Walter Cronkite Was a Journalist

Image by Nevada Tumbleweed via Flickr

In a world dominated by pretty faces and bleached blond hair-dos and talking head news readers; in a time  of sensational headlines and lowest-common denominator broadcasting, 24 hour news cycles, the World Wide Web and social networking, it's easy to forget that back in the day we got our news once a day at 6:30 or 7:00 and the person we trusted the most to read that news was one Walter Cronkite.

He was the most trusted man America in the 1960s and 70s, and we gathered around our TV sets each night to listen to the news (and it was news) from the man himself. He was 92 years old and lived a long life, but I was saddened this evening when I heard the news of his passing because with him we lost one of the last legendary news men of the heyday of CBS News, and a man who was a real reporter and a journalist.

Just remember folks, when you watch (as Don Henley once wrote) that bubble headed bleached blond who comes on at five and tells you of a plane crash with a gleam in her eye--that once upon a time, there was a man who was a genuine journalist, who read the news each night, and people respected him and the institution, and it was actually well researched, fair and balanced (without having to trumpet that fact). Rest in peace, Walter Cronkite, you will be missed.