Tonight marks the end of an era.  I am not quite certain what era, but definitely an era.  I feel like Santa Claus and Walt Disney all died in one fell swoop.  “The most trusted man in America” is no longer with us.

Walter Cronkite appeared to be the consumate professional.  We didn’t know his politics.  We could count on his objectivity as he reported the nightly news.  He was hero.  He stormed the beach at Normandy as a war correspondent.  He covered the Battle of the Bulge and attended the Nuremburg Trials.  Walter Cronkite announced the death of JFK. 

Yet there was no greater cheerleader for the space program than Walter Cronkite.  It wasn’t what he said as much as it was his exuberance and enthusiasm as he reported the events of Apollo 11 40 years ago.  How fitting that he exit this earth as we commemorate “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

There is wonderful overview of his life and career at Wikipedia.  There is so much to say but I will leave it to our contributors.  So for tonight, in the immortal words of Walter Cronkite, “…And that’s the way it is.”

In his own words:


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80 Thoughts to “Walter Cronkite Dead –Age 92”

  1. He is one of the first news people I remember watching as a kid. He always looked old to me–and wise.

    Rest in peace, Sir!

    Was he ever knighted? If not, he should have been.

  2. Gainesville Resident

    He will definitely be missed. It’s odd he died around the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. I used to rely on his newscasts for news about the Gemini & Apollo missions when I was young. In my mind he was always connected with the NASA missions, even though that was a small amount of the news he covered.

  3. Emma

    It is definitely the end of an era. I felt like the week that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died was the week that the ’70s died, in a way. Now I feel like journalism is truly dead.

  4. Lafayette

    Emma, well said. I totally agree. There aren’t journalist like that these days. One of the first things I remember on tv was President Nixon resigning and it was Walter Cronkite that brought the news into our living room all those years ago.

  5. Moon-howler

    Agreed Emma, the end of journalism.
    He definitely was the standard bearer.
    No one has come even close to filling his shoes, in my opinion.

  6. Lucky Duck

    I remember my parents watching his newscasts and no other. I took that habit with me when I moved out on my own and continued to watch him until he retired. A true professional and he continued his graceful, dignified manner the rest of his life.

  7. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    Yeah, hard to believe that TV journalists had integrity once. Mr. Cronkite, you were truly a class act!!

  8. Punchak

    Emma –

    I don’t know how you can even mention Michael and Farah in the same sentence as Walter Cronkite! Talk about comparing lemons with a peach.

    Beside his role as a news anchor, the thing I remember is his annual hosting of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Years concert. It was a wonderful experience every time.

    Tim Russert who was feted like royalty when he died, had nothing to offer compared to Walter Cronkite.

    Hope there are sailboats in heaven!

  9. Moon-howler

    Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were both icons in their own time.

    Walter Cronkite covered many more decades and more historical events than they did. Yes, Lemons and peaches and probably a few apples but each, in his or her own way, impacted our lives.

    Too many have died and too many have died in the past month. Cronkite lived a long, productive life. He had been very ill.

    I expect most of us mourn our own loss, knowing that Walter Cronkite has gone. He has left us to a bunch of ‘journalists,’ who simply will never measure up to the professional that Cronkite was.

    He was probably too modest to realize how he really shaped the majority part of a century and contributed in so many ways to making America what it really is. Yet he also contributed to the America that many of us remember and long for. Now he belongs to the ages.

  10. Moon-howler

    Welcome back Slowpoke, I was wondering where you have been. You and Speedy off somewhere getting into trouble?

  11. Leila

    I’m afraid I am going to have to agree with Punchak, I can’t fathom mentioning Cronkite in the same sentence with Jackson and Fawcett. I grew up with Cronkite, and with “good night Chet, good night David,” too of course. But Cronkite did have a singular persona. That said, I hardly think it is the death of journalism as Emma said. First, I can think of incredibly influential broadcast journalists who preceded Cronkite. Chief among them was Edward R. Murrow, who had a lot to do with bringing down the abuses of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Murrow was easily the kind of icon Cronkite was, but for a much shorter time since he died in his 50s.

