RIP Walter Cronkite

[KukriKhan]

Good night Uncle Walter. You're the only newsman I ever trusted. Rest in Peace.

[Louis VI the Fat]

The one text by Cronkite that I know seems strangely apt:

For eons, our planet has drifted as a spaceship through the universe. And for a brief moment, we have been its passengers. Yet in that time, we've made tremendous progress in our ability to record and share knowledge.

Rest in Peace, Walter!

[Whacker]

Good lord, I didn't realize how old he was. 92 is a VERY old, respectable age to reach.

RIP Walt!

[Crazed Rabbit]

RIP.

CR

[seireikhaan]

Rest in Peace, Mr. Cronkite.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Mr. Cronkite set the gold standard for TV news reporting. Watching the evenings news was never the same after he retired. RIP

[Banquo's Ghost]

I remember Mr Cronkite commentating on the Moon Landings. He was so excited, just like we were. Even in Ireland he was legendary, though we never really saw him other than during Apollo 11.

Hard to imagine these days any journalist being dubbed "the most trusted man in America." Whatever happened to the integrity and standards Walter Cronkite embodied?

Rest in Peace. That's the way it is.

[Hooahguy]

you cant be serious.
RIP walter.

whats it with famous people dying in the past month?

[rotorgun]

Walter was a class act all around. I shall miss him, because the world will be a little darker without his light. There was a man- I think we shall not see his like again.

[Xiahou]

Cronkite was good at what he did, but I'd never want to go back to a time when most Americans sat around for 30 minutes each even to have their news spoon fed to them. I much prefer varied sources, and competing viewpoints to having to take one person's word on it because they say "that's the way it is".

I came across an interesting essay from an AP writer, Ted Anthony, on Cronkite, his legacy and the evolution of the media. I think it's a good read:

Cronkite and the voice of authority gone

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"And that's the way it is," he'd say. It wasn't, but we wanted that reassurance. The idea that someone could wrangle the world each night and boil it down to a sensible, digestible half hour was so comforting.

Barely a generation has passed since Walter Cronkite disappeared from our evenings. But the notion of one man — a single, authoritative, empathetic man, morally reassuring and mild of temper — wrapping up the world after dinner for America seems incalculably quaint in the technological coliseum that is 21st-century communications.

Many of the network farewells to the CBS anchorman, who died Friday at 92, seemed built around the notion of the father figure. Anchors and reporters who are part of another age — a still-unfolding era of community feedback, viewer outreach and social-media interaction — struggled to summon the idea of anchor as monolith.

"We'd all let him watch our kids when we went out to the supermarket if we had the chance," NBC anchorman Brian Williams said. Hard to imagine Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann, vigorous though they are, as national baby sitters.

"Uncle Walter," we called him. But on the Internet, there's not much use for uncles.

We are now confronted with a rushing, 24-hour river of information, much of it chaotic and raw, with no one to shepherd us through it.

Though network TV news remains popular, its demographic is older and it has struggled, losing about 1 million viewers a year in the years since Cronkite retired as anchor in 1981.

At the end of last year, according to Gallup, 31 percent of Americans considered the Internet to be a daily news source, a 50 percent gain since 2006. That's almost 100 million people actively reaching out to get their news rather than flipping on the TV and waiting for it to come to them.

At the same time, people now want a stake in their news and direct attention from the people who deliver it. They're demanding it, and they're getting it.

NBC's Williams, for example, does a daily blog. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez has built his midafternoon show around feedback from followers on Twitter and Facebook. News has become a two-way street, something to create community around.

That can be at once productive and perilous.

It gives an exhilarating voice to the voiceless. Yet it also can encourage consensus reality. If enough of us say it loudly enough, it must be true. In the 1960s and 1970s, Cronkite was accepted as the everyday incarnation of empirical truth — "a voice of certainty in an uncertain world," as President Barack Obama put it Friday night.

Cronkite's legendary assessment of Vietnam's quagmire — the one that led Lyndon Johnson to lament, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America" — is often cast as a barometer of the anchor's power at the time. What shouldn't be ignored is that, even then, the waning of that kind of power had begun.

