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Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:18:00 +0000

When longtime (1962-81) anchorman Walter Cronkite signed off the “CBS Evening News” with his signature “And that’s the way it is,” his audience believed that’s the way it was, for better or for worse. The avuncular newsman, after all, was often cited by opinion polls as the “most trusted man in America.” Several of his peers remember him below.

Andy Rooney, newspaper columnist and television commentator: A tough, competitive scrambler

A group of reporters would meet at St. Pancras station and board a train for Bedford. Among the friends I made on those trips were…Walter Cronkite with United Press…

Cronkite had escaped being drafted because he was color-blind….

These reporters were my teachers although they didn’t know it. While I tried to act more like one of them than a student, I watched and listened carefully. Anyone who thinks of Walter Cronkite today as the authoritative father figure of television news would be surprised to know what a tough, competitive scrambler he was in the old Front Page tradition of newspaper reporting. He became the best anchorman there ever was in television because he knew news when he saw it and cared about it. He was relentlessly inquisitive. The subject of his interview always sensed that Cronkite was interested in what he had to say and knew a great deal about the issue himself. (London, 1942)

The Fix

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 14:40:00 +0000

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch lunched with Senate Democrats this week and tried to convince them that his merger with DirecTV was a good thing. They came back at him with critiques of his Fox News, saying that it could be more "Fair and Balanced" than it says it is. Rupert was shocked, shocked! that the Dems saw it that way. Said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.: "He said Fox News is fair and balanced and he just can't imagine that there was any kind of a slant there. Members of the Senate were just speechless." Durbin said the one thing they agreed on was a point Murdoch made: that "The Simpsons" is the best show on television. What a relief. (Variety)

One hopes that the mayor of Venice, Italy, will be more open-minded than New York's Rudy Giuliani was about the artwork of Chris Ofili. The artist, who made headlines when his elephant dung painting of the Virgin Mary at the Brooklyn Museum was denounced by Rudy, is headlining the Venice Biennale opening this weekend. Previews note that his work this year includes paintings of "romantic scenes between two lovers against an exotic background." Shouldn't cause too much ruckus in Venice -- that's what goes on every day there anyway. (BBC)

The Fix

Thu, 20 Mar 2003 19:43:00 +0000

The intersection of politics and Hollywood has always been a compelling one. The war is now on, and questions in the air include "Is Saddam dead or alive?" and "Will Meryl Streep attend the Oscars?" We don't have the answer to either one, but the information is trickling in. So far, Will Smith is out, Catherine Zeta-Jones is in (unless she gives birth) (Billboard); Cate Blanchett is out, the Barbara Walters special has been postponed (LA Times) and Meryl Streep is "making noises" about canceling. (Page Six) And those stars who do show may stage a symbolic protest when the living honorees are all onstage at once to celebrate the diamond anniversary. (LA Weekly)

If you want to check out of reality and focus instead on what Britney Spears is up to, we hear she's dating MTV host Mike Kasem and that he's being a positive influence on her. Thank god. (WENN)

Reality tough on reality TV alumni

Wed, 26 Sep 2001 16:56:00 +0000

Those of you looking to escape reality by turning to reality TV, be warned: Things aren't going so well for denizens of that alterna-world these days either.

Original "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch, for instance, won't be shaking his blurry booty quite so saucily for a little while. On Monday, a judge in Newport, R.I., apparently found Hatch's ends-justify-the-means routine even less charming than TV audiences did and so found him guilty of the domestic assault charges brought against him by his ex-boyfriend Glenn Boyanowski.

Judge Pirraglia sentenced Hatch to one year of probation for allegedly roughing up Boyanowski and pushing him down the stairs during a confrontation in August.

Hatch, however, has vowed not to give up the fight. "It's a ludicrous ruling," he said in a radio interview after the trial, "and I'm not sure what's behind the judge's personal reasons for it, but it's certainly not objective."

But at least Hatch has happy memories of Pulau Tiga to comfort him. Michael Skupin, the boar-butchering contestant who suffered severe burns during the filming of "Survivor II," has apparently emerged relatively unscathed after another brush with death.

Walter Cronkite

Thu, 05 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

He has been called the most trusted man in America. His 60-year-long journalistic career has spanned the Great Depression, several wars, and the extraordinary changes that have engulfed the U.S. over the last two-thirds of the 20th century.

At the age of eighty, Walter Cronkite wrote his life story–the personal and professional odyssey of the original “anchorman” for whom that very word was coined. Cronkite set a standard for integrity, objectivity, enthusiasm, compassion, and insight that is difficult to surpass. He is an overflowing vessel of history, and a direct link with the people and places he reported about.

Walter Cronkite helped launch the juggernaut of television, and tried to imbue it with his own respect for quality and ethics; but now he occupies a ringside seat during the decline of his profession and the ascent of the lowest common denominator. As he aptly observes, “They’d rewrite Exodus to include a car chase.” Still, plenty of people know the difference. They know that for decades they have had the privilege of getting their news from a gentleman of the highest caliber.

The medium isn't the message

Mon, 13 Jan 1997 18:01:00 +0000

media criticism hasn’t changed much since Spiro Agnew’s 1970 denunciation of the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” the effete media elites who look down their noses at the “silent majority.” Oh, sure, there’s a lot more media criticism today, professional and amateur. But whether the critic hails from the right, the left, or the center, or affects some postmodern political mishmash that won’t even fit on the charts, the complaint is largely the same: that the media is out of touch, imposing its own, possibly pernicious, agenda on the rest of us. Noam Chomsky believes that the people hunger for news about East Timor The New York Times doesn’t see fit to print; right-wingers believe the press is hiding the truth about Vince Foster.Over the past several years, a new breed of media critic has begun to emerge, one that sees the perfidy and obsolescence of the old media as the inevitable outcome of its old-fashioned ways and out-of-date technology. For salvation, these critics look to new communications technologies, especially the Internet.