Where Did You Go, Joe D— No — Walter Cronkite?
Fifty years of news media — from the belief in ‘unbiased news’ to editorial narrowcasting
From Kindergarten through my master’s degree, I grew up with Walter Cronkite relaying the news on CBS. After dinner, my family would get comfy in the living room and take in everything Walter had to say.
As a 6-year-old, I watched him fight back tears as he announced the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Five years later, he did the same as he told TV viewers that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.
A year later, with immense pride, Cronkite was there to describe the landing of US astronauts on the moon. And throughout these years, up until 1975, he described the tragedies occurring in Vietnam.
Cronkite was known as “the most trusted man in America.” By all reports, he was an honorable man, and he worked to create unbiased news reports, something that is truly a thing of the past with respect to US television news. Previous to his anchoring of the CBS News, he had been a reporter and covered World War II battles in Europe and northern Africa.
And now?
Now, I NEVER watch news on the television. I have yet to find anything remotely close to the values that Cronkite…
