Thanks to Cronkite, we were there

By Gary Gilson

In 1982, when I was working at Twin Cities Public Television, I vacationed on Martha's Vineyard, marched in the Fourth of July parade and for the first time saw the real Walter Cronkite.

Our so-called Peace Contingent brought up the rear, and Cronkite, who had a home on the island and was a spectator at the parade, burst into applause as he watched our tiny troupe go by. Not the normal or required behavior of a professional journalist. But by then he had retired.

There was more personal activism to come.

Cronkite -- "the most trusted man in America" -- earned that reputation by playing the news down the middle and convincing viewers of CBS that he took their interests and concerns seriously, as they hoped their family doctor would.

But he publicly criticized himself for betraying that neutrality by reporting, after going to Vietnam, that the war was unwinnable. President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." It was the beginning of the end of Johnson's political career.

What Cronkite felt he had violated was the CBS News policy, dating to 1939, that said a news analyst had the right and the duty to point out contradictions with the known record, in a way that helped people decide for themselves, but not to do the deciding for them.

He had, until then, jealously guarded his neutrality, with one glowing exception: He was a shameless booster of the space program. As any American old enough to remember the first moon landing can attest, Cronkite's face and voice were an integral part of the event. His death on Friday is a poignant note in the observance of that mission's 40th anniversary.

His basic straightforwardness sprang from his roots in Midwestern America; he grew up in Missouri and Texas, dropped out of college in his junior year, 1935, to become a reporter, and two years later was working for United Press, the rival wire service to the Associated Press, both of which thrived on what they called objectivity. Just the facts, please, no opinion.

After Cronkite retired as the CBS anchor in 1981, he quickly dropped his neutral public stance and began espousing liberal causes. He championed the United Nations; he opposed the second invasion of Iraq; he condemned Fox News as a special pleader for right-wing causes.

He never stopped berating himself, though, for his remarks about the Vietnam War. That lapse in professional standards made him feel like a kid who's been caught shoplifting. He also felt guilty about being paid so much -- perhaps $250,000 a year -- for doing a job he respected and loved. That all became public when ABC News, at the same time, paid Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner each $1 million a year to co-anchor its evening newscast. Of course, Cronkite got a raise and the news business began edging closer and closer to show business.

Unlike many powerful people, he did not suffer from a huge ego. Although as managing editor of his broadcast he vetted the news, he knew that the quality of the product reflected superb work by hundreds of faceless professionals who gathered and processed the stories.

I met Cronkite several times, first when he visited Fred Friendly's summer program in broadcast journalism for members of racial minority groups at Columbia University, where I was faculty director. The students, all college graduates, were in their mid-20s, good thinkers and writers, with no previous motivation to enter the field because they saw hardly anyone of their color in it.

When we generated the promise of jobs for them, they had plenty of motivation. And Cronkite sat with them and infused them with the sense that journalism must be a public service, not a commodity, and the sense that they had a tremendous opportunity and a responsibility to report and explain the news. With vigor, commitment, humility and down-to-earth friendliness, Cronkite empowered them.

What sort of man was he? Perhaps the best way to answer that is to recall the way he always closed the series he hosted, "You Are There," focusing on a single day in history:

"What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there."

Walter Cronkite altered and illuminated our times.

And we are lucky he was there.

Gary Gilson, a writer and teacher, spent most of his career in public television and served 14 years as executive director of the Minnesota News Council.

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