"Middle America" then generally meant white and over 30, the very people that the young, energetic game-changers of the late 1960s were insisting shouldn't be trusted. Power to the people was upending the national hierarchy, and the Age of Many Voices was approaching.

Four decades later, cacophony reigns. What room is there for the conscience of a nation, for history's anchorman, for the father we all wanted?

In 2009, even trust, at least in the public realm, seems an uneasy notion. It's something we continue to desire. But in an age of wholesale, instantaneous, unprecedented lying, trust is something that may not be that wise when it comes to evaluating our sources of information.

That's what has changed since Cronkite's heyday.

Today's model works more like this: Everyone vies to get his personalized, customized, agenda-driven version of "that's the way it is" enshrined in the cultural canon. We shout, cajole, maneuver, horse-trade. We demonize the opposition. We brand ideas as products and send them on their way, ready to do battle in the marketplace.

Our anchors follow suit, riding the rising crest of expectation and anticipation and, sometimes, misusing it. "It's not the old voice of reassuring honesty that they cultivate, but one of perpetual anxiety," Los Angeles Times TV critic Robert Lloyd wrote in his Cronkite eulogy.

The coliseum is always open for business. If you've got a TV or a laptop, you're plugged in to the whole planet and can have your say. No one person can speak for us all — we don't even pretend that's the case anymore — and those who tried would be put in their places as fast as you can say Edward R. Murrow.

That can be a glorious expression of democracy, or it can lead, as it did Saturday morning, to the most e-mailed story on Yahoo! News being the one about the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile crashing into a house in Wisconsin. Democracy has a way of being quite democratic.

Nightly American comfort, Cronkite style, is a thing of the past, if it ever really existed at all. Perhaps, in the Age of Many Voices, comfort and reassurance is not meant to be our lot. Maybe that's just the way it is.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Cronkite was good at what he did, but I'd never want to go back to a time when most Americans sat around for 30 minutes each even to have their news spoon fed to them. I much prefer varied sources, and competing viewpoints to having to take one person's word on it because they say "that's the way it is".

Sorry to tell you but that's how it still is nowadays. People watch the type of partisan news (O' Reilly, Obermann) that fits their ideology to comfort themselves and not deal with having to think for themselves or possibly even realize that the opposing side might have some good points as well.

Nowadays opinions are not based on the raw facts, select facts are manipulated to wrap around and support the opinion and only the facts which can be manipulated for either side are the ones presented in current news (at least from pundits).

From what research I have done, modern news began to turn into what it is now after the removal of the Fairness Doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine) in 1987:

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission's view) honest, equitable and balanced.

I really don't know what to think of it, on one hand I think it is pretty sad when people listen to pundits instead of hearing the raw facts from journalists and making their own decisions, on the other hand I wouldn't care for government saying what the public can and cannot watch.

Hey, maybe I could make a thread about this doctrine and get a better view of both sides.

[Xiahou]

Sorry to tell you but that's how it still is nowadays. People watch the type of partisan news (O' Reilly, Obermann) that fits their ideology to comfort themselves and not deal with having to think for themselves or possibly even realize that the opposing side might have some good points as well.

Sorry to tell you, but you're wrong.

People have varied news sources, with the Internet being the most prolific and fastest growing medium. Note- before anyone starts handwringing about unreliable Internet blogs:

Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).

From what research I have done, modern news began to turn into what it is now after the removal of the Fairness Doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine) in 1987:

From what research I've done, our news has greatly improved since it's removal. The fact that a solid majority of people are not happy with the current state of journalism speaks volumes to how far we've come from a time when most people were perfectly happy to be fed news from one or a couple sources.

I don't want to drag a memorial thread too far off topic, so I'll leave it here.

RIP Cronkite, but I'm also glad that our news media has evolved beyond the need for a Cronkite.

[Hooahguy]

From what research I have done, modern news began to turn into what it is now after the removal of the Fairness Doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine) in 1987:

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission's view) honest, equitable and balanced.

I really don't know what to think of it, on one hand I think it is pretty sad when people listen to pundits instead of hearing the raw facts from journalists and making their own decisions, on the other hand I wouldn't care for government saying what the public can and cannot watch.

