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WALTER CRONKITE PROMOTES DEMOCRATIC FEDERAL WORLD GOVERNMENT (Received W.F.A.'s Norman Cousins Global Governance Award on 19 October 1999} I am greatly honored to receive this award for two reasons: first, I believe as Norman Cousins did that the first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world; second, I feel sentimental about this award because half a century ago Norman offered me a job as spokesman and Washington lobbyist for the World Federalist organization, which was then in its infancy. I...

President Obama has been invited to eulogize Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS News anchorman, at a memorial service in Manhattan next month, network sources said. Former President Bill Clinton has accepted an invitation to speak at the service, to be held at Lincoln Center at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 9. Also speaking at the service will be Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News"; Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports; and Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp.'s president and chief executive officer. Performances are scheduled by Jimmy Buffett and Mickey Hart, who was a Grateful Dead...

NEW YORK, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and ex-astronaut Buzz Aldrin are to attend a memorial service for Walter Cronkite, officials said. Cronkite died July 17. He was 92. His funeral was July 24 in New York. The New York Post said the luminaries are scheduled to speak at the Sept. 9 event at Manhattan's Lincoln Center. Also reportedly on the guest list are television personality Nick Clooney, CBS executives and newspeople Les Moonves, Sean McManus and Bob Schieffer, veteran broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw and media mogul Howard Stringer. The Post said Wynton...

Walter Cronkite created Fox News. Cronkite's fundamental role as a "cultural artist" in creating Fox. one of the most notable moments of Cronkite's liberalism being unmasked in a highly visible fashion was his now famous series on Vietnam. But by this time conservative Americans were already well awake to the realization that this powerful new institution of television was being used in ways both subtle and not, to convey the message that there was no more enlightened or superior world view than modern American liberalism. Broadcast by broadcast it was increasingly apparent that those who disagreed or who challenged the...

Walter Cronkite's family has released details on his funeral service tomorrow at 2pmET at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan. The service will be a traditional burial service from the Book of Common Prayer with the Rev. William McD. Tully presiding. Music will be performed by St. Bartholomew's Choir. The music was chosen in cooperation with the family and will include a jazz band's rendition of "When The Saints Go Marching In" during the final procession. Speakers will include Andy Rooney, Sanford Socolow, Mike Ashford and Bill Harbach followed by a final tribute from son Chip Cronkite. St. Bartholomew's is the...

Journalism: After the eulogies, the fact remains that "the most trusted man in America" betrayed that trust. He helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam and tried hard to do the same in Iraq.President Obama on Friday praised Walter Cronkite as a journalistic icon, calling the CBS anchor the "voice of certainty in an uncertain world." More to the point, he was the father of advocacy journalism, the patron saint of media bias. He went from reporting news to recreating it in his own image. Far from the image of the patriotic war correspondent, Cronkite was a...

Katie Couric offered some comic relief on this morning's Early Show, preaching the importance of objectivity in reporting. As evidence of her impartiality, the CBS Evening News anchor cited the fact that, as did Cronkite, she has gotten "grief from both sides of the aisle." Now I suppose some of the more radical elements of the Red Army Faction might have found something to quibble with in Couric's coverage over the years. But how can the woman who has come to epitomize MSM liberal bias suggest with a straight face that criticism has come in comparable degree from the left...

On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite delivered his verdict on the (ongoing) war in Vietnam. The most trusted man in America pronounced that it was "...more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam War is to end in a stalemate." Stalemate.... The Tet Offensive, which battle prompted Cronkite's televised towel throwing, was a decisive American victory -- of the more than 80,000 Communist troops who poured south on the Vietnamese New Year, American and allied South Vietnamese soldiers would kill or capture more than 58,000, while suffering a combined, and comparatively light, 9,000 casualties. Tet was in fact a disaster for the...

