Walter Cronkite: What Journalists Can Learn From This Legend

America’s legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite, who passed away at age 92, would be long remembered among the journalist fraternity in the world for the basic things he upheld/promoted as a professional all his life: Excellence, Integrity, Accuracy, Fairness, Objectivity.

Really, the world would be a better place if journalists left aside the frills and returned to these basic values in journalism. He was a typical example of the saying that “journalists are born and not made”. He edited the high school newspaper and was a member of Boy Scouts.

Cronkite attended college at The University of Texas at Austin, where he worked on The Daily Texan, and became a member of the Nu chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He also was a member of the Houston chapter of DeMolay, a Masonic fraternal organization for boys. More here…

The Christian Science Monitor recalls: “Walter Cronkite, who died Friday, always took an interest in young journalists. He was known as ‘Uncle Walter’ for his low-keyed but authoritative style.” More here…

The NYT gives an old Cronkite quote: “ ‘I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor — not a commentator or analyst,’ he said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. ‘I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.’

“But when he did pronounce judgment, the impact was large. In 1977, his separate interviews with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel were instrumental in Sadat’s visiting Jerusalem. The countries later signed a peace treaty.

“ ‘From his earliest days,’ Mr. Halberstam wrote, ‘he (Cronkite) was one of the hungriest reporters around, wildly competitive, no one was going to beat Walter Cronkite on a story, and as he grew older and more successful, the marvel of it was that he never changed, the wild fires still burned’.” More here…

(A friend reminds me of Cronkite’s another famous quote: “There are sound good stories and good sound stories. Unfortunately, the world loves the sound good stories.”)

See here for Life magazine’s pictorial tribute to Walter Cronkite….

And here for the BBC’s tribute… The photo above shows Cronkite interviewing JFK two months before the latter’s assassination.

To read about some interesting facts about Cronkite please click here…

Excerpts:

• Cronkite swayed the outcome of the Vietnam War in 1968 by declaring it “unwinnable.”

• He made “Watergate” a nightly theme on his newscast, the relentless repetition of which was used by the left to topple Republican President Richard Nixon.

• Since retirement, he has advocated many liberal causes, including a single world government and the end of U.S. veto power in the United Nations.

A reader suggests a site that carries a number of links related to Cronkite…See here…