Walter Cronkite — Get It First But Get It Right
Cronkite called foul or fair regardless of whether JFK or Nixon threw the pitch.
Anchorman: The fastest runner on a relay team. The term was first used to describe Walter Cronkite’s role in CBS’ political convention coverage — when the PR department asked news producer Sig Mickelson “What’s Walter going to do?” He replied: “He is going to anchor for us.”
Walter Cronkite: Courage of Conviction
Anchorman: The fastest runner on a relay team. The term was first used to describe Walter Cronkite’s role in CBS’ political convention coverage — when the PR department asked news producer Sig Mickelson “What’s Walter going to do?” He replied: “He is going to anchor for us.”
On April 16, 1962, Cronkite sat down in the anchor chair for the first time. He tried out a new voice, giving it a bit of Broadway and raising the decibel. It got him noticed. Trial and error was Cronkite’s way of innovating, a practice he would repeat throughout his career. As soon as the broadcast was over, Andy Rooney (a former wartime buddy and later of 60 Minutes) sprinted over to the booth, as Cronkite recalled:
“Andy Rooney barked: “what are you trying to sell me? You broadcast like a pitchman. You’re trying too hard. Calm down.”
His sign off was a Cronkitism as well:
“I’ve always been intrigued with ‘irony of fate’ type news stories. They usually appeared in the newspapers. I thought I’d end a broadcast with one of those. I could use a phrase that could be…said with a tinge of sadness, or with a tinge of irony, or it could have a tone of sarcasm or disbelief. So I could say, “and that’s how it is” with any tone I wanted.”
The backstory is vintage Cronkite.
If your memory of Walter Cronkite is an avuncular fellow with a trim mustache and a sonorous cadence (he spoke at a rate of 120 words per minute), you are missing quite a story.
His dream was to anchor the CBS Evening News. Even the siren’s song of the Vice Presidency couldn’t tempt him (Frank Mankiewicz, political director of the McGovern 1972 presidential campaign, suggested Cronkite’s name on the Democratic ticket. It didn’t make it out of the smoke-filled room).
Cronkite was energized by power and glory. Today we would call him an action addict. Those who knew him were hardly surprised when the plainsman from Missouri turned into a born power player once he held the reins. He wasted little time in remaking the broadcast in his image, as he related to Don Carleton of the Briscoe Center of the University of Texas (where Cronkite donated his personal and professional papers):
“When I took over the CBS Evening News, I wanted to be the ultimate judge of the news content. That made quite a difference to the producer Don Hewitt (later of 60 Minutes) because he ran the show. I wanted to work differently. I suggested the title, Managing Editor. There were a lot of complaints from newspapers, ‘how dare a newsman on-air call himself managing editor.’”
The Columbia Broadcasting System aired the first scheduled news program during wartime, 1941. Then, in 1949, a 15-minute daily news show became a reality. The first 30-minute news program wouldn’t air until September 2, 1963 (of course, anchored by Walter Cronkite). For broadcast trivia addicts, Edward R. Murrow did host a 30-minute news special report on March 9, 1954, called See It Now, an expose of Senator Joseph McCarthy that led to his Senate’s censure.
Those early 15-minute broadcasts weren’t just news either. Three of those precious minutes went to commercial time. This may have been a practical business strategy, but it didn’t sit well with Cronkite. He was a battle-tested UPI heavyweight. He liked to tell the whole story and was a stickler for details, as his Evening News successor confirmed:
“Seeking the truth is really important. Cronkite was an incredible stickler about getting it right. And, you know, things are done kind of fast and furiously in this day and age…Walter really honed his craft, working for United Press, back in the day.” — Katie Couric.
There would be no debate. If he was going to put his stamp on the Evening News, it had to rise to a new standard. The reality was the talented anchor barely had time to read headlines. So he came up with a sign off that lent a touch of gravitas, a counterbalance:
“And that’s the news. Be sure to check your local newspapers tomorrow to get all the details on the headlines we are delivering to you.”
Somehow, the jury of his bosses at CBS didn’t fully appreciate this closer, as Cronkite’s producer and great friend of many years, Sandy Socolow, recalled:
“CBS News President Richard Salant ‘raised hell with Cronkite’, but the newscaster wasn’t budging. And then Cronkite had an epiphany: In the absence of anything else, he came up with ‘That’s the way it is.’ Salant’s attitude was, ‘We’re not telling them that’s the way it is. We can’t do that in 15 minutes. That’s not the way it is.’ But to Cronkite, Salant was missing the point about the need for a powerful sign-off, so he persisted.
