Walter Cronkite, That's The Way It Was

I watched a fascinating PBS show on the career of Walter Cronkite. There were 4 things that especially impressed me:

1) I hadn't known that both the name of anchorman, and in fact the very concept, were coined to describe Walter's role, initially in reporting the 1952 conventions - asked who among the reporters assigned would be covering it, the CBS News exec said, "They will ALL cover it, but we will have Walter be the 'anchor-man' " - a term up to that point used exclusively in track & field, to refer to the guy who gets the baton & runs the key final lap. Apparently, up till then, there was no such concept - or term - in news.

2) I had seen some of the clips of Walter covering the JFK shooting before, but saw some I hadn't seen before.

3) We were at the beach during the 68 Chicago Dem Convention, and in those days, you typically didn't have TV at the beach (remember renting the set, Jim, to watch Nixon resign?) The radio coverage was VERY dramatic, but of course, I didn't see Walter. It was amazing to hear him describe the Democratic security guards "a bunch of thugs" when they assaulted Dan Rather, & eventually to explode in what he himself called "anger" and say, "We're tempted to leave this damn place and let the Democrats sort out their problems by themselves."

4) Not having watched CBS Evening News as regularly during certain key phases of Viet Nam & especially Watergate as I did at other times, I had only a vague impression of how truly extraordinary Walter Cronkite's personal commentary on these events was - when he said in February 68 for instance that "we no longer believe our leaders when they tell us there is a silver lining and light at the end of the tunnel," and what a crucial role they played in events - when Cronkite made that remark, Johnson turned to his press aide & said, "I've lost Middle America, now."

Comments

[Yvonne]

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