    Also, I can think of great journalists today, especially in the print media. But also some in the broadcast media as well, including TV and radio like NPR. There are journalists working at home and abroad to do the traditional journalist task of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” There are Pulitzer-prize winning reporters exposing all kinds of malfeasance in government and elsewhere. There are foreign correspondents in print and broadcast media risking their lives daily in war zones and other dangerous locations. Lots have been killed. Some are in prison. I truly believe that Walter Cronkite would be the first to be insulted at the blanket claim that journalism is dead.

  12. JustinT

    In news reports on CNN it sounds like he was not a fan of the Vietnam invasion. He must have been so sickened by Iraq. He was no longer an anchor when I started watching the news. To me he is a likable historical figure that everyone seemed to respect, so I did too. I couldn’t help but be happy for him that he lived to be 92 and he lived to see the end of the Bush years.

  13. Gainesville Resident

    I agree, Walter Cronkite was head and shoulders above most journalists. He never was partisan, and I don’t see how anyone can assume anything about whether he was for or against the Iraq War.

    Leaving that aside, indeed, there’s no journalist who has come close to him. Dan Rather was a very poor successor who could not be objective like Cronkite.

    Cronkite was great when it came to reporting on space related stuff, as he was on more political subjects. It’s too bad more journalists don’t try and emulate him. As many people said above, it is the end of a era, and there is no one on TV that comes close to him. There were other journalists of his era that were like him, but he’s one of the last greats of that era. It’s too bad what has happened to brodcast journalism. Cronkite came across as more intelligent, more honest, and just more objective than anyone i can think of on any TV network today – whether the traditional national networks or the cable networks.

    Journalism isn’t dead, but it has changed, and broadcast journalism has not changed for the better. Did you ever see Cronkite try and sensationalize a story for ratings? No. I’m sure he was horrified at what had become of broadcast journalism, even on his former network.

    Too bad some people are trying to inject party politics into this discussion, I don’t think Walter Cronkite might look so kindly on that.

  14. Gainesville Resident

    And you can’t believe CNN anyway – they could be editing/slanting any inteviews with him – also not many people were for the Vietnam war – so you can’t infer anything about his party politics. Yes, not many people were for the Iraq war, although you’d be surprised how many soldiers think we’re doing the right thing there. Quite different than Vietnam, where the soldiers were not at all for the war. Most soldiers I talk to (and I just talked at length to a Staff Sergeant who cmae back from Iraq in February) say the news media completely distorted what went on there, and the ground truth of what’s going on there is much different than the media would have you believe. He and others have a similar attitude – the US news media is scum, and they did all they could to make things look very different than the ground truth of what is happening there.

    Now, it would be nice to get back to remembering Walter Cronkite without trying to inject partisan politics into this discussion. I don’t think Walter would want to be remembered that way – or have people trying to say whether or not he objected to the Iraq War, or what he thought about Bush. If he didn’t come out and say it – then maybe he didn’t want anyone to know, and didn’t feel it proper to give his point of view on it. If he did make a statement, then I take back what I just said, obviously.

  15. Moon-howler

    Each of us was allowed some license with hyperbole yesterday. Of course, journalism isn’t truly dead–it just seems so at the moment. Also, Santa Claus hasn’t died and Walt Disney has been dead for quite a few years.

    “The day the music died” allows us to make such statements.

    I agree with GR that Cronkite would be horrified at what passes for journalism every time one turns on a cable news channel, regardless of political persuasion. The entire field of journalism seems to have changed.

    I was thinking last night, about Dan Rather at the Democratic convention in 1968. Both he and Mike Wallace were roughed up while covering the convention. I believe it was after that when journalists no longer cared if we knew their politics. Perhaps that is just my perception.

  16. Emma

    Good grief, Leila and Punchak, you’ll argue with anything I say. As I look outside, I see that the sky is blue. Any issues with that?

    Have a pleasant weekend.

  17. Gainesville Resident

    I remember that incident at the Democratic convention in 1968 too. That was a pretty rough convention but you may be right that could have been the turning point when journalists began to just let it be known their political leanings. That’s an interesting observation.

  18. Gainesville Resident

    Emma – I see some white streaks in the sky looking out my window! Just kidding!

  19. Leila

    Emma, that was a rather bizarre response considering I have posted only a few times in the past several months and I wasn’t arguing with you on them I don’t believe. I guess you have some programmed answer, because it certainly has no basis in recent experience.

