Cronkite

By Douglas Brinkley

Cronkite had liberal opinions like Murrow’s regarding politics and trends in American society. But he didn’t believe his preference for Adlai Stevenson over Dwight Eisenhower for president should be public knowledge. “I thought he’d gotten the nomination simply because of the hero worship of World War II,” Cronkite explained of Eisenhower, “not by his ability to be president. Ike’s association with a lot of the right-wing Republicans bothered me a great deal.”

But Cronkite also knew that objectivity had its limits. Although he privately toasted the news of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin’s death on March 1, 1953, he didn’t editorialize. When on May 17, 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that racial segregation was illegal, Cronkite again rejoiced. But he also knew that the South might soon become a tinderbox as the U. S. Department of Justice tried to enforce the landmark ruling. During World War II Cronkite’s UP dispatches lacked objectivity because the Nazis were so heinous. Post-Brown, he hoped CBS News would do the same in covering the civil rights movement as it fought for the implementation of the Supreme Court opinion. “CBS executives sensed a more immediate concern,” Cronkite recalled. “Their job was to gather an audience and sell it to advertisers. … In the 1950s, CBS chairman William Paley didn’t want to alienate his Southern affiliates whose defection could weaken CBS ratings and revenues. Those of us who would do the reporting would feel caught in a rare dilemma between commerce and journalism.”

(Brinkley 2012, 177-178)

The horror of Nixon’s continuation of the Vietnam War obliged Cronkite to become a left-leaning CBS Radio editorializer, which raises the question: how did he get away with such over-the-top commentary full of pro-Democratic partisanship? The “fun part of it.” Cronkite maintained, was taunting Nixon and Colson to come after him. They tried. But after reading a batch of Cronkite’s radio broadcasts, it became obvious to Colson that the anchorman used generic qualifiers to protect himself from slander. Lines like people feel that or it is believed by some people were routinely used by Cronkite to provide plausible deniability.

(Brinkley 2012, 447)

Cronkite’s last day anchoring the CBS Evening News was Friday, March 6, 1981. At the company’s request, he had stayed through the February sweeps.

There was a sense that Cronkite’s leaving the broadcast was akin to his dying.

A telegram from a Long Island woman reached Cronkite, begging him not to quit: “Keep it up, you’re getting better.” But Cronkite wasn’t taking a hiatus; he was going out on top. A national magazine, in full mourning mode, contacted Cronkite with an offer for him to write his own obituary. Amazed at the letter’s gall, Cronkite indeed tailed back a response: “Walter Cronkite of television and radio died today. He was smothered to death under a pile of ridiculous mail, which included a request to write his own obituary.”