Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite (born November 4, 1916, St. Joseph, Missouri, U.S.—died July 17, 2009, New York, New York) American journalist and pioneer of television news programming who became known as “the most trusted man in America.” He was the longtime anchor of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite (1962–81), for which he reported on many of the most historic events of the latter half of the 20th century.

As a boy, Cronkite was an avid reader of books, magazines, and newspapers. In 1927 he moved with his family to Houston, where he worked on school newspapers in both middle school and high school. After graduating he studied political science at the University of Texas at Austin (1933–35) and, to help pay his tuition, worked as a correspondent for a Houston newspaper. In 1935 he left college to take a full-time position with the paper. In 1939 Cronkite became a news editor for United Press (UP; see United Press International). When the United States entered World War II in 1941, UP elevated Cronkite to overseas war correspondent, assigning him to cover fighting in the North Atlantic. He was soon reassigned to London, where he reported on German bombing raids on the city. Cronkite also covered the invasion of North Africa. He flew in bombing raids over Germany and in 1944 reported on the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, on D-Day. After the war’s conclusion, he remained in Europe, covering the Nürnberg trials and helping set up numerous UP bureaus. Before returning to the United States, he served as UP bureau chief in Moscow (1946–48).

Cronkite attracted the attention of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) vice president Edward R. Murrow, who in 1950 hired him as a correspondent for the CBS television affiliate in Washington, D.C. Throughout the 1950s Cronkite hosted the CBS shows You Are There, an imaginary broadcast of historical events; The Morning Show, which he cohosted with a puppet named Charlemagne; and a documentary series, The Twentieth Century.

Working in a medium he initially knew little about, Cronkite helped shape the face of television news. He had an unflappable calmness and an uncanny ability to extemporize verbally, which made him ideal for hosting the political news show Man of the Week (1952–53) and for covering unpredictable events, as he did when reporting on the presidential conventions of 1952, 1956, and 1960.

In 1962 Cronkite attained the position he would become most famous for: anchorman of the CBS Evening News. Soon after Cronkite took over from his predecessor Douglas Edwards, the then 15-minute broadcast was expanded to 30 minutes, making it the first half-hour nightly news show on American network television. From the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, he reported on the most traumatic and triumphant moments of American life in the 1960s, from the assassination of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy in 1963 to the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969. The influence of Cronkite’s reporting is perhaps best illustrated by his commentary on the Vietnam War. In 1968 he left the anchor desk to report from Vietnam on the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. Upon his return Cronkite departed from his usual objectivity, declaring that the war could end only in a protracted stalemate. U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson told his staff, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America,” and some held that Johnson’s decision not to run for reelection that year was a direct result of Cronkite’s reporting.

Cronkite continued in his position at CBS through the 1970s, reporting on the decade’s most memorable events, including the Watergate scandal, the resignation of U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon, and the historic peace negotiations between Egyptian Pres. Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. His avuncular mien and adherence to journalistic integrity—exemplified by his sign-off line, “And that’s the way it is”—endeared him to the American public, and a 1972 poll named him “the most trusted man in America.”

Cronkite covered nearly every American manned spaceflight from 1961 to 1981. Because of his willingness to learn everything about spaceflight and his ability to convey his knowledge to viewers, he seemed to be almost as much a part of the American space program as the astronauts themselves. His infectious enthusiasm for the space program was often revealed on the air, as when he yelled, “Go, baby, go!” while watching the launch of Apollo 11.

Although he resigned from the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite in 1981 after 19 years as the show’s anchor, he remained active in television. He hosted numerous documentaries for the Public Broadcasting Service and for various cable television networks; among these programs was Cronkite Remembers (1997), a miniseries chronicling the historic occasions on which he had reported. He also contributed essays to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and occasionally served as a special correspondent for CBS. Cronkite published his autobiography, A Reporter’s Life, in 1996.

During his many decades of news broadcasting, Cronkite won several Emmy Awards and Peabody Awards and became the most famous and admired broadcast journalist in the world. In 1981 U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter awarded Cronkite the Presidential Medal of Freedom.