Walter Cronkite has passed. The last vestige of an era when television journalists had integrity, intelligence, and understood their role has gone. The last in a line of superb journalists that included Edward R. Murrow and John Chancellor and David Brinkley . . . we will never see his like again.
It is unfortunate for Cronkite that he was "the most trusted man in America" when he spoke out against the war in Vietnam in 1968. The roots of the right-wing joke known as "liberal media" lie in his vocal opposition after a visit toward the end of the Tet Offensive. When Vice President Spiro Agnew spoke of the "nattering nabobs of negativism", he was talking about . . . Cronkite, of course. I don't know Cronkite's politics, nor do I care all that much, to be honest. It was enough that he had the guts to face the reality of Vietnamese tenacity in the face of defeat during Tet and realize that, even though the United States scored an overwhelming strategic, military victory, politically, the war was untenable because the Vietnamese were quite willing to die en masse rather than be whatever it was the United States wanted them to be. Combined with the many domestic shocks we were facing, our military venture there was doomed, not by pointy-headed bureaucrats or peacenik anti-war protesters, but the inability to form a coherent strategy and the tactics to achieve those goals. It was to Cronkite's credit that he had the guts to sit before a national audience and tell them the war was unwinnable.
Other great moments in Cronkite's career included his steadiness before the camera when he received the report from a young Texas newsman named Dan Rather that Pres. Kennedy had died at Park Hospital in Dallas. I have seen tapes of that broadcast and still marvel that Cronkite managed to maintain his professional composure at that moment of national shock and grief. Contrasted with the stunned look in the eyes and voices thick with tears of so many television journalists on September 11, 2001, it is a model of how a TV News anchor could become a source of strength. I have no doubt that Cronkite, like the rest of America, wanted to weep that November afternoon; yet, he managed to intone the words, "Pres. Kennedy has died" without flinching, choking up, or tearing on camera. When the red light went off, I have no doubt he wept like a child.
It is also fitting that he passed near the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, because Cronkite covered the space program from the first pre-orbital flight right on through the Skylab missions. He loved the space program. His reporting provided context and significance without overt melodramatization or cliche. He was the go-between for the three men in the capsule a quarter million miles away and the millions watching at home. He was as much a part of that event as Collins, Aldrin, and Armstrong.
The nation is much poorer today. We have lost not just a great television journalist, an icon of a bygone era, a voice of surety from a time when nothing else seemed certain. We have lost someone who knew who he was, and was humbled by the trust placed in him by his viewers. His example has not been followed by those who filled his shoes, the glare of the lights and the thrill of seeing one's name overwhelming discretion, professional standards, and even common sense. His passing reminds us that, just like the possibility of remounting a program to return to the Moon would take years, regaining the credibility of televised journalism will take even longer, just to get back to where we were 40 years ago.
Virtual Tin Cup
