Bjcorbin's Blog

Last week saw the passing of yet another cultural icon in America, former news anchorman Walter Cronkite.  While that may not register as high on the pop culture Richter scale as some other recent deaths, I can’t help but feel that, at least in a symbolic way, it may have been even more significant.  There was a time, in the now distant past, when most of America looked to Walter Cronkite for their daily news; earning him the title of “The Most Trusted Man in America”.  That almost sounds funny to our post-millennial sensibilities; after all, why should we need to trust the guy who’s reading the teleprompter (or in Walter’s heyday, the news copy).  But the world was a very different place in the era that Cronkite established his legacy; America was not the undisputed world power that it is today; and the general public was far more aware of the subversive ideologies (e.g. communism) that were competing for world domination.  In that day, one need only look to what was then the “Soviet Union” to see a news media that only reported the things that supported their political agenda and that was used as a tool to control the people.  Thus it was important for American’s to know that they were receiving a clear and unbiased reporting of the details surrounding any particular event.  To succeed in such an era it was essential that a journalist convey some sense of neutrality in their reporting and this was a key to Cronkite’s appeal.  It wasn’t so much who he was as a human being, after all we didn’t really know the man; it was more what he represented to a troubled American psyche.  It’s not so much that he told us the truth; it’s more that we believed he was telling us the truth.  He may not have really been as wise and unflappable as he seemed, but we were convinced that he was and collectively we found that reassuring.

Of course, history has moved on; the cold-war ended, America rose to the top of the world food chain and we’ve changed the way we think these days.  People of my generation grew up with the perception that we are the most powerful country in the world and that there is very little that poses a legitimate threat to our way of life.  We’ve become far less concerned about the possibility of a subversive ideology infiltrating our culture and much more concerned about our right to have a subversive ideology if we want one.  Our news media has definitely changed with the times as well.  Gone is the need to appear to be neutral or even unbiased.  We now have whole networks devoted to reporting the news with their own particular slant and we like to watch the one’s that slant in the same direction that we do.  It may not be the truth, but somehow we find it reassuring to hear things that support our particular point of view.  As I ponder these changes, I wonder at whether Walter Cronkite would have had much of a career in today’s media and I find myself even more sorry to see him go.