Cronkite’s Death Marks an Era of News that Passed Years Ago

walter-cronkite

There was a time when Walter Cronkite could have run for President of the United States.  He didn’t.   There was a strong possibility he could have won the election, but still, unlike the news hucksters today he want to parlay their two cents of wisdom into a higher office, Cronkite didn’t succumb.

Cronkite had among other things too much integrity.   As the most trusted man in America, Cronkite at his peak did more to encourage us to visit the moon than any other person.   His vast influence helped hasten the debacle of that era, better known as the Vietnam War.   People watched him, and people listened to him.   More importantly, people believed him.

Cronkite was arguably the first true anchorman.   While he was a at the top of the game, there were others who lent their own credibility and integrity to the news format.   The news format, back then, and the network executives who ran that division, assured that it was never mistaken for entertainment, cheap tricks in the guise of news in order to milk the ratings.   The news department was sacrosanct.   Those in other divisions of the networks, there were only networks at the time, well understood you never messed with or tried to influence the news divisions.  Not the entertainment or advertising departments.  No in behalf of sponsors or a celebrity looking for a leg up.   If you did, you had your head handed to you.

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The list goes on.   These were broadcasters who gave you the news.   Most often they did little to influence your opinion, and if they did so, it was through subtlety in lieu of bombast.   They respected each other, and they respected their guests.   They were responsible for utilizing the great new age of electronic media transmission to its best advantage.   To make people knowledgeable about the world they lived in.

And then there was Walter Cronkite.  We watched him as a news anchor, the host of documentary series, like “Air Power,” and “The Twentieth Century.”   We listened as he urged us to the moon and implored us to end another stupid war.    We had faith in him.  We may have never seen him as a great man, really, but as our wise grandfather, giving us perspective on an ever changing world.   But he was a great man.   And Cronkite and his kind have been sorely missed.  Their passing should cause us mourning and reflection, even if Cronkite and his peers doesn’t get a celebrity laden sendoff from the Staples Center.

We missed them when they went off the air and were replaced by…something else.   We  miss their style and their integrity.   We suffer from their absence.   Cronkite’s death is our loss.   An era has passed us by.   And we are a poorer nation for it.

Author: Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic behavior in the late twentieth century. He has recently published The Cuban Quarter, The Blood Orange, and The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He is the author of The Constant Travellers. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.