Remembering Walter

The "memories of Walter" rush is on and rightfully so.

No doubt many with bolder face names than mine are dictating or at keyboards knocking out their "I remember when" pieces as we all try to both honor the memory and pin down the fact that "we were there with The Man when" which is a natural instinct. I was lucky enough to be one of those who was in the dozen or so years when my starter career at CBS News in the early '60s and his exploding one connected. I worked directly with him in the early days of broadcast news and his ascendancy to a rightful and earned place as "most trusted man."

My stories?

All brief, so bear with, and culled to get at what I think is essential not to lose now: That no matter how big he became there was an essential decency and humanity along with his drive to know and understand each story that he never lost. All that contributed to that "most trusted" thing and it begins for me with his ability to say and say in public "I was wrong."

It's 1965, and it pre-launch for one of the Gemini manned space missions. As Walter's "anchor assistant" which was a grab bag job title of researcher and producer and hand holder and security blanket, I helped prepare him for the story he was about to broadcast. After taking Walter step-by-step through a piece of orbital mechanics arcana that was key to the mission, Walter told me flatly: "Damnit you're wrong" and I told him equally flatly that he didn't know what he was talking about.

There I was at barely 25 nose-to-nose with WAL-ter CRON-kite, going at it and losing on a point that had to be won if was to be right on air but wasn't winning and to boot was being chewed out hard and in public by The Guy.

We went on the air, broadcast the launch and the start of the mission and at some point it became clear to me that Walter had finally gotten it. No light bulb is visible in the playback tape but clearly it had gone on. And when we got off the air, Walter stood up and told a crowded broadcast trailer studio: "I was wrong. This young man was 100% right and I should have listened." A public apology from Walter; an admission that he was wrong? Who'da thunk? Only those who didn't really know him I discovered that day.

Walter and me in Phu Bai in 1968, Credit: CBS News cameraman Jimmy Wilson

Flash forward three years and it is Viet Nam where I am with Walter in February of 1968 where I was having my Hemingway-war correspondent moment and trying to figure out which side of the camera I belonged on. I was asked to step away briefly from that to join the production team put together for the special half hour he was going to do on the war and the TET offensive.

And this little story is all about Walter's need to "experience it as it was" in order to know the story he was covering.

We were in Hue after a ride in on open truck full of replacements through very much contested territory during which one young marine looked up, saw Walter in flak jacket and helmet and said as only a Marine could, "Fuck, if Cronkite is here, this must be big." When it came time to bed down, the question was where? I said I was taking the film crew to the safest place I knew which was the stone basement of Hue University. Be a helluva rocket to get us there was clear but it was going to mean a stone floor for a bed and Meals Ready to Eat coffee heated in canteen cups for breakfast. Our military escorts (Walter WAS very well escorted) offered up a tent with cots and blankets in a relatively secure somewhat rear area that came with a hot breakfast.

Walter had none of it. "You guys," he said to his more senior producers, "can go, but I'm going with those guys" meaning us and he did. Slept on the floor. Flinched at the sound of incoming and outgoing with the rest of us. Hated the coffee but thanked us for it and he experienced the war at the Grunt's level and it made his reporting what it was as did the only ride possible out of Hue. It was on a Marine helicopter the crew and I helped load with dead Marines. He wanted to experience it and wasn't afraid to do what it took.

Flash forward again but this time only five months. Chicago 1968 and the Democratic Convention.

I'm back from my six months having agreed to return in time to pick up as Walter's anchor assistant trading foxholes in Viet Nam for a pit under the anchor desk where I became the unseen body attached to that hand passing 5x7 file cards up to Walter's left hand. I cannot remember which night is was that they showed the memorial film for Bobby and Martin whose assassinations I had essentially missed intellectually and emotionally while covering the war. They died. Their deaths interrupted what we were doing, were worked into the fabric of our coverage and then we moved on. Neither had hit me.

As that film spooled out for the delegates I was destroyed. King whom I had covered and gotten to know in the South was now actually dead for me and so was Kennedy which brought back the range of emotion I felt when covering his brother's death five years before.

I was unable to function and worried about what would Walter "do" as I sat up against the desk and wept. And what he did was reach down; pat me on the shoulder; and say "take the time you need. When you're ready come back to me." It was a moment of empathy and humanity I have never forgotten and it was part of the essential man.

Walter and me in New York overlooking the John Glenn parade in 1962

America may not have known it, but it saw that essential man twice that I am aware of while he was on the air and both times he took his glasses off.

