Cronkite on Cronkite : Journalism: The legendary anchorman was plugging his book “Westwind” in Newport Beach, but he also spoke of the autobiography he plans and highlights of his career.

Walter Cronkite was supposed to be talking about “Westwind,” a coffee-table book he has co-authored about the shoreline between western Canada and Ensenada. But the questions at the Balboa Bay Club kept getting back to another book, one he hasn’t even started writing yet: his autobiography.

It will, the legendary anchorman said with a grin, “expose all my biases.”

It won’t be “a ‘CBS Dearest,’ ” he said. But it will be heavy on anecdotal material “and a lot of personal attitudes and feelings about subjects--things that I could never express as an anchor person.”

Cronkite, who will be 74 next month, said he actually signed with publisher Alfred A. Knopf to do the book 20 years ago. But don’t think the old journalistic war horse has been indifferent about the deadline.

A Knopf executive, a friend whom Cronkite frequently saw on weekends, had been asking him constantly: “Why don’t you do a book?” Cronkite finally told him, “I can’t stand this nagging; you’re ruining our friendship. I’ll make a deal with you. If I ever write an autobiography-type book you can have it--if you’ll promise me that you’ll never mention it again and there will be no deadline. “And,” Cronkite continued with a laugh, “he came up with a contract that said that. But a couple of years ago we renegotiated and I promised it to him. So now I’ve got to do it.”

He plans to start in on the book as soon as he wraps up his “West-wind” publicity chores. Meanwhile, “I’m thinking hard about it. It’s pretty much in mind. I write pretty quickly once I start writing. In the old newspaper refrain: ‘I don’t write well, but I write fast.’ ”

He offered some of his preliminary thoughts:

* On dramatic reenactments of news events: “I abhor it. I think it’s absolutely awful to mix fact and fiction. It’s perfectly all right in a costume-type drama where you certainly know it is not a news event. But some of the recent transgressions, where they have reconstructed the alleged way that an event developed, that is almost criminal.”

* On tabloid journalism programs: “I regret to say this is something I forecast 30 years ago. . . . that if somebody wanted to go for the ratings it would be so easy to turn tabloid. (But) I’m not disturbed by these (tabloid-style) programs any more than I’m disturbed by tabloid newspapers. I think it’s unfortunate people waste their time and money that way, but I can understand the public demand for them.”

* On whether local news anchors and reporters should be sent to cover world news events: “I think local stations should send their own people to the scene of a disaster, for instance, in which local people are involved. But to send their own people to a scene of something where there is no local angle is simply show-boating. It’s not necessary. The local person, in most cases, doesn’t have the facilities or wherewithal, or possibly the capability, to do as well as the network.”

* On anchoring the network evening news programs from the scene of news events: “I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The anchorperson has access, frequently, to top officials that another correspondent might not have.”

* On the world leader he has interviewed who impressed him the most: “I think my nominee is Sadat (Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who was assassinated in 1981).” Why? “Courage--personal and political courage, and a really lively imagination about how things could be. It’s too bad he was cut down because he had such great dreams for Egypt that might have been realized if he was alive.”

* The most memorable story of his broadcast career: “I’ve got nominees for different aspects of all of our journalism experiences, at least in television broadcasting. One is the breaking story, the one you’re not prepared for and you have to be able to ad-lib your way through it and organize as you go, and that was the Kennedy assassination. For a story that you could make some preparation for but is still highly dramatic: Man’s landing on the moon.”

* On his success at becoming one of the nation’s most respected and recognizable TV journalists: “I think nine-tenths of it is luck. But I’m not totally modest about that. I think you have to be prepared to take advantage of luck. I think I was a pretty good newspaperman. I’m sure I was. As far as television goes--and that’s where obviously the success came in great quantity--I really think I sort of tackled it as a press-service guy: Get the facts fast, write it fast and present it as impartially as it is possible to do. And I think that stood me in good stead in broadcasting.”

* On being called “the Most Trusted Man in America:” “I’m honored by it because, obviously, I think what every news person would like to be is trusted. I don’t have any idea why I would be selected over any of the others for that particular accolade. I’m very proud of most of the people in our profession for their attempt to get facts straight, to get them honestly and with integrity.”

Any critique of Dan Rather, his CBS News anchor replacement? “I don’t go into it,” he said. “It’s a useless exercise.”

Looking back over the nine years since he left the CBS News anchor seat, is there one news story that he wishes he had been in a position to cover? “Every one,” he said. “I don’t miss (being an anchorman) any more than I anticipated missing it, maybe even a little less than I anticipated it. But on the other hand, I didn’t expect the ‘80s to be as big a news decade as they’ve been.”

Which stories in particular does he wish he had been able to report? “Oh, the Berlin Wall is one,” he answered. “The whole Eastern European development, Gorbachev’s rise. And now the Saudi Arabian crisis. And the eight years of the Reagan counter-revolution--that was a dramatic story in its own. It was slower developing--it didn’t have the great peaks that some of the things have--but it was a story that was well worth staying on top of, and I like politics as a story.”