    It is childish in the extreme to compare a reasoned disagreement about whether or not “journalism is dead” with an issue over whether the sky is blue. If there is anyone here demonstrating a knee-jerk sort of behavior this morning, I’m afraid it is you.

  20. Leila

    When I think of journalism, I primarily think of other mediums than television with its desperate need to condense and simplify. The only TV journalism I know of today that resists that is on PBS, like the Lehrer News Hour. But since I know what impressive work is still being done by newspaper and magazine journalists, who may take months over investigative pieces as well as report daily news, often from very difficult conditions, I think the focus on the broadcast medium is mistaken. Although yes, I realize that most people may get their news from top of the hour headlines on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc. I watch those too, because I am a total news junkie, but there are plenty of non-superficial sources out there, foreign and domestic, including radio like the BBC and NPR, etc.

    Anyone curious about how important Edward R. Murrow was in early TV journalism and who wants to be entertained as well should check out the great film Good Night, and Good Luck (2005).

  21. Moon-howler

    Gainesville, I am going to have to throw Fox News in with your mix of who has a slant to news. I only watch cnn and fox (and cnbc for financial stuff in the morning) and I am appalled at how I know how every journalist on Fox feels politically. I honestly cannot say I see that quite as badly on CNN. Tell me which of their journalists is biased and I will look for it.

  22. When the bubble-headed bleach blonde (not my words – Don Henley’s) on Fox News announced his death I thought of Dirty Laundry – that’s what passes for journalism since the 90s:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb7GNzzIVIo&feature=related

    Journalism died when Dan Rather took Cronkite’s air.

  23. Leila

    Cindy, you don’t want to change that to “broadcast journalism” and not simply journalism? I would still disagree, but at least it wouldn’t look so odd.

  24. Moon-howler

    Cindy, does Faux News hire any female who isn’t cute and blonde?

    Cindy, I agree, Rather crossed the great divide.

    I think most of us are talking about TV journalism that makes it into our homes each day, like Cronkite did. Regardless of what they prefer to call themselves, the cable news stations have become MSM. I do think CNN gets a bum rap, mostly by those who prefer Fox. I think you have to watch both to even get it half right.

    Our local news at 11 seems to me to be the most unbiased.

  25. Gainesville Resident

    On CNN, I can’t say today which ones are. But a couple of years ago they were extermely slanted against the Iraq War, and some idiot on there (I forget who) made the statement that all US soldiers over there are participating in an illegal war, and basically are enemy invaders, etc. My system used to carry both Fox and CNN, and some high up general saw that piece, and forbid my satellite broadcast system to carry CNN anymore.

    I just think they are just about as slanted as Fox, but that’s my own opinion. And, who can forget the time CNN had that funny advertisement for their attractive woman newscaster, that had the sound of a zipper unzipping in the background, and said something like “let’s wake up to XXX in the morning” (I forget her name). I think she came out against that ad and was appalled with it, and later on moved to Fox.

    Anyway, there’s a flow of people back and forth between Fox and CNN, actually.

    Also, CNN – whenever they report on a technical subject I’m familiar with, they get it spectacularly wrong. Finally, most soldiers just HATE CNN – as did the one I talked to last week at Robins AFB, GA – he says they purposely ignored facts – one of them tagged along with his unit and wouldn’t listen to any facts the soldiers related – and twisted things around 180 degrees.

    I don’t think CNN is any better than Fox. Both have a slant and agenda, maybe CNN’s is more subtle. Someone I know calls them the “Confused News Network” – they often have really glaring (and funny) typos in their “crawl” across the bottom of the screen.

    I do agree with MH’s comment that “you have to watch both Fox and CNN to even get the story half right”. That’s the best statement I’ve seen about the whole Fox/CNN debate in a long time, and I think hits the nail on the head.

    I have to side with Emma – I thought her response was pretty good actually! She’s right – I’ve noticed a pattern of replies to her posts – so I believe as she says some people are just putting up knee-jerk responses to her posts just for the sake of argument.

    Not to belabor or turn into a debate – but Farrah – whatever you want to say about her – did a very courageous battle in her final days with cancer. And, she made that documentary, which should help to inspire lots of people in a similar condition. All I can say is, for myself, I don’t think I would be so courageous, and I would probably be a basket case if I ever get in that condition, and would not have the will or fight within me that Farrah did.

