Walter Cronkite, Anchorman: 1916 – 2009
By Craig Kennedy - July 17th, 2009; 10:13 pm
Walter Cronkite: On assignment
As the news media chases entertainment down the toilet, we lose the one who was there when it still mattered.
RIP Mr. Cronkite.
Filed under: Obituaries
He had the gift of coming across as decent, humane, erudite, and a man of complete integrity.
I’ll second that emotion, sartre. To those of us who are younger, I’m not sure it’s possible to truly relate to what Cronkite represented to us.
I was in 7th grade when JFK was assassinated and we were shepherded by Cronkite through that nightmare. Next, of course, were the deaths of RFK and MLK, both accompanied with Cronkite’s presence.
We also saw him, as a trusted spokesperson of the establishment, publicly change his mind on the extremely divisive Vietnam War issue. At the time of the Nixon presidency, Cronkite led CBS News into direct conflict with the administration, something no one else had the balls — or the power — to do.
So I hope we all can get a glimmer of what it means, emotionally and otherwise, to see someone of Cronkite’s talent, integrity, and stature pass on.
I’m a wee bit too young for Cronkite to have been a constant through my news watching days, but he represents something bigger that Pierre touches upon.
Imagine…the news media actually challenging the establishment.
In all the memorializing that took place yesterday and will continue today, I wish the talking heads would shut up for a minute and just look at themselves.
To me, Walter Cronkite represents a time when network news was actually worth a damn. It just isn’t the same now.
RIP, Walter.
(edited by me)
As I said in the other thread, the best of the best.
Imagine…the news media actually challenging the establishment.
Exactly. And I second what Joel says. Cronkite loathed the fluff that the network news gravitated to.
The talking heads will never look at themselves. They’re too disconnected.
RIP, Walter.
I was deeply saddened by this…even though I knew it was coming.
I am too young to FULLY grasp the entire effect that Mr. Cronkite had on the world. But he was a very big deal in the Wilding household when I was growing up.
Anyone who ever aspired to be a journalist or write seriously (about anything…) had to admire him greatly.
He was iconic for his dissemination of news during an extraordinarily turblent time. By all accounts, he was a gracious, decent, upstanding man with enormous intregrity.
There was no one like him. There never will be again…
RIP, Mr. Cronkite. You were my hero…
Yes, he was 92 years old, and he had a run that few could emulate in every barometer of measurement. Yet, he was larger than life, and even if he had lived longer than Jean Calment, his inevitable passing would still elicit the same kind of outpouring worldwide that it is now attracting.
I was in the third grade was JFK was assassinated, and like Pierre I too remember vaguely the Cronkite report on television that evening, which of course has been painfully encored to this very day.
R.I.P.