Looking back, Cronkite agreed:
“Well, that was a very contrived sign-off, obviously. And I’m a little embarrassed about it today. Dick Salant hated it and tried to talk me out of it. Being the stubborn Dutchman I am, I clung to it, and it became so much a signature so quickly that I was not inclined to give it up. Because I think Dick Salant was right. Almost from the beginning of the “Evening News,” there was so much news to cover we never got that irony of fate stories in. As a result, we were loading the broadcast with important news, and I was ending up saying, and that’s the way it is. An arrogant line in a sense.”
What Would Walter Do?
If there is a signature teachable moment in Walter Cronkite’s oeuvre, viewers couldn’t guess his politics from his reporting. Today, we would call him a “progressive liberal,” throughout his career, he was a dyed-in-the-wool believer in journalism that castoff any hint of ego or bias. He worshiped a catechism that preached a journalist’s only duty was to get the facts and get them right. Although those highfalutin scruples would land him in trouble time and again, as an experienced sailor, it was the way he found his True North in the newsroom, as he told Katie Couric when she took over the broadcast:
“I got in trouble from both sides of the aisle…whether liberals or conservatives. I thought I was doing something right because I would hear it from everybody.”
Uncle Walter
“He remained Uncle Walter to generations of Americans who saw him as a wise and fair man with a sailor’s skill of getting them through rough seas by keeping a steady hand on the tiller and his eyes on the far horizon.” — Tom Brokaw
Walter Cronkite’s impeccable timing would make a thespian envious. His path from radio to UPI and CBS, even his retirement as a highly sought after commentator, paralleled the rise of the media in the United States — from the early days of an advanced communications technology we now call radio, then beginning to compete with print, to the worlds of television and digital media.
Cronkite’s 20-year beat captured the zeitgeist of America during the 60s and 70s. His boots were on the ground in Vietnam. He was about to become the only broadcaster to join a NASA rocket launch (until age disqualified him). He handled the anchor desk during Selma, Watts, the Chicago Democratic convention, Mayor Daley, and the SDS. He reported the country’s struggles with Kent State shootings and those infamous symbols of our first televised war, body bags (nearly 60,000). He brought perspective to an epidemic of assassinations beginning with JFK in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and then RFK and MLK in 1968.
In the summer of 1965, viewers learned from Cronkite that 3,438 people had been arrested for violent protests in Los Angeles, soon to be called Watts Riots, and contagion of race riots sparked across America’s cities. Anxiety was palpable, and so was a sense of despair the country would come unglued before its bicentennial. But each night, they listened to Cronkite’s calm and measured tones. There was something there that reassured them.
Cronkite’s reporting was also at least partially responsible for two historic counterpunches that found their target in the Office of the Presidency. President Johnson withdrew from his own reelection. Watergate followed a few years later when President Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.
Who could have predicted that the country would come to rely so deeply on this ordinary extraordinary man in these harrowing times? Cronkite’s nightly visage was ubiquitous to the point we barely recall a time he wasn’t “Uncle Walter.” By the time the Gallup Poll got around to checking with its researchers, Cronkite had become “the most trusted man in America.”
Cronkite’s Way
Historians would have to rewrite the Vietnam War tragedy if not for Cronkite’s February 27, 1968, prime-time special report, Who, What, When, Where, Why. Cronkite was pro-war originally, or at least pro-American soldier. He reconsidered after spending time with Andy Rooney and Morley Safer on the battlefield, where he saw the Pentagon’s reports were bogus. His two chums advised him to take a definitive stand.
That was exactly what Cronkite was planning. Only he was concerned about using the CBS Evening News as a platform for the overheated politics of the War. So he ran it as a special report where he famously concluded Vietnam would end in a stalemate. This shocked Americans who were accustomed to hearing only positive Pentagon propaganda. Among those watching was President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sighed aloud: “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Shortly after the broadcast, Johnson withdrew from running for reelection.
Cronkite’s interview with Anwar Sadat similarly triggered an epic, even global reaction. The Egyptian president placed his historic call to Menachem Begin during his interview with the anchorman. The inspiration for doing so was when “Ambassador Cronkite” suggested it to Sadat on the air. It led directly to Sadat’s 1977 historic visit to Israel, the most significant Middle East peace overture in recent history.
Cronkite was a reporter’s reporter who loved nothing better than to scoop the competition. He saw himself as a tireless, no-nonsense journalist albeit with an avuncular presence. In the bare-knuckled television world, it wasn’t surprising that honchos saw him as a TV celebrity who could be bullied. But Cronkite was no one’s fool. In fact, when it came to journalistic principle, those who tested his determination did so to their everlasting regret. It didn’t matter if it was the President of the United States or his producer. At Kansas City’s KCMO radio, when Cronkite first started broadcasting, he refused to announce a tragic fire because it was based on hearsay of the program director’s wife:
KCMO program director: You don’t have to check (if there was a fire). My wife called and told me.
