The last trusted TV newsman?

No one can ask Walter Cronkite his opinion of Douglas Brinkley’s 2012 well-written book, “Cronkite.”

My initial thought was that Uncle Walter would not like it. After all, Brinkley did take a no-holds-barred approach. He wrote about the smoking, the drinking and the late nights on the town.

But on further reflection, I thought that maybe Walter Cronkite, if he’d lived long enough to read Brinkley’s book, would have said quite simply and directly “And that’s the way it is.”

For several decades, including the years of my youth, CBS news anchor (and former newspaperman) Walter Cronkite was known as the most trusted man in America.

This was true during the Vietnam years, the Watergate years, the Pentagon Papers years, the Carter years and the Reagan years.

There are two introductory quotes in “Cronkite” that caught my immediate attention. One was from George Will, who wrote: “When the history of journalism is written about our era, it will be divided into two separate eras – B.C. and A.C. – before Walter Cronkite and after Walter Cronkite. And the great division here is that Walter had in spades what today is lacking in huge proportion – and that is trust.”

George Will is, with little room for doubt, correct. Not long ago, I read a report on the least respected professions in the United States. Those in the media topped the list. Small wonder. (Lawyers were second. Sorry, Roy!)

And then there was this quote from the late Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Proud Highway:”

If we cannot produce a generation of journalists – or even a good handful – who care enough about our world and our future to make journalism the great literature it can be, then ‘professionally oriented programs’ are a waste of time.

Without at least a hard core of articulate men, convinced that journalism today is perhaps the best means of interpreting and thereby preserving what little progress we have made toward freedom and self-respect over the years, without that tough-minded elite in our press, dedicated to concepts that are sensed and quietly understood, rather than learned in schools – without these men we might as well toss in the towel and admit that ours is a society too interested in comic strips and TV to consider revolution until it bangs on our front door in the dead of some quiet night when our guard is finally down and we no longer even kid ourselves about being the bearers of a great and decent dream.”

Thompson obviously appreciated that Cronkite worked his way through the ranks after leaving the University of Texas in the middle of the Great Depression – sans degree.

Revisiting Hunter S. Thompson, I found another favorite quotation from the Good Doctor: “No two ideals were ever more incompatible than the security of conformity and the freedom of individuality. After the choice is made, the rest is easy, unless you don’t have the guts to stick by your choices.”

Brinkley chronicles Cronkite in an interesting, informative and enlightening style – everything from his television news persona to his near-nomination as vice president on the Democratic Party ticket.

By and large, Cronkite tried to keep his liberal politics out of the evening news. Most observers seemed to agree that he did a fair job of concealing his personal political views.

One of a few issues that Brinkley references is Cronkite’s narration of “The Eagle’s Talon,” a propaganda film from 1962 during the Kennedy administration.

According to Brinkley, the film left the impression that Cronkite was a “Kennedy patsy.”

Cronkite rarely made the same mistake twice, though. Mostly, he learned to keep his political leanings out of his broadcasts.

After being replaced by Dan Rather upon his retirement as CBS News anchor, Cronkite continued to appear on television news and entertainment programs.

Even though he’d retired a decade earlier, in 1991 Cronkite teamed up with CNN’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm. In fact, CNN put together a makeshift studio at Cronkite’s New York residence so he could speak directly with Bernard Shaw in Baghdad.

In 1981, novelist Kurt Vonnegut said that with Cronkite’s retirement, “the era of thoughtfulness in news broadcasting was over.”

Writing in “The Nation” in March 1981, Vonnegut said: “Cronkite steps aside just as old newspapermen are becoming as legendary as cowboys. As young as this country is, we will have a rich mythology, by and by.

“Radio and television news began with old newspaper people. How else could they have begun? The noun ‘press’ is now archaic as applied to news editors and reporters. Equally antique is the cliche that describes Walter Cronkite so well: “He has printer’s ink in his veins.”

Senior UPI editor H.D. Quigg offered : “It can be said of three men that, in their time as communicators, this nation hung on their words: Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Walter Cronkite.”

All agree that Cronkite’s lasting media legacy boils down to a single word: Trust.

Americans trusted Cronkite.

It may be a long time before we trust the multitudes of today’s news media purveyors as we once trusted Walter Cronkite.

Frankly, I don’t expect to live to see it happen.

Rory Ryan is publisher of The Highland County Press.