In any case, it was night after night of one hour lectures until it became apparent (to certain viewers) this “news special” was little more than what we would now term an “infomercial” for Lyndon Johnson’s Urban Renewal Program, a scheme to redistribute massive amounts of tax dollars to rebuild “blighted inner city neighborhoods” accompanied by the complete destruction of the social and economic fabric of existing communities. Variants of this program still exist around the country today, with the same outcome. But in the 1960’s it was something new and untried.

Of course it's sad when anyone dies, despite the fact that it's an inevitability, but when a media type dies, notice how their world (thus ours) comes to a stop? In 2005 Peter Jennings died. In 2006 ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, as was CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier. In 2008, Tim Russert passed. In almost all of these cases, all other equally important stories were promptly buried by fellow journalist retrospectives and video tributes. Rival networks all offered their sympathies and comments because we're talking about one of them.

WASHINGTON – Walter Cronkite is dead at 92 – but most Americans, many of whom considered him "the most trusted man" in the country during his reign as CBS News anchor – still don't know what motivated him and how he secured such an influential and lofty position. He was like a grandfatherly institution in the early days of TV. People believed him. Uncle Walter wouldn't lie, America believed. Thus, when he gave his opinions, they had impact. One example was his report on the Tet offensive in Vietnam, which is credited with swinging the tide of opinion against the...

Time: Cronkite, the 'Patron Saint of Objectivity' -- Well, Actually, Thankfully, No By Tim Graham (Bio | Archive) July 18, 2009 - 09:02 ET     Most Americans who were born before 1970 remember Walter Cronkite as a towering figure of TV news. I remember being riveted to the set during his final newscast in 1981. But one grand claim about Cronkite should not stand: that he was "TV’s patron saint of objectivity," as Time TV writer Jim Poniewozik wrote in a tribute. Even Poniewozik can’t stick with that claim. He went on to honor Cronkite for trusting his...

(snip) "I'm saddened to learn of the passing of Walter Cronkite, one of the most influential newsmen of our time," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "I will never forget our memorable visit together to Hanoi on the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon."(snip)

CBS Reports with Walter Cronkite ; UFO Friend. Foe or Fantasy,May 10, 1966.

Every day of my working life, I knew that Walter Cronkite was looking over my shoulder. Literally it was true, since I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a giant picture or two of him hanging on the walls of my office or propped up on my desk, peering down at me through those wise, sympathetic eyes and bushy eyebrows.

NEW YORK – Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the networks' golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called "the most trusted man in America," has died. He was 92. CBS vice president Linda Mason says Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. Friday with his family by his side at his home in New York after a long illness. He was the face of the "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, when stories ranged from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to racial and...

Broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite has died at age 92, The New York Times reports.

...."Most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not, by my definition, they can hardly be good newspapermen" W. Cronkite "You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation" -Plato Sarah Palin on Twitter

Report: News Legend Walter Cronkite Gravely Ill By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY Updated 9:00 PM EDT, Thu, Jun 18, 2009 American journalism legend, Walter Cronkite, is nearing death and CBS News has been scrambling to update the 92-year-old's obituary, Mediabistro.com reported Thursday. The former anchor of "CBS Evening News" is gravely ill, according to TVNewser, a news blog on Mediabistro.com that cited several sources at CBS News. The Los Angeles Times reported that rumors surrounding Cronkite's health began swirling when CBS began calling other top TV anchors for quotes and comments on Cronkite's career. CBS News declined to comment on Cronkite's condition....

Walter Cronkite’s remarks at the end of his February 27, 1968 evening news broadcast, four decades ago today, were a watershed in the history of the MSM’s credibility.   Unless you’re at least 55 years old, you probably don’t remember that CBS broadcast 40 years ago.  The most trusted man in America had recently returned from Vietnam where he hosted a documentary on the VC/NVA TET (New Year) offensive that began January 31, 1968.  Back in NYC, he closed his program that night by introducing “an analysis that must be speculative, personal, [and] subjective.”  Among his comments were these: Who won...