Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite dies

[Cutlass]

Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite dies
Last Updated: Friday, July 17, 2009 | 8:53 PM ET
CBC News

Walter Cronkite, the former CBS anchor known as the Most Trusted Man in America, has died, the American broadcaster said Friday. He was 92.

A news anchor when CBS News was in its heyday, Cronkite conveyed to Americans historic events including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the landing of the first man on the moon.

He was noted for his editorial during the 1968 Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, when he characterized the war as unwinnable.

"It is increasingly clear that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to the pledge to defend democracy," Cronkite said in that broadcast.

After hearing Cronkite’s verdict, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Cronkite was anchor of CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, when he handed over the desk to Dan Rather. His nightly signoff, "And that's the way it is ..." was well-known throughout America.

He continued reporting for CBS and other networks until 2008.

Born in St. Joseph, Mo., on Nov. 4, 1916, Cronkite attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked on the Daily Texan.

He entered broadcasting in 1935 as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Okla. He later joined a radio station in Kansas City, then moved to the United Press wire service in the same city.

Cronkite first came to wider public attention as a battlefield correspondent for United Press during the Second World War, covering battles in North Africa and Europe and U.S. bombing raids on Germany. After the war, he remained in Europe to cover the Nuremberg trials.

In 1950, respected newsman Edward R. Murrow hired him as a Washington correspondent at CBS affiliate WTOP.

In 1962, he was made anchor of CBS Evening News, then a 15-minute broadcast. It became the first 30-minute network newscast the following year with Cronkite at the anchor desk. Later in his career, he said he regretted never seeing the newscast expand to an hour.

Cronkite's calm and sober style, and CBS’s reputation for in-depth journalism worked together to make him the most trusted source of news in America.

He was first on air with reports of the Kennedy assassination, breaking into As the World Turns with a live broadcast on Nov. 22, 1963, with the earliest report of the shooting. He is remembered for the personal emotion he betrayed in his first bulletin reporting the president’s death.

"At that moment I teared up — I just had a little trouble getting the words out," he said of the historic broadcast.
An anchor with credibility

Cronkite was anchor during events such as the Vietnam War, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the Apollo space missions and the Watergate scandal.

Cronkite’s credibility and status is credited by many with pushing the Watergate story to the forefront with the American public, resulting in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

"Nixon, to me, never seemed comfortable in the presidency. He always seemed to be acting out a rehearsed role. I thought I could see his knees knocking with stage fright," he said later of the disgraced president.

Cronkite won numerous awards for his journalism, including an Emmy, a Peabody and a 1991 Award of Excellence from the Banff Television festival.

He retired at age 65 from the news anchor job.
'Passing of the baton'

"For almost two decades … we've been meeting like this in the evenings, and I'll miss that. But those who have made anything of this departure, I'm afraid have made too much," he said in his goodbye to viewers.

"This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman preceded me in this job, and another will follow. And anyway, the person who sits here is but the most conspicuous member of a superb team of journalists — writers, reporters, editors, producers — and none of that will change."

Cronkite continued to do reports for CBS, CNN and NPR, and also took on projects such as narrating an Imax film about the space shuttle and providing narration for Spaceship Earth at Walt Disney World.

He released his autobiography, A Reporter’s Life, in 1997 and contributed to the TV special about his life, Cronkite Remembers.

He remained a fearless critic of U.S. policy and in recent years made acerbic critiques of the war on drugs and the war on terror.

He was married for 64 years to Betsy, a reporter he met in Kansas City. She predeceased him in 2005.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2009/07/17/walter-cronkite.html

Shame. R.I.P

 

[Birdjaguar]

Awesome newscaster. Too bad he never got to ride in a rocket to the moon.

 

[Moss]

He's a legend...his face and voice are seen and heard reporting so many iconic events. RIP.

 

[emzie]

v char limit

 

[Narz]

Shame. R.I.P

I wouldn't say it's a shame, everyone's gotta die sometime. He lived a long, full life it sounds like & has been without his wife since 2005. RIP.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

This has been one sucky month.

He had the sort of voice a family would cuddle around the fire to. There goes another symbol of an age.

Rest in Peace.

 

[Imperialmajesty]

What a class act. 92 years simply isn't enough for a person of his calibur and class.

 

[Masada]

Short listed for the cloning list.

 

[Colonel]

very sad indeed.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

My grandmother always enjoyed watching him. While 92 is a respectable lifespan for anyone, it's too bad he wasn't able to see the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It is too bad Walter saw the incredible erosion of his own profession before he died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/pageoneplus/20mon3.html?_r=1

To most of us, most of the time, the news is something that happens to other people, the disembodied events of the day. It was Walter Cronkite’s job to embody them for us, to give them presence in our lives. You may not have known much about how the “CBS Evening News” was assembled in Cronkite’s day, from 1962 to 1981. But you could not help feeling its significance, its weight, by hearing it told in that voice — in that reassuringly unaccented accent, the product of growing up along the 95th meridian, more or less smack in the heart of the United States. In retrospect, Walter Cronkite’s authority is something of a mystery. Its sources are obvious. His reporting during World War II alone would have fueled half a dozen careers. The mystery is the modesty within his authority. His job was to appear unfazed, unchanged by the events he described. But from time to time — reporting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, reporting from Vietnam, reporting that first step on the moon — he made it clear that the news of the day had changed not only us but him. In those moments he seemed his most authoritative. How one becomes a proxy for a nation, as Cronkite did, is a matter of luck and timing and experience. But it’s also a matter of character. Cronkite had limitless stores of character. And limitless stores of wonder. He never grew weary of the world or reporting on it. He seemed bemused by the accolades and almost reverential of the trust that so many millions of Americans placed in him. Some deaths end only a life. Some end a generation. Walter Cronkite’s death ends something larger and more profound. He stood for a world, a century, that no longer exists. His death is like losing the last veteran of a worldchanging war, one of those men who saw too much but was never embittered by it. Walter Cronkite’s gift was to talk to us about what he saw, and we are very lucky to have been able to listen.

And that's the way it is...