    As to Michael Jackson, he creeped me out in later years, and I think he was a child molester perhaps, and obviously a drug addict. It is unfortunate about him – as he started off brilliantly. He is a case study in how a great life can go “off the rails” so to speak. His life was tragic in the end, and I think there can be lessons learned from it.

    I would not compare him to Cronkite at all, but I think it is fair to mention all these celebrity deaths together – in the past few weeks a lot of celebrities have died. Have they all been “great” in the same way as Cronkite was? No. But to go off on someone for putting their names in the same sentence, that’s just plain silly and being highly argumentative.

    Well, that’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth (much less than that even!).

  26. Leila

    There are so many broadcast and print options out there, MSM, non-MSM, most of which are available free via the Net, that I have to feel that complaining about news sources is like complaining that you can’t find X brand at the tiny corner store when you have a massive supermarket right next to it. If you ignore the supermarket, then it is your fault, not the media’s.

    If you are using this website, then by default you can bring anything daily into your home if you choose to. Most people don’t choose to. I find Fox appalling (they have a lot of truly irresponsible journalists), but I watch them because I know they are important in that they are shaping the views of millions. I will say though that it was one of their vapid blondes who put a colleague in his place the other day for his bizarre eugenics-inflected riff.

    http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/08/qotd/

    and countless other sources.

    If you are conservative, there are so many more reputable news sources on your side of the fence, although it might require reading rather than listening/watching.

  27. Gainesville Resident

    I think I’m thinking of Paula Zahn (think that’s her name) where CNN put up that ad when she first signed on with them. It also said the word “Sexy” in it. She was appalled by it, and it only ran a couple of days. Definitely the sound of a zipper unzipping could be heard in the background! Who was the idiot who thought that ad was a good idea? Hopefully they fired him, or fired the ad agency that came up with it, but probably not!

  28. Leila

    Gainesville, I don’t know about other people’s responses to Emma, but she was specifically accusing me, which was totally ludicrous since I haven’t been around hardly at all in the posting sense for months, with a few exceptions that didn’t involve her.

  29. Moon-howler

    All three were American icons. Was one more important than the others? Depends on who you ask I suppose. I would say that Cronkite impacted more people simply because he covered more decades than the other 2. He lived to be 92, Fawcett lived to be 62 and Jackson 50. Do the math. He impacted more generations. Our parents turned on the news and we ,in turned, turned on the news and made our children suffer.

    Farrah Fawcett certainly inspired girls and women in the 70’s to a certain look. She and Bo Derrick were the beauties of their day, very much like some of the sweater girls and pin ups of the WWII generation. When she was on top of her game, there was not a person in America who did not know who she was.

    Michael Jackson affected millions of people world wide with his music and with his charity. He defined the music video for a decade. He was an American icon for part of 5 generations: 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000’s. His music and videos will live on well past his lifetime and into new genres of music.

    So is one more important than the other? No. All three have made their mark on not only America but also the world.

  30. Gainesville Resident

    Found an article about that ad – my memory was correct. All I did was search on Paula Zahn zipper in Google, and I turned up a bunch of links, but here’s one of them:

    http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/cnn.htm

  31. Leila

    There are few people more right-wing than Matt Drudge (though that makes him something of a hypocrite in his personal life), but I look multiple times a day at the drudgereport.com because his portal is definitely one of the most influential out there.

  32. Gainesville Resident

    Leila – I remember your posts in the past few months well, including the one you accused me of having a “hidden agenda” regarding Hasidic Jews! That’s ludicrous! It was the most laugh out loud ridiculous thing anyone’s accused me of! It was too funny actually! Anyway, I’m not going to get in the middle of this, I probably shouldn’t have said anything and I wasn’t addressing you specifically, but you chose to infer that. I was more addressing the fact that people in general seemed to be highly argumentative with her, and don’t even think I was thinking of you. Funny you should infer that from my post.

    I still say, for liberals there’s plenty of other more legitimate news sources than CNN too – to comment on your thread above. For me, I read the Wall Street Journal daily – which is a conservative oriented piece of news media. You seem to be implying that conservatives are too lazy or whatever to seek out other sources than Fox News, and don’t want to read or something. Maybe I’m reading something I shoujldn’t between the lines, but it sure seems like you said that.

  33. Gainesville Resident

    MH – you said it better than I could, why it would be OK to mention those 3 people in the same sentence or paragraph.

