Walter Cronkite, The Most Trusted Man In America

Walter Cronkite passed away yesterday at the age of 92. As a student of American History I saw clips of many of his news clips from the sixties. As a former News Director of CJSW 90.9 FM, I was marvelled at his signature sign-off - the ability to state, and believe clearly "That's the way it was on (whatever date it was)." As a reporter I never had that sense of certainty. Too much Foucault and Derrida, perhaps, but also the sixties themselves ended the notions of consensus that Cronkite too for granted. I don't know how many people took him at face value by the 1980s, even though he was still referred to by many as "The Most Trusted Man In America".

Even if he seemed a kindly grandfather, and his personal politics often questioned the government, his was, by then, the voice of the establishment. That otherside of the consensus, the side that refused to believe him when he said "That's the way it was", after Nixon they just stopped watching and reading the news. The Daily Wenzel has article on Obama healing the wounds of the 1960s, and I still maintain, as we did then, that 1968 was a year of great schism in the United States and a significant proportion of American society dropped out. From my perspective, 1968 was also the last year that any singular perspective could be uttered as a certainty, and perhaps like many, when I think of the voice of certainty, I still think of Walter Cronkite.