Walter Cronkite

Those under 35 years old may not be able to truly appreciate just how huge a part of American culture Walter Cronkite was. Of course they wouldn't remember his tenure as the anchorman of the CBS Evening News (he was the guy that the word "anchorman" was coined for), or his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the Moon landing, or Watergate. But they also have to realize how mass media, specifically network news, was disseminated in those days.

There were only three networks (you might have a UHF station or two in big cities, but they didn't run news), and only two of them had news divisions of any clout. For millions of Americans, "watching Cronkite" was a synonym for watching the news. Families usually had only one TV, and therefore watched the same show at the same time. In this way TV personalities like Milton Berle and Lucille Ball became popular and familiar to huge proportions of the audience. Cronkite was the same.

In our family we watched NBC. I have dim memories of The Huntley-Brinkley Report, and have much more solid recollections of John Chancellor. But Cronkite was an ever-present figure. I distinctly remember his Saturday morning children's show, You Are There, which presented historical events from long before the advent of television. I also remember him popping up now on then on programs on PBS, or hosting the Kennedy Center Honors, where his gentle grandfatherly nature compelled one to instantly believe anything he said. After all, he was known as "the most trusted man in America."

He will be an indelible figure in the history of America as viewed through the lens of news. Even those who did not see his announcement of JFK's death, said as he removed his glasses, the slightest catch in his voice, have seen the clip of it, and have used it as a bookmark to that event. As will his undisguised glee as men landed on the Moon, when he rubbed his hands together and boyishly said, "Oh boy!" Or how he may have influenced the tide of American politics when he visited Vietnam in 1968 and concluded that the war could not be won. Lyndon Johnson, who would shortly announce he would not run for re-election said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

In an age of lurking cynicism, it's somewhat striking that no one seems to have anything bad to say about him (although I seem to recall some lines from All in the Family where Archie Bunker said some nasty things). During an era that saw riots in the streets and the toppling of a presidency, he was an almost universally revered figure. His name was even bandied about as a political candidate (Garry Trudeau made sport of this in the 1980 campaign, when independent candidate John Anderson was looking for a running mate). Cronkite, to his credit, found such talk ludicrous.

Truly Cronkite's passing signals the end of an era. Other than Mike Wallace, there aren't any broadcast journalists left from the golden age of the dawn of TV news, and solid responsible journalism has been pretty much shouted down by the partisan squawking of cable news. Though he hasn't been a regular presence on television for close to thirty years, he will be missed.