  34. Gainesville Resident

    So CNN doesn’t want to try and air promotional ads on THEIR sexy anchors? Again, reference my link to that webpage – which has a BUNCH of articles on that topic. From my perspective, CNN is just as guilty as FOX in the “sexy anchor” department, and for hyping them as such. I don’t buy for a minute that the ad got on the air without high up approval by CNN, contrary to what some of the articles suggest.

  35. Leila

    Gainesville, You said you agreed with Emma’s statement, which was specifically referring to me. So to say I was inferring anything is somewhat of a stretch. I think you need to go back and read the discussion we had about head scarves and you will not find any such phrasing as “hidden agenda.” So I am not sure why you are putting that phrase in quotes and seemingly attributing it to me. Since we are talking about journalism here, I would point out that one does not attribute words to others inside quote marks if they didn’t use them.

    My first post to you on the issue began with the words that you had a valid point on a particular thing I said, or failed to qualify. Later I wondered why you thought the Hasidim were a small minority among the Orthodox since they have extremely large families on average, but you never explained or gave any stats. What I care about is accuracy more than anything else. I’m afraid you are not demonstrating it.

  36. Leila

    And no Gainesville, I am not implying conservatives are lazy about seeking out a variety of news sources. I am only saying that in general in the US complaints about the MSM (from Americans across the political spectrum) only indicate people are not using all the hundreds of sources out there. And I would add English-language sources like the BBC. Maybe you would care to point out to me where I limited myself to talking about CNN!!!, since that was actually the opposite of every single thing I have spoken of this morning.

  37. Emma

    Gainesville, don’t trouble yourself with this. It’s too nice a day, although I did appreciate your sky comment 🙂

  38. Leila

    Gainesville, it is interesting you bring up the WSJ, because it is extremely conservative on its inhouse editorial statements and in most of its op-ed writers (not all). But in quite a bit of its regular journalism on the war and other issues it is pretty much along the lines of the Post and the Times. I have seen plenty of WSJ coverage of Iraq, the torture issue, and other such topics that starkly contradicts the paper’s editorial position. It’s a really admirable thing about the WSJ that the owners, both pre- and post-Murdoch, don’t force reporters to tow the paper’s editorial line.

  39. Censored bybvbl

    GR, you’re right that CNN pushed that ad about Paula Zahn, but all one has to do is look at the regular female anchors, commentators, and reporters on CNN and Faux News to realize that CNN staff looks more like the rest of us – not so much blond helmet hair.

    I wonder if a young Walter Cronkite could even succeed in today’s multi-national corporate MSM regardless of his personal integrity. Even the MSM’s coverage of the Iraq war is sanitized to the extent that reporters aren’t free to cover many aspects whether they’re limited in where they can travel or what they can photograph.

    I suppose the best way to get one’s news is from a variety of sources – MSM, public tv and radio, blogs, foreign sources. One blog that I’ve read for a few years predicted just where the housing market was going long before the MSM picked up on that story (which was safely after the market started to collapse).

  40. kelly3406

    Walter Cronkite was extremely biased, but the lack of alternative news sources at the time did not make that clear until much later. JustinT is actually correct (I am amazed to be writing that JustinT is correct about anything): Walter Cronkite was very much against the Vietnam War. An example of this was the aftermath of the 1968 Tet Offensive in which Cronkite reported that the War was lost. The Tet Offensive was a huge tactical victory for the U.S., but the television cameras and war correspondents that focused for the first time on heavy U.S. casualties turned the battle into a strategic loss. This battle turned out to be decisive, because it eroded public support for the war and led to our eventual defeat. I think Walter Cronkite deserves much of the “credit” for turning the public against the Vietnam War.

    Walter Cronkite did not have to resort to sensationalism, because whatever he stated on the evening news became the unchallenged “truth.” The rise of cable news networks since that time has prevented such breath-taking power from being exercised by any one journalist.

  41. I agree with getting your news and information from a variety of sources. And no, print journalism is just as bad as broadcast. Look at marketing for the Washington Post’s “salons” that was exposed. The line between broadcast news and advertisers was forever tainted when corporations went from advertising on networks to owning them. Now the line between newspapers is blurred in their desperation to hang on to print editions. I worked at 2 TV stations and a newspaper. I have a great respect for journalists who go out, get the real story and don’t go with that story until they get the big picture — comments on all sides of the issue. You don’t see that today though. You, the reader or viewer, have to take the story and search different news sources to get the whole information. That includes getting your information from blogs.

    Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay for “Network.” That’s broadcast journalism to a T. It was made into a movie in the 70s, and Walter Cronkite’s daughter even had a small role in it. It is even more prophetic today.

  42. Emma

    Cronkite may have had his biases, but news was delivered in a calm, authoritative way. I’m not sure technology has really improved news delivery, except for the fact that delivery is nearly instantaneous these days. I think about the constant running headers and sidebars with busy charts and graphics that CNN, Fox and others use, to the extent that a single screen shot is delivering information on maybe 6 news items, including financial information. And usually what they are actually “analyzing” focuses on the sensational–i.e., what will sell air time. It’s overload for short attention spans. No wonder many people can only digest sound bites.

  43. Moon-howler

    Cronkite may or may not have had his biases. The point was, Americans didn’t know how he felt because he didn’t interject his opinion into every sentence.

    As for Vietnam, he apparently felt that it was a necessary evil like most Americans felt, in the early days. After the Tet offensive, Cronkite had a different opinion and in a rare move, said so. Cronkite said: “The only rational way out… will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

    Johnson felt if he didn’t have Cronkite, he had lost to the American people.

    There were other news anchors out there.

    Also Cronkite didn’t report the war was lost. I will post the text of his comments.

  44. Punchak

    Emma

    ??????????? I don’t believe I have ever commented on one of your comments. Furthermore, I’ve been away for a month and when I came back, my computer was on the blink so haven’t been here for quite a while
    – Didn’t you miss me?

  45. Moon-howler

    WALTER CRONKITE’S “WE ARE MIRED IN STALEMATE” BROADCAST, FEBRUARY 27, 1968

    Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won’t show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

    We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that — negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

    To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

    This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

  46. Emma

    Sounds like someone who was in line with the pulse of the viewers at the time, not his own personal agenda or that of his network. His concluding paragraph was very fair. And I don’t remember him taking potshots the way many anchors do now.

  47. Emma

    Punchak, I wasn’t responding to anything from the past. I just thought that I had made a fairly benign comment that others agreed with. You made it sound like I compared Jimmy Swaggart to Jesus.

  48. kelly3406

    You have made my point for me, MH. Walter Cronkite did not simply report the news in this case — he used his power to influence the outcome. You have to ask yourself: what would have happened if Walter Cronkite refrained from making news himself?

    In 2006, Cronkite said that his statement on Vietnam was the proudest moment of his career and he would not hesitate to make the same statement about Iraq. His statement that our people “did the best they could” was a tacit admission of defeat, i.e. the U.S. could not successfully defend democracy, so we must negotiate an end to the war.

    Here is a very relevant statement I lifted from AmericanThinker.com:
    General No Nguyen Giap, the Supreme Commander of the Viet Minh (NVA) forces said, in a 1989 interview with CBS’s Morley Safer,
    “We paid a high price, but so did you…not only in lives and material…After Tet the Americans had to back down and come to the negotiating table, because the war was not only moving into…dozens of cities and towns in South Vietnam, but also to the living rooms of Americans back home for some time. The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory…The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion.” (The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations, Howard Langer, 2005).

  49. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    Moon-howler :
    Welcome back Slowpoke, I was wondering where you have been. You and Speedy off somewhere getting into trouble?

    Writing…genealogy.

  50. Moon-howler

    Kelly, I am not sure what you point is. I am not going to participate in any bashing of Cronkite.

    No one is denying what he said about Vietnam. That was a very benign (to quote Emma) statement in those days. While it was opinion, it wasn’t opinion from afar. The man had just come back from investigating the war in the region. He said it was opinion. It was one of the few times he spoke in that manner.

    I don’t do what ifs….if I did I would start off with…what if the military didn’t lie to Congress and to the American people about how the war was going. That would be the place to start playing that song.

    I don’t really care what the North Vietnamese general had to say. Can you say ENEMY? Screw him!

    Walter Cronkite was an honorable man who set the bar for professional journalism very high. For such a gentle, decent man, I don’t know why a thread about his death has brought about so much contention.

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