New Biography of CBS Newsman Walter Cronkite Dents His Halo

The Daily Beast ^ | 5/21/12 | Howard Kurtz

[Obadiah]

In the early 1970s, the most trusted man in America did a very untrustworthy thing. Unbeknownst to the millions who tuned in religiously to the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite cut a deal with Pan Am to fly his family to vacation spots around the world. Together with a handful of friends, they roamed from the South Pacific to Haiti, with Cronkite snorkeling, swimming, and drinking, thanks to a friend at the airline. According to Douglas Brinkley’s sweeping and masterful biography Cronkite, the news division president, Dick Salant, was upset at what he deemed a blatant conflict of interest, but took no action against his star anchor. This was not the Cronkite I grew up admiring from the time I watched his image flickering on a small black-and-white set, the voice of authority in an age when we still revered, without a trace of cynicism, those who spoon-fed us the news.

[Obadiah]

Old, Uncle Walter, once ostensible the most trusted man in America. No we know he was really the father of Journ-O-Lists.

[dead]

Cronkite was patient zero for the bias virus infecting the journalistic body politic.

[JaguarXKE]

Where is he buried? I’d like to go water the flowers on his grave!

[EyeGuy]

For knowledgeable patriots here on FR, the hugely overrated Commie’s reputation long ago, was not dented but, due just alone to his outright lies concerning the unequivocal American victory in the Tet Offensive, an outright full vehicular total.

[forgotten man]

Saint Walter. /s

[Ann Archy]

He was a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT.......they ALL think they are ABOVE everyone else!!

Walter has BLOOD on his hands for what he did about Viet Nam......lots and lots of YOUNG BLOOD.....hope he did his penance.

[Maceman]

Here is Cronkite's appallingly outrageous speech to the Unite Nations, wherein he calls for the U.S. to give up its sovereignty.

Here's an excerpt from that speech:

"It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.

To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.

But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.

The circumstances were vastly different, obviously. While the colonies differed on many questions, at least the people of the colonies were of the same Anglo-Saxon stock. Yet just because the task appears forbiddingly hard, we should not shirk it.

We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity.

[kcvl]

" I came to realize that the man who once dominated television journalism was more complicated—and occasionally more unethical—than the legend that surrounds him. Had Cronkite engaged in some of the same questionable conduct today—he secretly bugged a committee room at the 1952 GOP convention—he would have been bashed by the blogs, pilloried by the pundits, and quite possibly ousted by his employer. That he endured and prospered, essentially unscathed, until his death in 2009 reminded me of how impervious the monopoly media were in those days, largely shielded from the scrutiny they inflicted on everyone else. "

[ReformationFan]

“Uncle Waltie” was a commie.

[NormsRevenge]

“Uncle Waltie” was a commie.

—

and.. That’s the way it is..

[kcvl]

" after Cronkite had belatedly turned against LBJ’s Vietnam War, he met privately with Robert Kennedy. “You must announce your intention to run against Johnson, to show people there will be a way out of this terrible war,” he said in Kennedy’s Senate office. Soon afterward, Cronkite got an exclusive interview in which Kennedy left the door open for a possible run—the very candidacy that the anchor had urged him to undertake. (Kennedy announced three days later.)"

[Lexington Green]

“If you believe that we ‘lost’ the Vietnam War, as opposed to simply canceling it like a TV series that has dropped in the ratings, then you should know we did not lose it to Ho Chi Minh. We lost it to Walter Cronkite.” — Jim Morris

[Vigilanteman]

Cronkite will always be an asshat to me for his relentless cheer leading for the enemy. A lot of good, decent American boys of my generation were unnecessarily forced to give their lives in Viet Nam because Cronkite kept giving the enemy encouragement to push onward when they were prepared to give up. May he rot in hell and keep Jane Fonda warm when her time comes to join him.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Dougie Brinkley was the “historian” that wrote hagiography for J ‘effin Kerry. If Brinkley is saying these things about the old commie then chances are it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

[kcvl]

"I thought that some day the roof was going to fall in ... I don’t know why to this day I got away with it,” Cronkite is quoted as saying years later. But he often gave himself deniability with linguistic hedging. Cronkite once told me his liberalism “affected how I looked at the world” but not his reporting.

[Nextrush]

Cronkite was not as far to the left as Barack Obama, but he openly advocated one world government.

Cronkite acknowledged Communism was not a good thing in his own biography, but he figured some trade and interaction with the western nations would help fix up the shortages and misery it caused.

Cronkite worked in Moscow as a United Press reporter from 1946 to 1948. Cronkite said his reports were censored but the UP never told its readers about it.

I do admire Cronkite for being a workhorse who used his work ethic to get far in the news business.

The airline deal doesn’t surprise me. Cronkite worked for an airline in the 1930’s and had friends in the business.

[traditional1]

"at least the people of the colonies were of the same Anglo-Saxon stock"

And...if we had stayed that way, we would have a real America today, without the pandering, white-guilt, "feelings" crowd we have today, and we would not be in Debt up to our eyeballs from handing out Taxpayer earnings to non-blievers, non-productive, and the irresponsible.

[Chgogal]

First words that enter my mind when I hear the name Walter Cronkite - disgusting, nauseating, traitor, liar, pestilence, plague.

[kcvl]

On the day that CBS chairman Les Moonves fired several people over Rather’s botched story on George W. Bush and the National Guard—having already deposed Rather as anchor—Cronkite barged into Moonves’s office and congratulated him on doing the right thing. Moonves was able to sleep that night, he recalled, because “Walter said it was OK.”

[skinkinthegrass]

Uncle Walter = Uncle Joe Stalin
'ol Walter "evolved" into a communist..he was always a 'rat.