Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr.was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years. During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. He reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson's Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNews Anchor
Date of Birth4 November 1916
CitySaint Joseph, MO
CountryUnited States of America
As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is." To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.
Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.
Interviewing friends is a tough one. Your duty to the interview must transcend your friendship. Occasionally you'll lose a friend.
We've always known you can gain circulation or viewers by cheapening the product, and now you're finding the bad driving out the good.
The ethic of the journalist is to recognize one's prejudices, biases, and avoid getting them into print.
We are the lucky generation. We first broke our earthly bonds and ventured into space. From our descendants- perches on other planets or distant space cities, they will look back at our achievement with wonder at our courage and audacity and with appreciation at our accomplishments, which assured the future in which they live.
Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day-23 minutes-and that's supposed to be enough.
We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.
In all my years as a news commentator I was never once, able to tell the truth, about anything.
The daily coverage of the Vietnamese battlefield helped convince the American public that the carnage was not worth the candle.
Television... is not a substitute for print.
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace ... To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.
We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened.
We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.