Post by Minty on Jul 19, 2009 8:17:39 GMT -5
It's a sad day for all Americans. Breaking news just scrolled or paused most broadcasts on television, Legendary CBS broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite has died. Walter Cronkite, a true journalist and news anchor was considered "The Most Trusted Man In America".
Cronkite was legendary for delivering the news of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and the lunar landing in 1969.
Three weeks ago Cronkite's family revealed he had been suffering for years with cerebrovascular disease and was not expected to recuperate.
Cronkite was the anchor of the CBS network news from 1962 to 1981. He was known for signing off by saying, "And that's the way it is."
Cronkite died at home in New York at 7:42 PM -- he was 92.
"The CBS Evening News" on Aug. 16, 1977, led with a story on the Panama Canal. Former President Gerald Ford had come out in favor of a plan, announced the week before, to give control of the canal to Panama. Former California Gov. Ronald Reagan said he was against it. Again.Elvis Presley's death was reported later.
There are those who contend that if Walter Cronkite had not been on vacation, CBS would have led with Elvis, as ABC and NBC did. But the fact that it was even a close call was hard to fathom.
"Our job is not to respond to public taste," Richard Salant, then-head of CBS News, had offered as an explanation of the Panama/Presley call, according to various accounts. "Elvis Presley was dead ..so he was dead."
For years insiders at the CBS newsroom were said to have repeated the words “remember Elvis,” because the network felt as if it had been remiss in its coverage of the star. The day the Elvis music died dominated the media cycle for weeks on end. CBS would come to repeat the mantra "Remember Elvis" for years afterward, fearful of ever again seeming out of touch with what touched viewers. There was no debate at the House of Murrow when Bing Crosby died two months after Presley.
By 1980, when John Lennon was murdered, the major-media template for handling celebrity deaths _ prominent coverage, specials and other remembrances _ was established, straddling between tribute and exploitation, news and sensationalism. And you saw it still last week for Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.
And in the words of Walter Cronkite, "and that's the way it is."