Walter Cronkite

American journalist

• Born: November 4, 1916
• Birthplace: St. Joseph, Missouri
• Died: July 17, 2009
• Place of death: New York, New York

Cronkite, a television journalist and anchor for, most famously, CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite from 1962 to 1981, earned the title “the most trusted man in America” from his viewing audience for his objective and judicious coverage.

Early Life

Walter Cronkite (KRON-kit) was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Walter Cronkite and Helen Fritsche Cronkite. His paternal forebears were Dutch, descending from Hercks Seiboutzen Krankheidt. Cronkite grew up in Houston, Texas, where his family had moved when he was ten years old. As a student at San Jacinto High School, he worked on the school’s newspaper, Campus Club, and won a Texas Interscholastic Press Association newswriting contest. The young Cronkite worked hard to earn his own spending money by selling newspapers and Liberty magazines. He was influenced by American Boy magazine, leading him to pursue a career in journalism.

Cronkite enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin (1933-1935) and worked on the Daily Texan (the university’s newspaper). He also worked as a cub (novice) reporter for major newspapers in their respective capital bureaus during the Depression. His mentors, such as Gordon Kent Shearer, bureau chief for United Press (now United Press International, or UPI) in Austin, influenced Cronkite to be accurate and fair. Cronkite accepted a full-time position with the Houston Press in 1935, then moved to the Houston Post. He became a news writer and editor for Scripps-Howard and UPI in Houston, Kansas City, Dallas, Austin, El Paso, and New York. He worked in radio broadcasting in Oklahoma City for an affiliate of NBC (station WKY), covering football games, then joined the United Press in 1937 and earned a good reputation as a World War II correspondent covering military action in North Africa and Europe from 1942 to 1945.

Cronkite also assisted in reopening the United Press news bureaus in postwar Amsterdam and Brussels as a foreign correspondent and went to Nuremberg, Germany, as chief correspondent to report on the Nazi war crimes trials. He then worked in Moscow as the UP bureau manager from 1946 to 1948 and was a lecturer and magazine contributor in 1948 and 1949. In 1940 he had married Mary Elizabeth Maxwell (who died in 2005), and he had three children with her Nancy Elizabeth, Mary Kathleen, and Walter Leland III.

Life’s work

Cronkite became a national network correspondent in 1950 with CBS News in Washington, D.C. His program, CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite , was a well-respected broadcast that ran from 1962 to 1981 and was headquartered in New York. Cronkite also hosted the CBS Morning Show. His reputation as a respected journalist was sealed because of his coverage of the major news events of the 1950’s and 1960’s: the Korean War; the 1952 presidential election; summit meetings in Vienna, Paris, and Moscow; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Vietnam War; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the Medgar Evers story; the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy; Martin Luther King’s assassination and the Civil Rights movement and struggle; the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon; the Watergate scandal and trial; and the anniversary of D day, which he had covered originally as a UP war correspondent in 1945.

Cronkite traveled the globe to get his stories. He journeyed to war theaters in Vietnam and returned after the Tet offensive convinced that the United States should negotiate an end to the Vietnam War. Soon after Cronkite’s return, and after his news report on Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run for reelection and attempted to end the war.

Cronkite also narrated the historical documentary television series You Are There (1953-1957), Twentieth Century (1957-1967), and Eyewitness to History (1961-1962). As anchor of the CBS Evening News in 1962, Cronkite competed with the NBC team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, but by the late 1960’s he surpassed them in television ratings and viewer numbers. He had become an icon with a reputation for truthfulness and honesty, came to be known as Uncle Walter, and ended each evening’s program with the now-iconic phrase “and that’s the way it is.” His calm, firm, and assured baritone voice informed his viewers of national and world news.

During many news-making moments Cronkite often reported nonstop. One example was his twenty-seven-hour coverage of the Moon landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. He believed the Moon landing to be one of the biggest stories of the twentieth century and the one event that would be remembered five hundred years later. Cronkite traveled to the Middle East and was instrumental in bringing Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin together to negotiate a peace agreement.