Cronkite: I do, too, have to check on it.
Program Director: Are you calling my wife a liar?
Cronkite: I refused to go with the story, so the program director went on air and ad-libbed a news bulletin.
Although there was no tragic fire, there would be a firing — Cronkite’s, for insubordination. It wouldn’t be the last time he put his job on the line for the sake of good journalism.
Even Bill Paley, the influential founder of CBS, knew if the subject was editorial integrity, he was better off evading rather than risk Cronkite’s wrath, even when the United States President demanded it.
Walter Cronkite’s impact on Watergate deserves special mention because popular culture has immortalized the fabulous saga of the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Without Cronkite, the story might have disappeared from the front pages:
In late 1972, Cronkite asked his producers to do something unheard of — feature two nights of lengthy explanation on the Watergate scandal, which had been extensively covered by the Washington Post. But it had not yet received national coverage, and the story seemed to be losing steam.
The pressures from the Nixon administration were getting really severe on the Washington Post. They were to the point of giving up when…we brought new life to the Watergate story on October 27, 1972. The first piece we did on Watergate ran for more than 14 minutes. After Nixon’s special counsel, Charles Colson called Paley to complain, Paley raised hell with Dick Salant. Only he outfoxed him but very cleverly seizing upon Paley’s main complaint — devoting the entire news program on Watergate, and that saved the day. So Salant called us and demanded we shorten the next day’s piece by half. But the content was never mentioned. I later asked Salant, and he denied Paley had dictated the decision. Salant knew that if I knew Paley forced the decision, I would have blown my top.”
These days, journalists are prone to fall in love with political leaders holding views that mirror their own. (To be fair, perhaps out of the need for access rather than conviction). Cronkite understood the dangers of losing one’s perspective on the anchor desk. To paraphrase Sun Tzu’s famous edict, he “kept his friends close and his politicians closer.”
His political trophy room had a long row of distinguished heads. He interviewed and admired Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter (who he thought was the smartest president), and Reagan, but never to the point he couldn’t back off and give them a thumping. He worked both sides of the aisle regardless of his political opinion. He even visited George Wallace at his hospital bed after the assassination attempt on the Alabama governor. Cronkite vigorously disagreed with Wallace on several issues, most acutely, race. He just felt it was the right thing to do. Cronkite’s on-air persona was known for great theater, excellent reporting, and great empathy. “Great balance” would be another.
The most memorable Presidential moment of Walter Cronkite’s career was his announcement of the assassination and death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It casts a poignancy over an earlier interview with a petulant Senator Kennedy who tried to browbeat the anchorman into giving him a mulligan on his first take.
As Douglas Brinkley relates in his magnificent biography:
Cronkite had a date to interview Senator Kennedy at his Federal-style Georgetown home, a gift to his wife, Jackie. Unfortunately, Kennedy blew the interview. It was clear that he hadn’t properly boned up for the program, confusing even his résumé on film. Once the camera rolled, Kennedy was all hems and haws.
While Cronkite watched Kennedy’s botched interview in the CBS truck outside the candidate’s house, the CBS producer, Warren Abrams, came barging in, clearly panicked. “We’ve got to do the program over,” Abrams said. “What’s the matter with it?” a perplexed Cronkite asked. “It’s all right in here. I’m looking at it.”
“Well, the senator says we have to do it over,”
“Well,” Cronkite fumed, “what right does he have?” Cronkite scoffed. “It’s because he blew that last question. I’ve got to talk to him.”
Cronkite stomped up the stairs of Kennedy’s home to encounter a startled JFK. Kennedy saw “a fire in Walter’s eyes that he didn’t know he had.”
Kennedy, looking straight at Cronkite, said, “Tell me when you’re ready (to reshoot).”
“Senator,” Cronkite replied. “I don’t think we ought to do this again.”
Kennedy retorted. “We’re going to do it.”
Overwhelmed by the unremitting tension, Cronkite tried a sly new angle. “But you know,” he told Kennedy, “we’re going to have to carry a disclaimer. We’re going to say that Nixon’s was unrehearsed but that you requested to do yours over.”
“I can live with that,”
“All right, Senator,” Cronkite said in disbelief. “We’ll do it over. But I’ve got to tell you. I think it’s the lousiest bit of sportsmanship I ever saw in my life.”
