Walter Cronkite retired as news anchor for “CBS Evening News” in 1981, three years before I was born. Although I never had the chance to watch him man the news desk on a regular basis, he introduced my generation, in archive footage, to some of the most world-altering events of the 20th century. With his touching response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and his energetic coverage of the first moon landing, which took place 40 years ago today, Cronkite was influential in pioneering television journalism as we know it today.
His death on July 17, 2009 caused the nation to stop and remember Uncle Walter, as he was affectionately known.
In our current milieu of multimedia overload, it seems strange to think that, prior to the Cronkite era, only two television stations existed with a 15-minute program dedicated to news summary. According to Cronkite’s obituary from CBS News, serious journalists in the 1950s eschewed the idea of television news. “Radio and print…were for real reporters,” they claimed, and “television was for actors and comedians” (“Walter Cronkite Dies”). Cronkite changed that attitude for journalists and the American audience when he became anchor and managing editor of the first 30-minute newscast in 1963.
Perhaps Cronkite’s legacy is augmented by the fact that he was the first. If there had been a live television broadcast at the signing of the Declaration of Independence or Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, America would have been watching. This conceit does not in any way challenge the importance of the events that Cronkite reported, but only suggests that immediacy of “breaking news” and ‘round the clock coverage played a part in sensationalizing the events, burning the images into the memory and psyche of the Boomer generation.
Cronkite’s reign as anchor also coincided with a changing America. At a time when the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement forced Americans to confront their own demons, Cronkite provided a steady voice—and a face—of reason and conviction.
We now live in a world with multiple 24-hour news channels, information is constantly at our fingertips with the Internet and mobile devices, and if the revolution will not be television, it can be Tweeted (“Iran’s Twitter revolution”). And in an interesting twist of fate, television journalists now question the legitimacy of bloggers and other online media as reliable news sources.
The way we receive information has changed dramatically since Cronkite first told us “and that’s the way it is” and it will continue to change as new forms of media continue to appear and spread around the world. While accessibility to information is easier these days, no other generation will have a news media icon as ubiquitous as Walter Cronkite.