Hey, maybe I could make a thread about this doctrine and get a better view of both sides.

AFAIK, the fairness doctrine was aimed at talk show hosts, mostly conservative. ever since the 90's conservative talk radio has shot up, while the tv and newspapers have gone down in popularity.
the whole point of a talk show is for some guy or gal to run his/her mouth off about some topic and his/her opinion about it. making the talk show host present the other side undermines what free speech is all about. the host should be allowed to say whatever he wants as long as he is not hate-mongering.
if people want the one sided view, ok, go and listen to that show. but dont make them hear the other side if they dont want to hear it.

in short: the news is meant to be fair and seeing both sides. talk radio is not.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Sorry to tell you, but you're wrong.

People have varied news sources, with the Internet being the most prolific and fastest growing medium. Note- before anyone starts handwringing about unreliable Internet blogs:

From what research I've done, our news has greatly improved since it's removal. The fact that a solid majority of people are not happy with the current state of journalism speaks volumes to how far we've come from a time when most people were perfectly happy to be fed news from one or a couple sources. To suggest we were better off with less ways to get information is insane.

Link gives error.

When did I say I wanted less ways of getting information? I am just saying I would like less propaganda perpetuated by both sides if selected facts that everyone on the left are baby killing socialists and everyone on the right are war loving fascists.

When I read "varied" news sources like the Huffington Post and the Dredge Report I feel most of the time like I am not closer to the truth of the matter. Which reminds of me a Jefferson quote:

"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

I believe at this point television can be used instead of newspaper as well.

The fact that a solid majority of people are not happy with the current state of journalism speaks volumes to how far we've come from a time when most people were perfectly happy to be fed news from one or a couple sources.

So doctrine gets removed ----> People begin to dislike journalism nowadays = Journalism has improved from lack of doctrine?

Maybe it goes like this: doctrine gets removed ----> Internet comes about with raw facts and information now more prevalent then ever = People realize what a sham modern news is nowadays?

[a completely inoffensive name]

AFAIK, the fairness doctrine was aimed at talk show hosts, mostly conservative. ever since the 90's conservative talk radio has shot up, while the tv and newspapers have gone down in popularity.
the whole point of a talk show is for some guy or gal to run his/her mouth off about some topic and his/her opinion about it. making the talk show host present the other side undermines what free speech is all about. the host should be allowed to say whatever he wants as long as he is not hate-mongering.
if people want the one sided view, ok, go and listen to that show. but dont make them hear the other side if they dont want to hear it.

in short: the news is meant to be fair and seeing both sides. talk radio is not.

I don't know why people are accusing me outright supporting it when i say I don't know what to make of it, but anyway, when this doctrine was in place it was enforced for all mediums which I don't care for, for the reason you say in your post, but in terms of the news which we need to make important decisions it is important that it should not be spun/manipulated in favor of the presenters bias would you agree with that?EDIT: You do from your last sentence.

So how do we go about making sure the news is unbaised without trampling over anybodies free speech?

[Hooahguy]

i wasnt saying you were supporting it. i was just making a point against the doctrine.

the way how you get unbiased news is to make the fairness doctrine ONLY apply to the news. not talk radio.

news =/= talk radio

[a completely inoffensive name]

i wasnt saying you were supporting it. i was just making a point against the doctrine.

the way how you get unbiased news is to make the fairness doctrine ONLY apply to the news. not talk radio.

news =/= talk radio

(Just asking) What about the pundits who give news but put their opinion on it? Is Bill O Reilly news or is he entertainment?

[Hooahguy]

(Just asking) What about the pundits who give news but put their opinion on it? Is Bill O Reilly news or is he entertainment?

entertainment. IMO, news and commentary have no place together.

[a completely inoffensive name]

entertainment. IMO, news and commentary have no place together.

So how would you see this revised Fairness Doctrine apply on Fox News where much of the channel has infused news and opinion so much it is hard to tell what is supposed to be entertaining commentary and what is supposed to be news?

[Hooahguy]

im not concerned about tv shows like fox news. its talk radio which most stations (like WSB and WGKA, for some hometown examples) have very clear distinctions between the news and talk radio.
i dont mind making shows like fox and NPR fair. its shows where there is a very clear distinction that its only commentary.