The first was when he had to report that President Kennedy was dead. Glasses came off. He wiped the corner of his eye then took a breath and moved on. He felt the moment and let it be known as best he could while controlling it so he could move the story on. And the second was the night 40 years ago when man landed on the moon. When it was clear Armstrong and Aldrin were safely down at Tranquility Base the glasses came off and the "Holy Cow" Walter uttered softly was the essential man out there for the entire world to see. Feeling the moment and letting those on the other side of the glass know that he felt the relief and emotion and the pride that they did.

That was Walter. He was every bit a "what you saw was what you got" kind of guy and it is that made him unique and earned him that "most trusted" thing which to his credit he never really bought.

Jeff Gralnick is a 50-year veteran of broadcast news who was fortunate enough to work for and with Walter Cronkite from 1961 to 1970. He is currently acting as Special Consultant on Global Business Development for NBC News.

Comments

[davidmichaelsmith]

Thank you, Jeff, for those wonderful memories. I was in Vietnam the same time as you and Mr. Cronkite, and I will be always grateful when he told his audience the war was lost. Despite the fact that it was perpetuated for long afterward, I think he added immeasurably to the weight that finally made Americans realize what a mistake the entire affair was.

As a small-time radio journalist for many years, I always looked to Mr. Cronkite as my inspiration and personal hero. I'll never forget the t-shirt my wife bought me when he finally left the CBS Evening News. In tiny print, it longingly read:

"My God, what are we going to do without Walter Cronkite?"

Every would-be on air anchor and journalist should ask themselves that question each time before the light goes red.

[Hopemonger38]

GREAT article on a great man.

[bbobby]

Mr. Gralnick, thank you for the most insightful look at the real Walter Cronkite. It confirms everything I've ever felt about him. We all knew that he was probably the best journalist this country has ever produced, but your personal rememberances also show him to be a great human being - a kind, generous man who appreciated those around him and wasn't afraid to admit when he was wrong. That is the true measure of a great human being. He and my dad were very much cut from the same cloth - men striving to do their jobs the best they could, demanding quality from those they worked with, but first and foremost, demanding quality from themselves. Both men realized that you couldn't demand from others what they didn't expect from themselves - and both men got what they expected. I would never have intentionally let my dad down, and, I expect, those who worked for Cronkite felt the same way. Two great men. Hopefully, Cronkite's passing will give our present day journalists pause for thought.

[Tages72]

It's a great feeling when you get so know someone on a medium like television and know you could trust them with your most intimate secrets. That was how I always felt about Walter Cronkite. I never met the man but thought of him as family. Thanks for a great read and confirming my impressions of this fine gentleman.

He shall never be forgotten and always missed.

[beckpod1]

Hypocrites­....if they all admired him so much...why can't they try to carry on his work?
They can own the past....wi­th the archives..­..why can't they learn from the past?
Just like politician­s...the good ones are driven away because of the way business is done these days...

[Torus34]

I am sorry that I cannot provide proper documentation. I did not get the name of the commentator who said what I'm about to paraphrase. It bears repeating never the less.

Mr. Cronkite was trusted by the public, no matter what their political orientation happened to be. Reportage these days has become polarized, with liberal commentators believed by liberals and conservative commentators believed by conservatives. These commentators make it their business to say what their audiences wish to hear.

But who will Americans listen to -- and trust -- when things must be said that they will not like to hear?

[Weirdwriter]

Well said. Thanks for repeating.

Yes. It' s not just about the corporate control, the advertisers and the new breed of TV talking/ranting heads. It's about Us.

When did it become more important -- to so many -- to tune to people who told us what we wanted to hear, who stoked our worst fears, divided us and encouraged us to think of the "different" as "the enemy"?

[blindhog]

Kitty Kelly's book, The Family, states, in so many words, that in 1976 Walter Cronite confronted the CIA's use of reporters.

Maybe he was on to something well before his time.

One doesn't have to be a scientist when looking at the dots on the USGS Earthquake site to know that when one connects those dots, one will find faults. So too, if one connects the dots between the Bush connection, Cheney, South America, the CIA, Iraq and Valerie Plame one finds faults. It is fodder for novelists to show very honorable people can work, unbeknowst to them, with a group that has become rouge. Is it possible that there are elements in the CIA (like the fool on Glenn Beck) that are not looking out for the best interest of the United States of America?

Leaf through Kelly's book, there are a lot of dots.

[LMPE]

When Limbaugh/H­annity/O'R­eilly/Coul­ter die, we'll remember how they made a mockery of the very notion of journalism.

[Totto]

But they make so much money! Isn't that what it's all about?

[ConcernfromCanada]

Don't forget - they are comedians not serious journalists.

