t r u t h o u t | Walter Cronkite Dies

Friday 17 July 2009 by: Greg Kandra   "Most trusted man in America" passes away in New York at 92. Walter Cronkite, who personified television journalism for more than a generation as anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News," has died Friday night in New York. He was 92. Known for his steady and straightforward delivery, his trim moustache, and his iconic sign-off line - "That's the way it is" - Cronkite dominated the television news industry during one of the most volatile periods of American history. He broke the news of the Kennedy assassination, reported extensively on Vietnam and Civil Rights and Watergate, and seemed to be the very embodiment of TV journalism. "Cronkite came to be the sort of personification of his era," veteran PBS Correspondent Robert McNeil once said. "He became kind of the media figure of his time. Very few people in history, except maybe political and military leaders, are the embodiment of their time, and Cronkite seemed to be." At one time, his audience was so large, and his image so credible, that a 1972 poll determined he was "the most trusted man in America" - surpassing even the president, vice president, members of Congress and all other journalists. In a time of turmoil and mistrust, after Vietnam and Watergate, the title was a rare feat - and the label stuck. It was a remarkable achievement for a man whose beginnings were anything but remarkable. Walter Leland Cronkite was born in St. Joseph, Missouri on November 4, 1916, the only child of a dentist father and homemaker mother. When he was still young, his family moved to Texas. One day, he read an article in "Boys Life" magazine about the adventures of reporters working around the world - and young Cronkite was hooked. He began working on his high school newspaper and yearbook and, in 1933, he entered the University of Texas at Austin to study political science, economics and journalism. He never graduated. He took a p...