Suddenly Kennedy turned gray with embarrassment and said, “Let it run!”
Even later in life, as a retired broadcaster, Cronkite could only view politics by first making a keen comparison of intent against evidence of common sense and facts. He never set foot in a newsroom without acknowledging there were two sides, even if only one would prevail on the right side of history. In a 2002 interview with CNN’s Larry King, Cronkite (who was against the invasion of Iraq) offered his view of the Presidency of George W. Bush:
“I think it depends upon whether you believe in what he’s doing or not. He’s taking definitive action, according to his own rights and according to recommendations of his council. And if you believe that that is the way we should be going, then you’ve got to say he’s doing a great job. If you happen to be in opposition, you will say, ‘hold on a minute. Let’s examine this a little more closely.’”
Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
Walter Cronkite was a proponent of dependable journalism without adornment. That may have been the result of heritage as much as training: Cronkite, the glamorous editor channeling Walter the Depression-era child.
He was born Saturday, November 4, 1916, in St Joseph, Missouri. His roots were pure Midwestern and modest. The practicality of his Dutch heritage resonates on every line of his resume. He offered an exciting promotion or a raise. He always took the money. He learned well from this mother, Helen, who kept the family afloat by hawking World Book Encyclopedias. At the same time, his father, Walter Sr., built a fledgling dental practice (Sr. would later develop an outstanding reputation and go into academic dentistry in Houston).
Cronkite attended the University of Texas and studied journalism, and left in 1935 without graduating. He was hired by radio station KCMO where he met a young, talented copywriter named Betsy Maxwell. They were assigned to read a commercial script, which on-air talent did in those days. Cronkite’s then not-quite-famous voice whispered to Betsy: “Hello Angel. What heaven did you drop from.” With a smoothie who spoke like that, what else could she do but marry him (four years later)?
During 1937, the new fiancee aimed his sights on a media career at UPI, one of the world’s leading news organizations. It was either a stroke of luck or genius. He would become one of the top war correspondents of World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe.
His first overseas assignment was in London, where CBS’ Edward R. Murrow, then the most famous broadcaster in America, offered Cronkite a job. He gratefully accepted, then reneged after a generous counteroffer from UPI (following the money, as always). For Murrow, who grew up in radio, the shift to television’s new technology was natural. For Cronkite, a dedicated print journalist, it’s possible it felt risky. Whichever the reason, Murrow never forgave the slight, and Cronkite believed the celebrity radioman held a lifelong grudge. It might explain why Cronkite was never inducted into that hallowed fraternity, “The Murrow Boys,” like Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, and Howard K. Smith.
Then fate smiled when UPI chose Cronkite to be one of eight journalists to fly air raids in a B-17. His particular squadron took on the peculiar name, “The Writing 69th,” a play on the famous “Fighting 69th,” the regiment named Robert E. Lee. During his time with UPI in Europe, Cronkite covered the Battle of the Bulge, the Nuremberg Trials, and both the D-Day invasion and the liberation of Europe.
After the war had ended, Cronkite went to Moscow, where the Stalinists kept a close watch, and he became bored. In 1950, he got a second offer from CBS and accepted and returned to the United States. There he came under the watchful eye of founder and chairman Bill Paley, CBS honchos, Frank Stanton, Dick Salant, and producer Don Hewitt. Like the good judges of talent they were, they trotted their new star through a series of news, talk, sports, and election coverage (he even hosted a game show, It’s News to Me). He was a big catch at the time, and he made quite an impression on his young producer, who would go on to create 60 Minutes:
“ Our main man at the convention was going to be Walter Cronkite. I remembered Cronkite as a great print journalist from London during the war.” — Don Hewitt.
Once Cronkite warmed up in the CBS bullpen, he was tapped to replace America’s first news anchor, Douglas Edwards (who had a drinking problem, practically an epidemic in the American media business). CBS showed supreme confidence by changing the program to the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. It also became the first half-hour news broadcast on network television. The era of building a broadcaster into a celebrity, then leveraging his fame to promote the show, had begun.
When Cronkite got the promotion, he was pleased, but there would be no ego trip:
“I was very excited about the opportunity to take it over. It’s a big job, obviously…but I did not contemplate it, nor did I have any plans of what I’d do if I got it; none of that sort of thing ever crossed my mind. I always lived in broadcasting day-to-day with the idea I was going to be fired.”
