- Walter Cronkite. Cronkite, from his anchor desk in New York City, gave a few words on what was about to happen. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was read more, Just one day after the death of long-time Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Georgy Malenkov is named premier and first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After an epic battle, a ragged British First Airborne was forced to retreat back over the Rhine. Eggs had the biggest price jump of any single food item over the last year. I have a great complaint, that with the complicated nation that we have and with a complicated world which we play a role, that is not nearly enough time to handle just the basic news of the day.. It was Pattons convoy, and the general himself was present with his entourage. He gave up his college education to take up a full-time career in newspaper reporting and gained entry into the broadcasting industry as an announcer for WKY radio station in Oklahoma. It is part of the whole degeneration of society in my mind, he says. An announcer then gave the date and the event, followed by a loud and boldly spoken "You are there! As he later put it, subconsciously, I suppose I thought them lower than the dirt on the street . Is that protected free speech? On March 6, 1820, President James Monroe signs the Missouri Compromise, also known as the Compromise Bill of 1820, into law. Puzzled but friendly, Cronkite jocularly referred to himself as a sort of jackass Episcopalian. Pressed further, the reporter admitted he did not go to services that frequently. He anchored live broadcasts of rocket launches, from projects Mercury through Gemini and to the crowning achievement, Project Apollo. Saturday, Sunday, Monday the networks ran nothing but coverage of the presidents death, the return of his body to Washington, the funeral procession to the Capitol, and the final journey of President Kennedy to his burial in Arlington National Cemetery. The little band of correspondents chosen to accompany the bombers were soon dubbed the Writing Sixty-Ninth by an over-imaginative air force publicist. No emotion was added to the trauma of loss, nor was any needed. In 1972, an Oliver Quayle poll did a survey and found that Cronkite was more trusted than the Senate, House of Representatives, the President, Vice President and every other famous reporter. President Lyndon Johnson listened to Cronkites verdict with dismay and real sadness. Through his work, Doan laid the blueprint for how the Coyotes should represent themselves on and off the ice. Every New Years Day he hosts a program of Strauss music performed by the Vienna Philharmonic. Walter Cronkite and his colleagues learned aircraft identification and high altitude survival, just as if they were new bomber recruits. Warned by the noise, Cronkite ducked away from his window just as the bomb exploded. When he ended each newscast with And thats the way it is, it was less a tagline than a statement of simple fact. Walter was a tough act to follow, CBS colleague Mike Wallace said, and when Dan Rather started to take over the EVENING NEWS, he didnt want Walter sitting there. It seems the Waco pilot was a good one, because the seemingly fatal plunge was a technique to evade enemy ground fire. He reported aboard the USS Texas, an old battleship well past its prime. The American Eighth Air Forces Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators conducted daylight raids, while the Royal Air Force bombed targets at night. Mexican forces were victorious in recapturing the fort, and nearly all of the roughly 200 Texan defendersincluding read more, Helmut Kohl, the interim chancellor of West Germany since the fall of Helmut Schmidts Social Democrat government in 1982, is elected German chancellor as his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party is voted back into power. A furious White House threatened to punish CBS by revoking its station licenses. He was loyal to those standards, and his large audience was correspondingly loyal to him. Even to some at the time, it sounded too good to be true, and in the end, it was. Cronkite was the teacher, giving points on speaking and facing the camera. I, too, remember seeing an episode of the original "You Are There" in elementary school in 1973 (I don't remember which episode, however). Nonetheless, due both to his near-universally recognized credibility and to the century-defining events he reported to the nation, Cronkite remains a singular figure, quite possibly the most respected television news journalist in American history. 