George Rebane

Walter Cronkite defined the television journalism of my youth.  All this after he educated me with the ‘You Are There’ series that was “filled with the events that alter and illuminate our times.”  I was maximally impressed by Uncle Walter, he was reliability, goodness, and truth embodied.

And then came the dark days of Vietnam in the late sixties when our six o’clock news was full of the combat reels from the jungles that had been flown across the Pacific in the last 24 hours.  We saw the war as it was seen through the sweaty lens of combat cameramen walking through the jungle behind the infantryman when the Vietcong opened up.  And again, Walter Cronkite knit the whole picture together for us, and put it into a context that related it to the scenes of rioting on college campuses and debates in Congress.

But then we witnessed the hiccup in the man’s career.  He changed from pro-war to anti-war and decided that Vietnam was militarily unwinnable.  This altered his reportage, and we began to get a very dower picture of that far-off conflict to stop the communist dominoes.  I don’t know how much it affected his day to day reporting, but he definitely hit the nadir of journalism during the infamous Tet Offensive that North Vietnam launched in January of 1968.  The countrywide offensive was a military disaster for the communists who were beaten back with overwhelming casualties on all fronts.

Walter Cronkite and the mainstream media didn’t see it that way.  They kept listening to Secretary of Defense MacNamara and General Westmoreland giving positive assessments of our gains.  These assessments made them believe that the communists could never muster such an attack.  And when it came, we, of course, had to be the loser because we also took extraordinary casualties in beating them back.  But the big picture was settled in American living rooms with the evening news.  Walter Cronkite now pronounced the war unwinnable, and unwinnable it became.  Hearing this, President Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.”

Cronkite never apologized when the truth of the matter was made clear to him and anyone else who would listen.  We were then beyond listening (sorta like being beyond debate on climate change today).  I was surprised and dismayed to hear him state numerous times that he was most proud of the effect his editorializing had on our ‘cut and negotiate’ policy that ended the Vietnam War, and caused the death of at least another million Vietnamese in communist re-education camps.  He had taken lead of the liberal mainstream media.

His regular broadcast days ended in 1981 with Reagan’s first year in office.  The country saw him as a retired demi-god of the new information age.  He lent his sonorous voice to numerous TV specials on history and technology.  But it was definitely a sunset time for him, because he also started doing commercial gigs which no longer reached large audiences.

In the late eighties I was intensely involved in the interactive multimedia industry and consulted for some international heavyweights.  It was this time when Phillips, Sony, and Microsoft were battling it out for top spots in laser disc and cable (interactive TV) delivery.  I was one of 300 top Pooh-Bahs of the industry invited by Larry Ellison for his big show and tell of Oracle’s new multimedia server technology.  The air-conditioned tents were laid out in the vast parking lots of CBS Television City in Hollywood (actually West LA), food and drink were served in copious quantities as we hobnobbed in preparation for the big presentation.

Suddenly I saw Walter Cronkite being ‘handled’ through the crowd on his way to the auditorium.  We all followed and sat in hushed tones as Ellison outdid the best circus pitchmen you ever saw.  And then, at the apex of his presentation, he trots out Uncle Walter.  What followed was to me a sad episode starring America’s former voice of ground truth.  Oracle had scripted Cronkite to ask a trite series of questions which allowed Ellison to pirouette like a prima ballerina through technical drivel that was obviously beyond the ken of Cronkite.  And Cronkite’s script required of him awe filled responses which he delivered in the most awkward and self-conscious manner.  He was dancing for his supper as we in the audience looked at each other in discomfort.

Besides serving as the regular New Year’s host with the Vienna Philharmonic on PBS, one of his remaining great moments had to be when he was one of only two invited civilian guests on the shakedown cruise of the USS Constitution (‘Old Ironsides’) after its decade long refitting before resuming its berth as a living history museum in Boston harbor.  Walter was there along with Patrick O’Brian, the world famous author of the Aubrey-Maturin novels (highly recommended) chronicling the great age of sail during the Napoleonic wars.

When all is said and done, Walter Cronkite did indeed bring us the events which continue to alter and illuminate our times.  Rest in Peace.