End of an era

The world has lost one of the best newsmen of the last century. Walter Cronkite died at his New York home Friday at age 92.

First for UPI, then for CBS, Cronkite reported the biggest stories of the mid/late 20th century: the Battle of the Bulge, Nuremberg trials, Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Apollo moon landing, Watergate. He shed light on the world around us without ever inserting himself between it & us.

He was everything Dan Rather wished he could be: measured, objective, intelligent, astute. Most of all, he defined integrity in news reporting. Try to find that anywhere today.

Cronkite set a standard of honesty & trustworthiness from which the news media has been retreating ever since he retired in 1981. Peter Jennings came closest to Cronkite’s level of reportage; when he died four years ago, broadcast news fell completely into the clutches of the corporate bean counters interested only in cutting costs & blown-dried reporters more concerned with the camera angle on their on-camera stand-up than the actual, you know, story.

Try to imagine Cronkite being involved in reporting a story based on unconfirmed documents—the incident that led to Rather leaving CBS Evening News. Or staging of exploding gas tanks that rocked Dateline NBC. In both cases the “reporters” had a story they wanted to tell, & the truth wasn’t going to get in their way.

Moreover, Cronkite knew his job was to report the story, not be it, which is a rare quality in any form of journalism these days, print as well as broadcast or Internet. It’s gone way beyond the mixing of facts & opinion; it’s about thinking you’re more important than the news. That was something that never occurred to Cronkite.

Well, we’re all the poorer this week for his passing. & perhaps a bit more ignorant.