Walter Cronkite Dead at 92: Retrospect

Walter Cronkite died yesterday at the age of 92. He lived a long life, has been mourned by many, and his death elicited tributes from presidents past and present, world-famous astronauts and colleagues honoring the face of American broadcast journalism and the “most trusted man in America.” Cronkite died with his family by his side last night at his Manhattan home after a long battle with cerebrovascular disease, according to Marlene Adler, Cronkite’s chief of staff.

Cronkite anchored the nation’s most popular and prestigious broadcast news show, “CBS Evening News.” He displayed unflinching and keen insight into the political events of his day. In Nov. 26, 1969, in response to VP Spiro Agnew’s criticism of growing power of broadcast news, he is noted as saying “[i]t’s not reaction to a charge made against us that is the question that is at stake here. It’s the reaction to an implied threat to freedom of speech in this country,” according to the LA Times. That was a bold statement for his day. “His credo as a reporter, and later as an anchor orchestrating the work of others, was to get the story “fast, accurate, and unbiased,” says The Star. Quoting former CBS Anchor Knowlton Nash, they add “[h]e was a matter-of-fact man, the quintessential anchorman in the heyday of network news. He became the godfather of them all.”

Cronkite’s 31 years of anchoring in an earnest and what many see as a nonbiased manner resulted in news anchors in the Netherland calling themselves “Cronkiters”, according to the Miami Herald.

Unlike another famed news anchor, Edward R. Murrow, who blossomed during World War II, when partiality was thought a virtue in news reporting, Cronkite’s appeal was his seeming lack thereof.