I am too young to remember or have watched Cronkite's broadcasts.  Can someone offer a little help and insight?  Was he biased in his reporting, was he to the 60's conservative how we all look at let's just say Keith Overbite?

I'm interested to know more.

Maybe Cronkite benefited from working in a time when Americans simply had more trust in authority.

Authority? That word ignites me. Journalists are not authorities -- about anything. Authority means that you should listen to them. Authority means that you should take their word for it.

A doctor is an authority because some state medical board certified that he's qualified to practice medicine. A lawyer is an authority because the state certifies that he knows the law. A sergeant is an authority because the military's need for order and discipline gave him command over you. In all cases of genuine authority, there is a clear reason why you should follow what the official tells you.

What makes a journalist an authority on anything? Why should you follow what a journalist says?

What infuriates me about the media is that they assume (in fact, demand) that you trust them. They don't earn the trust first. And if they distort their reports, or tell you half the story, or outright lie ... none of that matters to them. They need your trust to make their money, so they simply demand it from you.

That Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin was incredibly revealing. Couric demanded to know which media sources shaped Palin's worldview, and she was incredulous that the media didn't control her opinions. That revealed far more about Couric than about Palin.

I'm old enough to have remembered Cronkite being the anchor at CBS News and passing the torch to that criminal propagandist Dan Rather.  That whole "most trusted man in America" crap was phony, and flattered the man uncritically.  He managed to piss whatever credibility he had left by insisting that Karl Rove had conspired with Osama Bin Laden to have Bin Laden make a tape days before the 2004 Election to swing the Presidency back to Bush.  In the end, he was a very old man who died.  Nothing particularly special or worthy of greater praise than the average person who passed on the same day.

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."  -George Best

I can honestly say that Cronkite was the newscaster whom I first recognized as a liberal.  He was doing a report on Barry Goldwater.  I said to my dad that Cronkite did not like Barry Goldwater.  My dad said to me that I was right because Cronkite was more for Johnson than Goldwater.  I wondered why that was and later found out by asking my American History teacher who introduced me to the idea of liberal thinking. 

"Maybe Cronkite benefited from working in a time when Americans simply had more trust in authority."

Cronkite was fortunate that he didn't have alternative and competing media checking his work.  Would he have earned a reputation for objectivity and trust if bloggers and others were posting information about things Uncle Walter wasn't telling us?

"But it may also be that he earned that trust — that by calling a quagmire what it was, he showed that a false even-handedness that flies in the face of reality is not the same as honesty."

He was one of three network anchors (actually four if you count both Huntley and Brinkley at NMC), and he represented the network wit the best news reputation, thanks in no small part to Edward R. Morrow in the early days of TV.  In fact, ABC News was such a minor player, it was really Cronkite and Huntley/brinkley that most of America was watching.

His demeanor was part unflappable, worldly journalist and part kindly old grandfather.  The public trusted him long before his 1968 Tet Offensive comment, which is why LBJ was so instantly dismayed.  It was Cronkite's comment that revealed his lack of objectivty.

Was he as objective as many will remember him?  I don't believe so.

"Jounalists", like actors, are overrated. They read the news. So? Walter was a college dropout. Jennings was a high school dropout. And when they venture into opinion, we begin to see how limited they are. But they certainly have influence. Cronkite and his pals in the media helped get Americans killed in Vietnam. They demoralized an entire nation. I'll never forgive them for that. Today's "jounalists" are nothing but backyard gossip columnists. They are the personifications of the arrogance of ignorance. They actually believe the crap they shovel. Illogical, immature, pathetic excuses for "professionals". Couric, Matthews, Olbermann, Williams, Lauer, et.al. are uneducated, sophomoric, petty individuals who lack the humility it takes to be objective. I believe Cronkite was not much different, but he was restrained by the different time and culture in which he worked. Unfortunately, the gloves are off today. The spoiled children have been let out of school. Sad.

NEVER,NEVER trust a "liberal"

I'll tell you what Cronkite benefitted from, it was that there were only three TV stations at the time and he was on one of them.  I'm sure that added to his supposed stature as "The Voice of America".  

I'm pretty sure that he would have been an afterword (or swear word) like Olberman et al. had it not been for the fact that he was one of only three faces on the network news.

Since government is coercion, politics is largely the exercise of deception regarding the intended use of coercion - George Orwell