I'm not saying there was a reason to trust Walter Cronkite -- like most of the rest of the MSM, he is and always was a biased liberal. But he reportedly held that title while he was anchoring the CBS Evening News, at least after 1974, according to
Ask Mr. Pop History:
From Alaine T - I've heard for so long, that Walter Cronkite was/is the most trusted man in America. When did this begin?
Mr. Pop History - We began hearing Walter Cronkite and "the most trusted man" in 1974, just before Richard M. Nixon resigned from office in August. It had to do with his Watergate reporting on the CBS evening news. More important, Walter Cronkite kept the trust of Americans, well after he left the CBS Evening news anchor desk. From July of 1974:
"Walter Cronkite of CBS was rated the most trusted and objective newscaster on television in a national public opinion survey. NBC's John Chancellor rated second in the Phillips-Sindlinger Survey and ABC's Howard K. Smith was third.
A year ago, Smith was first, Chancellor second, Harry Reasoner of ABC third and Cronkite fourth."Some more trivia about Walter Cronkite:
Back in the late 1960s, his daughter ran away and joined up with the Tory Hill Weavers, a far leftist commune in the wilds of Maine. The weavers did not have a good reputation in town, not because of their drug use, but rather for the contempt they held for the townspeople. Like most leftists, they thought of themselves as intellectually superior to the towns folk. Actually the town had quite a number of college graduates in engineering, math, physics, and many other fields. The weavers never figured that out.
Cronkite came to town at least once and I think he succeeded in getting his daughter away. The commune collapsed after a few years.
None of this was ever reported in any paper that I am aware of. In any case, one town in Maine knew that Walter Cronkite was an extreme liberal as early as the late 1960s.