The Way It Was (and Never Will Be Again)

I've spent the past couple of days "collating" -- as Ash from Alien might say -- my thoughts on the unfortunate death of Walter Cronkite. It would be easy to go into detail about the man himself: his dignity and dedication, his irreproachable level of professionalism, his enduring legacy in honest journalism. But for some reason, in spite of all that can be said about Cronkite's vast contributions to television news and news in general, I can't seem to get past the unintentionally amusing irony of what the coverage of his death says about the importance of the man and how it defines in clear-cut terms exactly what was lost -- and what will likely never be regained.

Put simply, to watch the often pompous lightweights who now dominate television news -- from the vacant Kens and Barbies to the self-satisfied assholes whose commentary has turned TV journalism into one big echo chamber -- react as if the passing of Cronkite is some sort of personal distress is more than a little laughable. The fact that Cronkite's nominal on-air progeny have not only a mere fraction of the talent that he did but possess almost none of his ethical backbone and commitment to journalistic excellence -- and yet are still more than happy to make a big show of genuflecting at his feet -- highlights in no uncertain terms just how much the news industry as a whole has changed since the days when people like Cronkite ruled the airwaves. Many of the TV newspeople of today are, for the most part, not so much in a league far beneath Cronkite's as they are not even in the same business. To hear the talking heads of today lament the passing of a man who helped define television news, you'd think they were actually doing the same thing he did all those years ago. In fact, they probably believe that they are; there's no doubt they think that by sitting in front of a camera and reading the news, they're the automatic inheritors of Cronkite's mantle. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. While there are still excellent journalists out there, excellence is no longer a prerequisite to climbing to the top of the TV news game -- particularly on-air. Unfortunately, almost any barely-educated idiot can do it.

Add to that the fact that the industry itself has changed so drastically -- abandoning so much of what guys like Walter Cronkite stood for and against -- that even the best work can be overshadowed by a business model that seeks profit above all, even, occasionally, the truth. And that's what it really comes down to: Cronkite stood for the truth. For telling Americans what they may not have wanted to hear but certainly needed to. He put the story above himself and his own personal gain. He was passionate about his responsibilities and didn't ask to come into your living room each night because he liked seeing himself on TV; he did it because he knew that the news he brought you mattered -- that a well-informed public was a strong public.

Contrast that with the modern mega-media ethos, in which important news stories can easily be tossed aside in favor of trivial fluff designed to keep you hypnotically glued to your TV, keep you asking your doctor about Cialis, keep the money rolling in for the stockholders, and keep your brain happily sedated and getting smaller by the minute. The job of journalism now is, to paraphrase the great H.L. Mencken, to discern what the people want and give it to them good and hard.

The death of Walter Cronkite truly is the end of an era. One that's never coming back -- and one which this country should mourn with everything inside it.

Follow Chez Pazienza on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chezpazienza

Comments

[neoprimordial]

Your post here is another example emblematic of why you are, along with a handful of others, first among my equals. I ought to be asleep right now, but I just needed to give my two cents.

Cronkite is the end of an era that will never be again, but that doesn't mean we can't create our own era to rival him. That's the challenge of every generation. I think we need to live up to it.

[josephXY]

Couldn't it be that the decline of journalistic standards has to do with the fact that people went along
with it for too long (apart from advertisers) and hence acceptance and paying for something they are
dissatisfied with?
And when readers cancel their subsriptions eventually and or change their TV consumption this
could indeed mean the usual consumer reaction to unsatisfactory products. (Look out for the financial
data, the Q - reports are published one after another right now again: "newspaper revenue" and
click on NEWS to that, for one; "media revenue" another searchword for following the trend.)

[expired]

RIP, Cronkite and Russert.

[TremoluxMan]

David Gregory's comment that "It's not our job, blah-blah-blah" still sticks in my craw. Journalism's building blocks are The 5 Ws and the Big H; Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. These building blocks have been largely abandoned and turned on their head. Especially in the run-up to the Iraq war when a major part of the whole story was the deception and lies. I don't recall one instance where a major news gatherer said to someone in power, "What you just said is not true and you are misleading the public."
How can it be logically argued that you don't call someone to their face on a lie if the lie is the heart of the story? Yet we get the ubiquitous preface, "Some question this-or-th­at." Edward R. Murrow dressed down Sen. McCarthy to his face and left him virtually speechless. I saw nothing remotely akin to that in all the coverage of Iraq. But I saw plenty of cheer-leading, unchallenged misinformation, and outright shilling.
Today's journalist aren't fit to carry Walter's jock.

[Clavis]

Maybe some things shouldn't be run by people whose sole concerns are profit and power. (Shocking thought, I know!)

[TXfemmom]

I can't help but believe that had Walter Cronkite still been a newsman and on air when we had the run up to Iraq, that he would have asked the tough questions and demanded answers and would have done a much better job of painting it for what it was, a pack of lies. Of course the Bush administration would have declared that he was unpatriotic and loved the people who hated us, and have done everything they could to intimidate him.

[Rainydaye]

Why do we bemoan the loss of cherished voices when they are finally buried? Cronkite was archived before he died. Lazy, biased reporting has flourished for some years. It's only now that people emerge through "hallowed doors of Journalistic Integrity " to cry the end of an era?
The era of Cronkite has passed. World news appeared once nightly, not 24/7. Not all stories were reported. There would be consequences for reporting outside the mold (which Cronkite did re Vietnam).
At 92, we celebrate Cronkite's life, full of character, integrity and determination to report the news honestly. We mourn that there are so few like him.
But, there was Tim Russett with many of Cronkite's qualities. There is hope. We cannot give up and say journalistic integrity is six feet under. We must demand honest reporting from news sources, making sure all understand the difference between entertainm­ent/opinio­n news. We must demand a level of integrity in those who report the news.
And we must demand unbiased reporting from the news. I have liberal views but I do not want news organizations pandering to me or to those on the left.
On Fox's...uh­ehmm "Fair and Balanced" News Stations, I watched Glen Beck share (rant?) his opinion with the Fox News icon on the screen which serves to give viewers a message that this is news.
We must demand that NEWS and OPINIONS are clearly delineated because there are way too many who cannot tell the difference.

[Rainydaye]

Sorry to barge in with a correction­...for me. Meant to say "pandering to me or to those on the right."

[Peter Winkler]

The celebrations of Walter Cronkite as a paragon of integrity fail to take into account the fact that Cronkite and other newsmen worked at a period of time when the network news division was not expcted to be a profit center for the network. After Roone Arledge became president of ABC, he put the news division within the entertainment division, and the evening news had to turn a profit for the parent comopany.

Cronkite preceded this sea change and was immune from network pressure to turn the evenig news into a source of revenue for the network. Would Cronkite have been nearly as elegant if he had to be a broadcaster post-Arledge, or if he was starting today?

[LizM]

I don't know what the answer to your question is but I will offer this...if the consumers of the news media demanded excellence in journalism and cared about being well informed, then I would hazard to guess that there may be today a journalist or two who exuded the same journalistic ethic and standard that Walter Cronkite embodied, despite the sea change in media culture over the last 40 years.

[truthglow]

I think we do, and Bill Moyers, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann (on some occasions) are partial answers to our demands.