And That’s the Way it Was
July 19th, 2009 | Editorial Cartoons | 4 Comments
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It’s hard to explain Walter Cronkite’s impact to anyone under thirty. In a world without cable television and the internet, the 24-hour news cycle and instant response from bloggers, Cronkite’s word was gospel. He was the most trusted man in America. Was that too much power for one journalist, even one as gifted and careful as Cronkite? Probably, but I’m not sure I like what we have now any better. I applaud the diversity of opinion to which we now have access, but the fracturing of our attention has helped create a partisan divide so wide that it seems irreparable. Those who watch only Fox News and listen only to Rush Limbaugh and his ilk experience an entirely different reality than those who watch CNN and listen to NPR, so different that we can’t even agree on the basic facts, let alone what they mean. Perhaps my nostalgia for an America in which our experiences were widely shared is misplaced, but the poisonous rancor that divides us now gives little comfort to those of us who would like the political life of this country to be about more than defeating the other party at any cost. Take back O’Reilly and Hannity, Olberman and Maddow, and give me Cronkite any day. Rest in peace, Uncle Walter.
Topics: journalism, news, television, tv news, Walter Cronkite
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We’ll Miss you Walt!
A huge loss for sure. He was truly the last real news anchor America had in my opinion.
In today’s world, it’s fairly easy to determine news anchors political bias from their work, not so with Cronkite. He did not let his political views influence his job.
That quality of journalism no longer exits in our world today and that’s even sadder.
John, I must disagree with you. Cronkite’s brand of journalism DOES exist to day, and is practiced by many, many dedicated journalists. I worked with a number of them at the Rocky. They’re all over the place, in magazines, freelancing, even on tv. What’s changed is the communications universe, in which there’s instant response to everything and anything anyone does or says, and in which the White House, the political parties and the lobbyists have much more power and leverage than in Cronkite’s day. Can you imagine what the response would be today to Cronkite’s blockbuster announcement that he considered Vietnam a stalemate, or when he turned on Nixon? The words would hardly have been out of his mouth before the attacks from all quarters began, and continued, until Cronkite’s reports were submerged in a sea of contradictory information and opinion. What was unique was the widespread trust he engendered, a trust that would be impossible in today’s fractured media landscape.
I should apologize for generalizing, I know better than that.
You may be correct and you are certainly more of an inside person than I am. From the laymen’s perspective, I get blasted from all sides with seemingly angry journalists telling me how the other side is in league with the devil himself. There are times I just want the news and I don’t want to be told how I am suppose to think about it.
It’s amazing that after every thing the President says I get pundits on various channels trying to tell me what he said; like I could not figure it out myself and amazingly none of them can agree on what the man just said.
To me, journalism has ceased to be a tool for the people and instead has become a tool of politics to tell people how they should think.
But I am sure there are fair number of honorable, hard working people in journalism, I just wished their work was easier to see.