Opinion: And that’s the way it isn’t

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

It’s silly, as well as trite, to call the death of Walter Cronkite the end on era. The demise of the omniscient, ultra-influential anchorman came years ago. As I wrote when Tom Brokaw retired:

The common ground for [media] critics of the left and right was the centrality of the network news anchorman. At least since the mid-1960s, anchormen have enjoyed cult status. They weren’t merely ‘newsreaders’ like their counterparts in Britain; they were also globe-trotting reporters and the ‘managing editors’ of their broadcasts. And, of course, they were TV stars, as marketable in their way as the stars of sitcoms and shoot-’em-ups.

They were also spokesmen -- however self-appointed -- for the American people. It seemed appropriate for Walter Cronkite, the ‘most trusted man in America,’ to give voice to his viewers’ enthusiasm for the space program or their horror at the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

As in ‘Murder on the Orient Express,’ there are many culprits in this killing: the advent of the Internet, the defensive response to it of Cronkite’s successors (I’m sick of CNN anchors cutting to the comments of viewers), the eclipse of supposedly objective TV reporting by the rants of cable commentators. The Cronkite legacy was also trashed by his self-important CBS successor, ‘Gunga Dan’ Rather, whose parting line wasn’t ‘That’s the way it is,’ but the enigmatic ‘Courage!’ Rather might have been speaking to viewers forced to adjust to the post-Cronkite age.