Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite died this week and there have been a lot of comments about this icon of the 1960s and 1970s. The President said "he was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day." I think a lot of people thought of Cronkite in that way. From my perspective, the role that the President described is dated, but more fundamentally is the wrong role for a newsman. There are two ways to think of the role of guide - one is informational the other more directive. I think Cronkite thought of himself in the more directional role.

Anyone of my generation can think of key stories where Cronkite was important in our memories. Obviously, for someone interested in politics his role as the first voice on the assassination of President Kennedy and also at many political conventions and election nights was important. He was also the image I most clearly remember from the landing on the moon.

When I was very young he was the voice of You Are There which was a series of historical reconstructions where he was essentially a reporter explaining the event in real time. I remember most the one for Lee's surrender.

But two other stories are more important from my perspective. And in both cases he took his role as a guide - that directive pursuit described above. In 1968 Cronkite did a long statement on his then recent visit to Vietnam. His characterization of our setting in the war helped to turn the tide. His report on Vietnam so changed the war that when LBJ saw it, he said "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Yet, had Cronkite reported the result of the Tet offensive in the way that most observers see it today, the course of the war could well have been different.

Before the 1972 election, Cronkite took half of his nightly newscast to go through what many people knew about Watergate. Like the statement after his visit to VIetnam, the Watergate may have changed the perceptions about the Nixon era. In that case Cronkite's reporting took the role of trying to guide our thoughts. Was Watergate a big story? Absolutely. But the import of the story may not have been served by Cronkite's editorial response.

There is something else missing from the coverage is Cronkite's setting compared to the other news team of the day - Huntley and Brinkley. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were the NBC anchors when Cronkite was the CBS one. They were less guiding in their coverage. Cronkite may have increased his market share when he began to guide - but in my opinion that over-stepping of the role of a journalist had several consequences. First, I think the role of guide helped to reduce the level of trust that Americans had in their institutions. Second, as the mainstream media began to try to aggressively guide, we created a British like press - with points of view. That is both positive and negative and may well have come about with the advance of technology.

There is one other conclusion from all the commentary. The President seems to want to serve the role as a guide - his critics call this the Messiah role. Indeed every president wants to play this role. But this president seems especially compelled to do it. In a free society we could do with a lot fewer guides, with the assumption that individuals can and should make their own decisions.