My friend Walter Cronkite and the change in broadcast news

The death of my onetime boss and CBS News colleague reminds me of how American broadcast news has changed since the days when Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the Evening News.

Walter tried not to get in the way of the news. Accurate reporting was more important to him than the anchorman’s ego. He let his correspondents cover the story. He mentored them, backed them, and when necessary protected them from pressure when the top brass got in the way of newsgathering. Those of us who worked for him in the field responded by doing our best to get the story right and the facts straight.

He kept his politics to himself, and rarely let his personal views interfere with the presentation of the news. (His 1968 broadcast on Vietnam in which he suggested it was time to negotiate with the North Vietnamese was a notable exception.) It was not until after CBS management eased him out of the anchor chair in 1981 that I learned he held rather liberal views on most subjects.

He was not a phoney. “Uncle Walter” was the same person on and off the air: affable, fair-minded, someone you could feel comfortable with. In short, he was the antithesis of the stereotypical blow-dried anchor.

The public sensed that in a 1972 poll when it voted him “the most trusted man in America.” The public has also noticed the change since Walter’s day.

A recent report by the Pew Foundation on The State of the News Media found that only a quarter of Americans now believe what they hear on television, and noted that “since the early 1980s, the public has come to view the news media as less professional, less accurate, less caring, less moral and more inclined to cover up rather than correct mistakes.”

The last time I spoke with Walter, in 2005, he was pessimistic about the future of the news business. He thought the network evening news shows were shallow and not worth watching. He deplored the networks’ cutbacks in coverage of important events abroad and critical issues at home. He believed the failure of the media to give the public the information it needs was damaging our democracy.

He spoke with the authority of someone who knew there was a better way of doing what we journalists are supposed to do. After all, he helped set the high standards that much of the American news business seems to have discarded.
 

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/worldview/090719/my-friend-walter-cronkite-and-the-change-standards-broadcast-news