhem television news has become.

At some level Cronkite had to have understood the uniqueness of his legacy. He saved everything.

Douglas Brinkley showed us the "tip of the iceberg" of his papers - bookshelves full of boxes. "You asked me what surprised me the most, is just how much Cronkitiana there is."

One letter said it all, from Lady Bird Johnson, widow of the president Cronkite helped to bring down. "Dear Walter, I believe I can say in all certainty you are a national hero. You are unabashedly one of mine."

It's hard to imagine that any one man could ever speak for the nation now. The fact that Walter Cronkite did is truly remarkable.

And that's the way it is.

[ColoSue]

I wish I?d had a chance to thank Mr. Cronkite. His voice was a huge part of my childhood. As one of your interviewees mentioned, my family made sure we ate our evening meal before or after we had watched Mr. Cronkite?s newscast, but nothing interrupted him! I never missed ?You Are There?, and especially remember the Amelia Earhart story.
In the early 1990?s I worked in the bookstore at the Dinosaur National Monument quarry in Utah. During the summer, it was a small, very hot, very crowded, very loud space (the walls were mostly glass). When the volume and tension of the people in the store got to be too much, we?d walk over to the video player and pop in the trailer of the ?Dinosaur!? series narrated by Walter Cronkite. The minute Mr. Cronkite?s voice filled the store people would stop in their tracks and quietly watch the screen. We tried our ?experiment? over and over again (for 6 summers) and it worked every time. I have never seen anything like it.
I was telling my step-son while watching your show that people felt like they ?knew? Mr. Cronkite - he was an Uncle or a Grandpa, we all felt like he was part of our family. While there are some great voices in the news today, there is no one quite like him.

[ginfromdurham]

I have been looking forward to this show all day and am so very disappointed to see that the producers elected to spend more time interviewing celebrities & politicians who imposed their version of Mr. Cronkite's extraordinary life story, rather than letting Mr. Cronkite's videos do the job. I feel like I am watching VH1 "Behind the Music" rather than a sophisticated tribute to a national treasure. Why is it necessary to have Spike Lee tell us about the events leading up to MLK's death, or George Clooney recount his summer vacation with Walter? Mr. Cronkite's own voice and vintage footage of his long career is all that should be necessary to pay tribute to this remarkable man. Rest in peace, Mr. Cronkite. You were a fine example of dignity and character, so unlike this poorly produced tribute. You deserve better.

[TVJeff]

You left out Robin Williams...who is no more a newscaster than you or I. Seriously, he had an effect on everyone's life who ever heard him, who watched his delivery immediately following word of JFK's passing, or exulted as he did when Armstrong & Aldrin set foot on the moon. I am grateful for the chance to have seen and heard a man who became a true legend.

[abby0802]

Walter Cronkite set such a high standard in journalism that few follow today. I always knew that when he spoke to us he spoke with honesty, honor, and integrity. For that our nation owes him all the accolades and acclaim. We shall not see the likes of him again.


Rest in peace, dear "Uncle Walter." The heavens await you.

[jokr8790]

I believe one of the reasons that Cronkite was so highly regarded was the standard he set for broadcast journalism. As was evident in going over his archives Cronkite never alluded to a fact without having a source he could immediately reference. Too many journalists forget that today. This became evident in Dan Rather's 60 Minutes story of George W. Bush using political pull to get out of going to Vietnam. Its not that the story was wrong or that it wasn't true. Its that Rather forgot the basic rules of journalism in verifying his sources. The other rule is "if the story is too good to be true, then it probably is. In this case the story was likely true, but Rather's source was questionable. I strongly suspect it was a Rove/ Cheney setup all the way. Cronkite could never have been setup that way.

[Sylphish1]

I grew up listening to first, my Dad (God rest his soul), then Monsignor Burke from our Irish Catholic parish in Scranton, PA, then Walter Kronkite. The world was right when Daddy came home from one of his 2 or 3 jobs, clicked the tv to CBS (no, there were no remote controls then)and Walter's voice would fill our living room. No one would speak...just watch and listen intently. We had one tv, black & white, and Mr Kronkite's voice was as commanding as it was soothing. My love for the news was born then...I would look at Dad and think "Gee, if Dad was a news anchor, he would have been Walter Kronkite. He was brilliant, trustworthy, honest and filled with the type of integrity that most men could only wish to contain. I know that Dad and Walter are having a talk right now, each with their pipes, engaged in conversation that not even an angel would dare to interrupt.
God bless you, Mr Kronkite, and enjoy my father wherever you are...you would have been great friends here. I know you are ready for Dad's questions about the world as you shared the time, in different places, here on earth. The world is better for knowing you both...as I am a better person for it as well...that's the way it is this Sunday morning, July 19, 2009...thank you for the memories... C McGraw Byrd, NC

[benjohnsonsr]

We lost a keystone in foundatation of our nation when Walter Cronkite died.
The reports of his life have been a reflection of mhy chilhood, however, I simply cannot understand why CBS has yet show clips and talk about the wonderful history lesssons he gave in 'You Are There', and 'The Twentieth Century'. These shows taught us so much, and were so well produced, they were almost real.

I hope this critique is pre-mature, and that I will yet see you give them the just deserves.

[makuahunowaihini]

I am happy to see CBS laud Walter Cronkite so admirably. However, I would have been more impressed if they had treated him better when he was alive. "Shabby" pretty much sums it up.