[a completely inoffensive name]

im not concerned about tv shows like fox news. its talk radio which most stations (like WSB and WGKA, for some hometown examples) have very clear distinctions between the news and talk radio.
i dont mind making shows like fox and NPR fair. its shows where there is a very clear distinction that its only commentary.

That sounds reasonable to me.

[OverKnight]

I'm reading a Boston Globe story about Walter Cronkite, and it said that he was so influential internationally that in Sweden, anchorpersons are known as "Cronkiters".

Is this actually true?

[Hooahguy]

I'm reading a Boston Globe story about Walter Cronkite, and it said that he was so influential internationally that in Sweden, anchorpersons are known as "Cronkiters".

Is this actually true?

wheres KarXII when you need him? (hes a swedophile )

[a completely inoffensive name]

I think this these might be what Xiahou was trying to link to.
http://www.zogby.com/search/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1454
http://www.zogby.com/search/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1710

Either way he got me there, I retract my statement:
Sorry to tell you but that's how it still is nowadays. People watch the type of partisan news (O' Reilly, Obermann) that fits their ideology to comfort themselves and not deal with having to think for themselves or possibly even realize that the opposing side might have some good points as well.

I guess it is easy to get lost in the large numbers for average views of Bill O Reilly (3.5 million viewers) and think that nothing has changed. I apologize.

[Ironside]

I'm reading a Boston Globe story about Walter Cronkite, and it said that he was so influential internationally that in Sweden, anchorpersons are known as "Cronkiters".

Is this actually true?

Nope. Never heard of the word, it doesn't exist on any Swedish site, not even with an alternate spelling. I suspect the it's same for the Dutch that shows up in the same type of rumours.

That doesn't mean that he lacks an international reputation though. I certainly recognize his name, even though born after his heydays.

RIP Walter

[OverKnight]

Yeah, it just sounded odd. One of those time you just read the newspaper and go "Really?"

I'm going to keep an eye on the corrections section.

[KukriKhan]

That (the above transaction between OverKnight in USA, and Ironside of Sweden) is a perfect example of how "news" and its presentation has changed.

In Cronkite's heyday, with only 3 major TV broadcasters available in major urban areas, we were forced to rely on the integrity and research of the news presenter and his huge team of fact-checkers, source-vetters, double-checkers, wire-service providers, etc.

So, we had to assume that when Uncle Walter said: "The sky was blue today", his fact-checkers had consulted weather experts, government officials, long-distance wire services, and a couple of university meteorologists, ahead of broadcast time (which was live in those days), to confirm that in fact, in America that particular day, the sky was mostly blue.

So we trusted that what he said was true, or as true as could be confirmed from multiple reputable sources, as possible.

OTOH, what Xiahou wrote is true as well: that was spoon-feeding us news, and in the hands of someone less scrupulous than Mr. Cronkite, could have been blatant lies, and we might never have known it. Fast-forward 20 years to Wolf Blitzer's reporting the US used nerve-gas in 'Nam; when debunked, his defense was: "I just read what they put in front of me." Cronkite-style reporting died that day.

That trust was gone. So now we have the 'net, and more direct contact with our own sources to check and double-check info. Improvement? I think so. But it takes more work on my part as an info consumer. Which I'm OK with. But I worry about my fellow citizens who continue to rely solely on TV so-called "news" outlets as their only source, ala the 1960's and 70's.

[HopAlongBunny]

RIP Mr. Cronkite

[Whacker]

Kukri, I think another very big factor in the picture is the tendency towards shock and sensationalist journalism. Sure, these things existed in the past, but now the media tries to make moles out of anthills, etc etc. Combine that with the lack of personal responsibility and you have where we are today.

Come to think of it, personal responsibility went out the window for the American public quite awhile ago.

[Devastatin Dave]

RIP Uncle Walter, you did a good job spoon feeding us a bunch of biased news for decades without any notice. You helped spawn Dan Rather and Katie Couric, and gave as much support to communists and lefties across the world. You will definitely be missed by many, just not so much by those that truelly understood what you were doing. Say hi to Mao and Che for us.