If news legend Walter Cronkite is smiling these days it’s probably because he’s finally saying what analysts and various news people have privately said for years: he was not happy being forced to retire and thought Dan Rather was a poor choice to replace him.
That’s putting it bluntly, but if you cut away the nicities, that’s what’s going on right now with Cronkite’s comments to CNN.
As a journalist, I had been told that over the years because invariably the subject of Cronkite’s premature retirment would come up. By network standards Uncle Walter was put out to pasture prematurely — then given very little to do by the network he had served so well and so diligently that he had earned the nickname Old Ironpants for his ability to put in long hours at the anchor seat. It was if they were afraid to use him because it would upstage and upset Rather.
Just look what Cronkite said to CNN…and note how the Washington Post is framing the story: the context in which they place it is a case of what everyone now knows (Cronkite was forced out) suddenly becoming the conventional wisdom as some journalistic nicities melt away:
Just 48 hours before Dan Rather steps down under a cloud as anchor of the CBS newscast he’s helmed for 24 years, the guy he squeezed out said Rather should’ve been replaced years ago.
After nearly a quarter of a century, Walter Cronkite landed the final punch.
While Cronkite has always dismissed the speculation that rising star Rather speeded up his departure from the anchor chair, yesterday afternoon he sure did sound like someone trying to take a few whacks at a guy who had KO’d him.
Appearing on CNN, Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to ’81, said CBS News should have given the gig to Bob Schieffer years ago:
“He is, to my mind, the man who, quite frankly, although Dan did a fine job, I would like to have seen him there a long time ago,” Cronkite told Wolf Blitzer.
“He would have given the others a real run for their money.”
POW!!! THWOK!!
All the corporate work over the years to show that Walter Cronkite happily left the anchor seat so he could go sailing and appear once in a while in some minor capacity on CBS has just gone down the drain. CBS didn’t want to lose Rather (who was talking to other networks) so they chose Dan over Walter…and over Roger Mudd who left and found a new low-profile home at PBS.
But it gets MUCH worse for Rather. Cronkite then gave Wolf Blitzer the kind of quote journalists dream about at night:
“Better than Dan Rather would have done?” asked Blitzer, appearing barely able to believe his good fortune to get such a quote out of Cronkite.
“Because [Rather] was perennially in third place in the ratings, behind Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings,” Blitzer added, cueing up the Cronkite Kidney Punching Machine.
“That’s certainly true, and it’s quite a tribute to him that . . . CBS held on to him so long under those circumstances,” Cronkite said, in a swift uppercut to the jaw that you don’t often see landed with such zing by someone his age. “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.”
And the final shot the head:
“So you would have been happier if Bob Schieffer would have replaced Dan Rather a while ago?” Blitzer asked Cronkite to repeat, as if he were afraid he’d wake up and discover it was all just a wonderful dream.
“I would have thought so, certainly, if not Bob someone else.”
The Post also notes that Cronkite dissed Rather in the New Yorker, suggesting his replacement was playing the part of a newsman instead of a serious anchor…and he repeated this thought on CNN:
“I think that there was a general feeling among quite a lot of us around the CBS shop and, indeed, some of the viewers, that Dan gave the impression of playing a role, more than simply trying to deliver the news to the audience. . . . It’s a personality question. I don’t think he was thinking of himself of playing the role, although I don’t know that. But that is the impression that came across. “
Cronkite is VERY PERCEPTIVE:
- There is an intensity about Dan Rather that, depending on how it was channeled, could be good or bad: a feeling that he felt cooped up at the anchor desk and really wanted to be out in the field reporting stories, and felt deeply about certain stories.
- There is a feeling that he revels in the idea that he is a newsman, on a major network, covering the big stories and that he can do them better than anyone. Remember: a certain amount of ego is necessary to work in the news business (as in blogging by the way). But you get the feeling that if you took the identity and job status away from him, he would be lost.
- He seemed a bit infected with the Geraldo Rivera syndrome. Rivera covers each story as: Rivera is covering this story — look and see how it impacts me and how brave and how much I care. Rather is a more serious newsman than Rivera is (anyone on a network newscast is) but he was not the detatched anchor as Cronkite was. Remember that years ago Rivera was considered an up-and-coming practioner of the “new journalism” before he began a steady descent into Saturday Night Live-type self-parody.
Cronkite is sure to be blasted for being honest — and some who will blast him will do so because they don’t like some of his views in recent years — but if they read the CNN transcript and put their own biases aside, they’ll see Cronkite is correct, from a journalistic point of view:
Bob Schieffer is cut from the same journalistic mold as Cronkite. Some people on the right and left don’t like Schieffer because he’s not far enough in their camp — but Schieffer clearly seems to take a deep breath and tries do the best he possibly can to deliver and REMAIN ALOOF FROM the news. The story is never Bob Shieffer covering the news.
Similarly, NBC’s Brian Williams has assumed Tom Brokaw’s old anchor job seamlessly — and he has that aura of credibility that comes from a certain degree of detachment…and perhaps a feeling communicated to viewers that he believes the world would survive if he wasn’t delivering the news.
Cronkite the Judas? Hardly. Cronkite was betrayed by the powers that be at CBS years ago.
UPDATE: Check out RatherBiased.com on this interview. They also note that Cronkite once said Rather should have been fired for walking off the set during a 1987 broadcast. (RatherBiased.com’s Matthew Sheffield will be appearing on the MSNBC show “Connected Coast to Coast” Tuesday in the 5pm (eastern) hour with hosts Monica Crowley and Ron Reagan to discuss Dan Rather’s retirement from the anchordesk.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.