Cronkite hosted several television specials, including the following: Vietnam: A War That Is Finished (1975); The President in China (1975); In Celebration of US (1976); Our Happiest Birthday (1977); Why the World (1981) for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS); Universe (1982) for CBS; Solzhenitsyn: 1984 Revisited (1984); Dinosaur (1991); and The Holocaust: In Memory of Millions (1993) for the Discovery Channel. He received the Peabody Award in 1962 and won several Emmy Awards. He received the William A. White Award for journalistic merit in 1969 and the George Polk Journalism Award in 1971. He won the Gold Medal from the Radio and TV Society in 1974 and the Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Award in broadcast journalism in 1978. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter in 1981.

Following his retirement as anchor for CBS on March 6, 1981, he wrote a news column through King Features Syndicate. He took on special assignments, such as anchoring news coverage of the second space flight of John Glenn in 1998 (as he had of Glenn’s first flight), and returned periodically as a special correspondent for CBS and for Cable News Network (CNN). He broadcast a series of commentaries for National Public Radio (NPR) on historic events such as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role in the D day campaign, as well as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the war in Vietnam, and the terrorist skyjacking in 1970.

Cronkite believed journalists held a great responsibility because they reported what was to become “history” a nation’s collective memory. His news commentary, too, was deeply meaningful to his audience. On March 9, 2004, Cronkite broadcast a reflective commentary on NPR that recalled an earlier CBS television show produced by Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow that questioned the bullying tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who engineered a campaign of terror against alleged communists in government and in the entertainment industry. Cronkite applauded his news colleagues’ refusal to be politically intimidated, and he praised their justice-seeking reportage. His professional ethics and his own pursuit of the truth set the standard for the type of news reporting he described in his 2004 NPR commentary.

After retiring from CBS as anchor, Cronkite served on the board of directors of CBS and continued to work for several networks as a news correspondent. He even performed the voice of Benjamin Franklin for the children’s animated series Liberty’s Kids. He also created a series of historical videotapes, CDs and DVDs for The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite (1985-1987), Walter Cronkite Remembers the Twentieth Century (1997-1998), All You Want to Know About the United States Constitution (1998), and You Are There (2004). Cronkite received the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award for his “truth in broadcasting” in 2004.

Among Cronkite’s many books are Vietnam Perspective: CBS News Special (1965), The Challenge of Change (1971), Eye on the World (1971), A Reporter’s Life (1996), and Around America (2001). He wrote the commentary to CBS photographer Irving Haberman’s Eyes on an Era (1995) and contributed book forewords to The Rise of the Computer State (1983), Places of Power (2000), The Heart of Success (2000), and Architects of Peace (2002), as well as to several children’s books on U.S. presidents. The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication was established at Arizona State University in recognition of Cronkite’s life achievements as a journalist, critic, and author.

Significance

Cronkite pioneered television news, elevated broadcast journalism to the highest levels of honesty and integrity, and increased the popularity of broadcast news among television viewers during the turbulent 1960’s and 1970’s and into the early 1980’s. His voice was one of reason, recording some of the twentieth century’s most memorable events. His stature and style provided a strong role model for future commentators in print and on radio and television.

Cronkite also was an excellent researcher who checked his facts. He was an affable and photogenic television personality, and his broadcasts were clear, genuine, authoritative, and accurate. He deftly worked within the time constraints of television, which broadcasted his image around the world. He strived to maintain objectivity, and he shunned bias in reporting.

Bibliography

Aaseng, Nathan. Walter Cronkite. Minneapolis, Minn.: Lerner, 1981. A well-written, praising, yet factual biography.

Cronkite, Walter. Eye on the World. New York: Cowles, 1971. Cronkite surveyed the previous decades’ major historic events at home and abroad, selecting certain events for comment.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. A Reporter’s Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. A most valuable autobiographical source, giving anecdotes from Cronkite’s personal life and professional career and revealing the friends who contributed to his success.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Vietnam Perspective: CBS News Special Report. New York: Pocket Books, 1965. Cronkite’s name will forever be linked to reporting the Vietnam War, which he accomplished with informed analysis and historical clarity in this small primer.

Westman, Paul. Walter Cronkite: The Most Trusted Man in America. Minneapolis, Minn.: Dillon Press, 1980. This work discusses Cronkite’s credibility and his career with CBS.