[Looplinker]

The passing of Walter Conkrite allows some of us to reflect on the history that his career covered and also on how the standard of news coverage in this country has deteriorated from the high standards of the TV news era of Conkrite, Huntley, Brinkley, and Howard K. Smith. Many of the present generation cannot comprehend the nonsense that is presented as news these days. They are unaware that current TV news functions to manipulate opinion.

Now as opposed to then, every reporter, whether knowledgeable or not, is allowed to add his or her own spin on the news. The so-called balance is provided by “experts’ on both sides of any issue yelling simultaneously their views without the courtesy of listening before responding – this satisfies the confrontational format that allegedly brings in the higher ratings.

The editorial selection of what to cover on the news program is dominated not by what is news worthy, but the visual impact of the available video or of the celebrity status. In this way the TV news coverage of Tim Russert’s funeral approached that given to Pope John Paul.

The current format of TV news coverage can best be described as tabloid. There is this underlying feeling that we are being manipulated by those that own these news bureaus.

The only TV news outlet that retains any integrity is the PBS Newshour.

[moodpost]

I've been missing Walter Cronkite for years. I remember being miffed about it. I got the sense that he should keep doing it because the country needed that reassurance we all got from hearing him. I didn't know how much things would change. Perhaps no one knew then that TV news journalism would become. His death doesn't really change how I miss him, but only brings it out of my subconscious where it has been packed away.

[SadieGirl]

I miss Walter Cronkie too. I always knew growing up that when he spoke, I would hear truth. Just the news. The day of the Kennedy assassination comes to mind the most. I was in junior high and they made us all go to our homerooms and they had the TV's on. He delivered that announcement and I felt as if the floor dropped beneath my feet. Our President was dead. It is a day that will be with me forever. Those four days of TV coverage had a lasting impression in my young mind. Through it all, Walter Cronkite was there, taking us on that journey. I have always had and will always have the greatest respect for his jounalistic integrity and honesty. The day he retired, American jounalism started the slow and continual slide down the 'integrity and honesty' slope into sloppy reporting of the lowest form. We have no true jounalists any longer. That's why they honor him and who he was and not what he did. Because they would have to look at their own lack of those qualities. God Speed Walter. You were truly the best there ever was.

[Budokan]

You know the RNC echo chamber Focks Gnus, and the slackjawed maroons who watch it, are thinking, "What was so great about him?"

And still they wonder why they're becoming politically irrelevant.

http://kennethmarkhoover.com

[raker]

If news professionals so admired Cronkite and his skill as a newsman, they ought to emulate his style; instead, they emulate Entertainment Tonight.

[in4success]

apologies for becoming so disturbed whilst writing my comment that i forgot the closing statement. here it is:

commercially anyway, with only a couple of exceptions, altruistic journalism is as dead. R.I.P.

[wearyvoter]

When Walter Cronkite was at the start of his career, the news divisions at the networks were considered to be sustaining, rather than moneymaking parts of the operation. When the network bigwigs decided that news could potentially become a profit center, things started making the long, downhill, slide into infotainment.

[in4success]

i watched faux news do a tribute to him and it made me physically sick -- the network is EVERYTHING he denounced, not only in theory, but in virtue. faux news considered him, and i've heard them say it on more than several occasions, a bias, left-wing, liberal "enemy of the state" as sean hannity would say.

the crew at faux does not deserve to mention his name without lightening blowing their entire block out of the center of manhatten.

[Totto]

Thanks for the lower case, upper case is undeserved for "them". Hopefully, some bright young journalists will take up factual reporting as deserving of effort. Cronkite wrote his own copy, unlike most in the news circus today. CBS is a shadow of its former self.

[balance]

Perhaps a good way for the mass news media to honor him, would be to honor his journalistic principles and ideals, as the sentinels of our Democracy.

Objectivity has too long been associated, in the media, with lazily presenting "both sides" of an argument, merely for the sake of perfunctory argument. Thus the media would present flat-Earthers on equal basis of fact, with legitimate scientists, or in practice, introducing Global Warming denial as an equally valid point of view when confronted by climate science consensus.

The MSM should recognize that objectivity does not mean coddling intellectual dishonesty, nor apathy when confronted with complex issues. --Otherwise, phony arguments for starting wars get a pass, and complex financial misconduct damages our economy and allows perps to walk away with billions.

Objectivity must be accompanied by earnestly caring about the pursuit of truth. And this pursuit of truth should be guided by facts and logic, and leave out ego and not be an allegience to a political ideology.

And journalistic objectivity should also recognize that concerns for justice & fair treatment should be extended not to just the powerful, but also to those who have less power and quieter voices.