Walter Cronkite

A lot of people have been waxing poetic over the death of Walter Cronkite.

I don't have much to say, mainly because Cronkite was never "Uncle Walter" to me. My family mostly watched NBC news back in the day (Chet Huntley and David Brinkley), and I watched Apollo 11 on ABC with Jules Bergman - I watched a LOT of Jules Bergman's science stuff.

I suppose I'd like to say that Cronkite was never "the" news broadcaster, that even back then before 24-hour news there were alternatives and that lots of people took them. I'd also like to say that while "if Cronkite said it, you believed it - and you knew you should pay attention to it" as one friend of mine put it, that the reverse was just as true: If Cronkite didn't say it, you knew it wasn't true and you didn't have to pay attention. And in those days, before his big Tet broadcast, Cronkite came out with the government line on a lot of things... It's true that he did decide to go and see, and then reported what he believed (correctly labeling it as his belief), but for years that wasn't so. (Also, of course, those decrying the de-obectivifying of news are all praising him for that moment when he wasn't objective. Irony is delicious.)

So, yes: Cronkite was a great newsman. But he wasn't the news.