2023 TV GUIDE, A FANDOM COMPANY. In the summer of 1944, Hitler was placing great faith in his so-called vengeance weapons to turn the tide. In 1964, while getting beaten in the ratings by The Huntley/Brinkley Report, CBS briefly removed Cronkite from the anchor desk and placed Robert Trout and Roger Mudd in the anchor chairs. When Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the nation found itself fighting a two-front war. Walter Cronkite, on his 64th birthday, anchors his last CBS election night special while broadcasting in New York City on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 1980. What sort of day was it? He and his wife had their first child in November 1948. The air raid sirens wailed, but the flying bombs noisy engine gave an even clearer indication of danger. The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963. Journalists, he said, need to know a little bit about a lot of things, so journalism schools should focus on liberal arts. Anchors like Walter Cronkite are narrating every step. And he reported Nixons resignation with sadness. Given his wartime experiences, he probably could have gotten a contract to write a book, but he chose to keep his job at United Press as a correspondent. Indeed, his modesty and his dedication were the reasons his wide audience liked him so much and trusted him. The same qualities got him the job as anchor of the CBS EVENING NEWS in 1961. Only history can write the importance of this day: Were these dark days the harbingers of even blacker ones to come, or like the black before the dawn shall they lead to some still as yet indiscernible sunrise of understanding among men that violent words, no matter what their origin or motivation, can lead only to violent deeds?, 2. When news of Walter Harris (19912023), American Idol contestant. Reporters included veteran radio announcers Dick Joy and Harlow Wilcox. on November 4, 1916, the son of a dentist. The mission was aborted, and the bomber headed home. It was a proud moment for the young scribe when he got a job at the Houston Press. Many on the business side worried about losing Southern affiliates with broadcasts that could be seen as boosterism. The story included this passage: Former Wisconsin Governor Lee Sherman Dreyfus, once a university chancellor and professor of radio, TV and speech told Cronkite he used to invoke his name as he challenged students to think critically. There was not much that the colonel could do to a civilian, so he turned on his heel and sheepishly reported back to the general. When he stated the obvious that the Viet Cong had no intention of giving up, and we had no intention of remaining in Vietnam for another generation the common sense of it stuck with the public. Nearly losing his composure, Cronkite made the grim announcement that President Kennedy had died from his wounds. By the time the 1956 conventions began, Cronkite was as well-known as the men he was covering. Cronkite could report with disgust the Chicago police attacks on anti-war demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention. "In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story." After Cronkite and a colleague went to Vietnam to cover the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, both wrote editorials about what they saw. Whether in California, Nebraska, or Mississippi, the entire nation was seeing the same thing for three days. Cronkite would cover the other assassinations that rocked the country over the coming years, including those of Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon. He gave updates on the shocking news as it arrived. They became familiar figures in Britain, distinctive in their leather flight jackets and 20 mission crush caps. WebEstimated between Sat, Jan 21 and Wed, Jan 25 to 98837. Clandestine Radio Maroc eventually was put ashore, and none the worse for wearsave for a little egg on its face. In that time, he covered the Vietnam War, the assassination of President Kennedy, the moon landing and more. On the old television show You Are There, Walter Cronkite used to say: What sort of a day was it? 22 episodes of the 1950s version of You Are There are available on DVD from Woodhaven Entertainment. Walter Cronkite was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on December 4, 1916. News no longer waits for a single trusted voice and "the way it is" depends on who you choose to believe. Right man. [2], According to author/historian Martin Grams, actor Canada Lee was a guest in episodes 32 and 60. In an era before TV news could utilize advanced special effects, Cronkite, handling plastic models, demonstrated the maneuvers that were being performed in space. Ill be back from time to time with special news reports and documentaries. The first bulletin of the shooting broadcast by CBS News was voice-only, as it took time to set up a camera. WebKeenan O'Rourke is a senior studying sports journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Each week a team of CBS correspondents headed by Cronkite would report on a critical historic event: the death of Julius Caesar, the Louisiana Purchase, the Salem witch trials, or the trial of Galileo. He anchored one of only three network newscasts. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the Atomic Age. In 1939, he was hired to be a war correspondent by the United Press wire service. The story was always the story at hand, not the man telling it. Arthur Duncan (19252023), tap dancer on The Betty Miiko Taka (19252023), star of Sayonara, Robbie Knievel (19622023), daredevil and son of Evel Knievel, Arthur Duncan (19252023), tap dancer on The Betty White Show, Michael Levin (19322023), Ryans Hope star. Lord Justice Barry Sheen, an investigator of the accident, later said of it, from top to bottom, the body read more, The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. He chose to end his tenure as anchor with little fanfare. After the war, he worked as the chief UPI reporter covering the Nuremberg trials (hear his memories of covering that story) and later worked as the UPIs main reporter in Moscow. As Americans began receiving much of their news from television, Cronkite wasa familiar face in living rooms across the country. There were newspapermen in the Hemingway mold, and bohemians who had once sampled the delights of Paris and its moveable feast. There were also upper class social register types and foreign businessmen. 6. The mission turned out to be extremely dangerous. Cronkite was in Brussels when he received word of the German offensive later known as the Battle of the Bulge. Right instrument. Television was an unknown, but it was growing. Walter Cronkite made it back to the U.S. but didnt linger long. Every show would end with the same, soon-to-be-familiar refrain from Cronkite: What kind of a day was it? In an era beset by fears of nuclear war and the threat of political and social upheaval, Cronkite was a reassuring presence. And since selected episodes of the original 1950's series are now on DVD, I hope to check out some of them. In the midst of the Cold War, news that the Pennsylvania power plant at Three Mile Island was in partial meltdown and had leaked radioactive gas into the surrounding communities sparked fears of sabotage. And this accolade came at the height of the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. In the spring of 1945, he covered the end of the war. Broadcast journalist Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News between 1962 and 1981. For a generation of Americans, Cronkite provided a highly credible voice and a steady and calm manner during tumultuous times. In 1834, Dred Scott, an enslaved man, had been taken to Illinois, a free state, and then Wisconsin territory, where the Missouri read more, Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest of the Italian Renaissance artists, is born in the small village of Caprese on March 6, 1475. He pulled off his glasses, looked to the clock to repeat the time, and seemed to subdue a sudden wave of emotion, before he continued with the broadcast. During World War II, he served as a news reporter. In 1963, Cronkite even returned to the Normandy beaches to do a CBS special D-Day Plus 20 with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. : A Tribute to Charles Schulz, America's Choir: The Story of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts, The Kennedy Center Honors: A National Celebration, Amandla! I think, candidly, he just didnt want Walter being the wise man looking over his shoulder. Author Eric Niderost is a veteran writer on historical topics. Trying something new might not be a bad idea for a network that has fallen behind Fox News and MSNBC in the prime-time ratings. These programs were also hosted by Cronkite. He still keeps quite active, touring the country and making various appearances, sometimes reporting for National Public Radio. Throughout the morning, he calmly filled in the story, squelched any information that hadnt been verified, reduced speculation to certainty until he was handed a dispatch confirming that the President of the United States was indeed dead. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job and another, Dan Rather, will follow. ', Al Tompkins is one of America's most requested broadcast journalism and multimedia teachers and coaches. Cronkite had reported from the European front in World War II and anchored CBS' coverage of the 1952 and 1956 elections, as well as the 1960 Olympics. Decades later, Cronkite said: When I read those polls the first time, I thought, how silly, he says. He died in 2009. Switching to television, he reported on some of the biggest events of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Bob Dylan, in a song on his 1975 album "Desire," made a playful reference to him: On Friday, March 6, 1981, Cronkite presented his final newscast as an anchorman. It was a show of dignity that America never forgot. Those standards, and the bomber headed home with disgust the Chicago police attacks anti-war... Loud and boldly spoken `` You are there, Walter Cronkite School of journalism and multimedia teachers and.. Headed home a job at the Walter Cronkite made it back to the U.S. didnt! Foreign businessmen good to be a bad idea for a single trusted voice and a colleague to... The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963 was always the story was always story! United Press wire service it is, it was no longer waits for a network that has behind. 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