RIP, Walter Cronkite
It’s arrogant to think that anyone can tell the story of Walter Cronkite better than his closest friends, who are now the elder statesmen of the rapidly fading era of solid, professional journalism. Cronkite was a pillar of our democracy in a way that may never be replicated. This is more than just sad — it’s a substantive issue for American democracy. Seeing as the news business has been swallowed nearly whole by the entertainment business, one can only hope that the citizen activism that has been made possible via the internet can replace the Cronkritic impact on our collective consciousness.
His story is being told every 15 minutes right now — JFK and MLK assassinations, man on the moon, and Cronkite’s famous “mired in Vietnam” report. But the episode that best exemplified his impact on our world was the brokered peace talks between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin. Leveraging the power of his post as the nation’s — and at that moment, the world’s — editor-in-chief, Cronkite put both Sadat and Begin on the spot on national TV, pointedly asking them what was in the way of peace talks, and catalyzing the magical moment in Middle East relations which resulted in a peace agreement between two of the giants of that volatile region. To be certain, much work had been done via political channels, and it’s silly to oversell the point, but without Cronkite’s critical role, we might well have an even more tense environment in “southwest Asia,” as the US Army calls it these days.
Cronkite was a giant, personifying the absolute best not just in journalism, but in US citizenship. The role of the fourth estate is critical to the American democracy, and Cronkite embodied a level of professionalism and concern that has gone unmatched. May Walter Cronkite rest in peace, and inspire some young person to once again take a unique, principled leadership role in responsible journalism.