JFK Assassination
The story behind the JFK assassination and Cronkite’s emotional reaction on the air is one of the most iconic moments in television history. The actual report of the broadcast shows how randomness plays a role in a news scoop, even under tragic circumstances, as he related to NPR’s, All Things Considered:
“UPI teletypes around the world started ticking out in the CBS newsroom in New York, from where my colleague Ed Bliss shouted across the room. I leaped from my desk to get on the air. But the cameras were not yet in place for the evening news, so I rushed into an adjoining radio booth. CBS was ten minutes into its daily drama “As the World Turns” when a CBS News bulletin slide appeared on the screen, and a different drama took over the air. In New York, our television cameras were up within 15 minutes. I sat at the news desk in shirt sleeves surrounded by telephones, typewriters, a clutter of papers, and a lone apple that sat on the front edge of the desk. By 2:30, there was a mounting consensus to the rumors.
Eddy Barker was news director of CBS’s Dallas affiliate and had some of the city’s best police sources. He was among the first to learn the facts, and he worked closely with Bob Pierpoint and Dan Rather, who was covering the Kennedy visit for the network. I marked the time. “There is the report in Dallas that the president is dead, but that has not been confirmed by any other source.”
Ten minutes later, Press Officer Malcolm Kilduff released the news, and it was official. It fell to me to announce for CBS. My emotion was apparent as I fought to control my composure, locking it inside a clenched jaw.
“From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time, 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago. Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital…”
The viewership of three networks came to over 175 million — the largest number of TV viewers of a single subject in American history. The country looked to national and local news chambers for any clue to guide it through this national tragedy. It connected people not only to television in a way that changed the medium but to one another.
Outside the Anchor booth
His father, Walter Cronkite, Sr., a troubled alcoholic, lost his wife and children because of an addiction to the bottle. But the son found a happy medium in the companionship of the tavern. Nothing Cronkite enjoyed than industry gossip, a good story, and bawdy jokes over drinks with celebrity news colleagues like Mike Wallace, Tom Brokaw, his producer, Sandy Socolow, and war buddies, Andy Rooney or Morley Safer.
Cronkite and his wife, Betsy, enjoyed a 64 year, colorful relationship until she died in 2005. They treated each other as a well-matched pair in all but one respect: her wit. No one would risk trading barbs with Betsy Cronkite as she had a sharp and infectious sense of humor, and it kept his feet on the ground, literally: Tom Brokaw recalled the scene:
“On a Kentucky Derby weekend, Walter and I were invited to go aloft in hot air balloons. As we lifted off, I could hear Betsy saying to Walter over the two-way radio, “We’re down here dividing up your things. Do you still want that burial at sea?”
“To say that Walter Cronkite enjoyed being Walter Cronkite would be an understatement. The kid from St Joe never quite got over the fact that he had made it into the big leagues.” — Morley Safer
Brokaw goes on to point out that the Cronkite’s were the “it” couple in New York at the time:
“Broadway opening nights and movie premieres — and they didn’t miss many — were always enlivened by the presence of the Cronkites, who had a wide range of good friends, including John Steinbeck, Eli Wallach, Toots Shor, Mike Wallace, Andy Rooney, Jackie Kennedy, Art Buchwald, and Bill and Rose Styron as well as — get this — Mickey Hart, the drummer for the Grateful Dead, a fellow sailing enthusiast. Walter occasionally appeared on stage at “Dead” concerts.”
Epilogue
Walter Cronkite never ceased yearning for his old anchor desk. During the last chapter of his storied life, the news business exerted a pull as gravitational forces did on his beloved astronauts. In a 2003 interview, CNN’s Larry King asked bluntly, “Walter, do you miss it?” Cronkite confessed:
“Every day. Every minute of the day. I hear (the stories) on the radio. I see them on the Internet. And I wish I could get my hands on that story, you know? It’s the old fire horse. When the bell rings, you want to go.”
Walter Cronkite died at the age of 92 on July 17, 2009. It could be said without hyperbole, as Hamlet did of his father: “He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.”
Afterword
I have my own Walter and Betsy Cronkite vignette.
A dapper-looking fellow in a glimmering white dinner jacket and an infectious grin comes over to order a drink at the bar. He takes a pull of his martini, turns to me, and introduces himself like I have no idea who he is. “Hi, I’m Walter Cronkite.” Soon we are getting along like a pair of prep school chums. We talk journalism for nearly ten seconds, and then I ask about his boat, and he regales me with sailing lore for 20 minutes when a less-than-patient Betsy walks over to see what is taking so long.
Betsy: “Walter, The King (of Morocco) wants to say hello.”
Cronkite: “The King? Well, Jeff, I better be off.”
Betsy: “Don’t worry, Walter. I’m sure it’s just professional courtesy.”
