Cronkite and Objective Anchors

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting. (Check out previous columns while you're at it.)  Likes, comments, and shares help with author discoverability on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated. And don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

          It was disappointing to learn last week that CNBC was cancelling “The News with Shepard Smith” after only a two-year run. It aired weekdays from 7 to 8 p.m. and was a sort of “experiment” of returning to objective reporting of the news. Alas, its ratings could not compete with those shamelessly subjective programs found on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.

          The failure of this effort to treat viewers as reasonable human beings got me thinking again about Walter Cronkite. Of the evening news anchors in the 1960s into the 1980s, who included Huntley and Brinkley, Frank Reynolds, Howard K. Smith, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather, Cronkite was the gold standard. He began his career with a commitment to objective journalism and for the most part stayed the course. He refused to allow his personal beliefs to affect his job of reporting accurate news. It was his integrity and commitment to fair reporting which led to Cronkite being called the “most trusted man in America.”

          I have missed that commitment in modern TV news, especially during times of national or international upheavals. To me, other than PBS, watching the nighttime broadcasts is like reading a 60-page newspaper containing four pages of news and 56 pages of opinion essays, and the more biased the better. The formula used to be that news was reported in a straightforward manner and based on that reporting viewers could form opinions. Now, the skewed agenda comes first, then the “reporting,” most of which consists of “experts” who corroborate the network’s agenda. And I mean this about CNN and MSNBC as well as Fox.

          Some background on Walter Cronkite. He was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1916. After attending the University of Texas, he pursued journalism as a career and was a reporter for CBS Radio during World War II, going on several high-risk assignments. Afterward, Cronkite was recruited by the legendary Edward R. Murrow to join the fledgling CBS News television team. He rose up through the ranks to eventually replace Douglas Edwards in 1962 as the anchor of what would become the “CBS Evening News.” This was the time – pre-cable, of course – when many Americans learned of what was happening in the world by watching a half-hour network broadcast at 6 p.m. CBS had Cronkite, NBC and Huntley and Brinkley, and a few years later ABC had Reynolds.

          With CBS News being the top-rated of the evening broadcasts, Cronkite’s anchor position made him a household name. This was no more true than during the coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. (It is hard to believe that this event took place 59 years ago next week.) Viewers of a certain age – and footage can be found on YouTube – will recall Cronkite receiving a piece of paper, glancing at it, hesitating, then relaying, as he wiped away tears, that President Kennedy had died. With Cronkite reporting it, the terrible news had to be true. Viewers trusted him and by extension the American news media. Over the years, CBS News acquired a reputation for greater accuracy and depth in coverage, and in 1967 the “CBS Evening News” began to surpass “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” in viewership.

           In 1969, during the Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 Moon missions, Cronkite received the best ratings and made CBS the most-watched television network for the missions. Was this because of his personal views? No, it was about veracity, reliability, and sincerity. The following year, when Huntley retired, the “CBS Evening News” finally dominated the American TV news viewing audience. Although NBC finally settled on the well-respected broadcast journalist Chancellor, Cronkite proved to be more popular and continued to be top-rated until his retirement in 1981.

            A few readers may recall that Cronkite ended his half-hour broadcasts with the phrase "And that's the way it is," followed by the date. Beginning with the January 16, 1980, broadcast, Day 50 of the Iran hostage crisis, Cronkite added the length of the hostages' captivity to the show's closing in order to remind the audience of the unresolved situation, ending only on Day 444, January 20, 1981.

          But Vietnam was a departure. It was because of this war that Cronkite broke objectivity – routine now, a huge deal then. In February 1968, Cronkite journeyed to Vietnam to cover the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. He was invited to dine with General Creighton Abrams, the commander of all forces in Vietnam, who told Cronkite, "We cannot win this goddamned war, and we ought to find a dignified way out."  Upon his return, Cronkite and his producer wrote an editorial report based on that trip. On February 27, Cronkite closed "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" with that report. It included:

“We are now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.”

Following Cronkite's broadcast, President Lyndon Johnson is claimed by some to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." (As I’m sure Robert Caro will point out in the next volume of his Johnson biography, this is not completely true.) Many Americans were stunned that the most trusted man in America would use precious broadcast minutes to offer an opinion, and some were troubled by it. Today, too often opinion is the lede in TV news. Thankfully, beneath that there is still some strong, objective reporting going on, especially by the journalists in Ukraine and other overseas hot spots.

It will be interesting to see if the “PBS Evening News Hour” gains more viewers as ranting opinion exhaustion sets in, especially with Trump campaigning and a return to “alternate facts” and outright lies and changing paths of hurricanes. Sadly, we’ll soon be saying goodbye to Judy Woodruff, who is stepping down as the anchor of the newscast.

Make your eyeballs seen. Let’s keep looking at the most objective news we can find on television and social media.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival and The Last Hill, the latter published this month. To purchase or order a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.