These articles will help people appreciate how admirable Walter Cronkite was and what sad specimens have taken over network television: Glenn Greenwald on Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did and NBC's Gregory to Sanford's Office: "Meet The Press Allows You To Frame The Conversation As You Really Want"

Then there was Stephen Colbert's brutally honest castigation of the White House Press Corps' role of stenographers at their annual dinner during the Bush era.

A cause for concern is how this dinner in 2004 exposed the moral corruption of the Washington establishment (press and power players) when George W. Bush made fun of not finding the mythical WMDs that helped pave the way for the criminal war on Iraq and all guests - except for David Corn and, perhaps, one or two others - found Bush's skit to be very funny.

Flashback: Cronkite on the lead-up to the Iraq war.

He was the TV Newsman. Too bad that the Net works decided on blow dried New readers instead. From his Program you are there threw the sad days of the JFK murder to the soaring hights of the Space program. Too bad he never got his dream of going into Space Space. Think of the reporting we could have heard.

thank you.

Goodbye Walter, the greatest journalist of the past 100 years.

Foods Lower Blood Glucose Levels

Cronkite was a progressive political activist in his retirement. He raised money for World Federalist Association (now Citizens for Global Solutions), lobbied hard to amend McCain-Feingold to require free time for candidates as nearly all other countries do, and was an early cric of President Bush's Iraq war.

I didn't think he looked quite as noble when he joined the Kennedys and others on Cape Cod in opposing an offshore wind farm, but, oh well, no one is perfect.

I'm not aware of Cronkite being criticized for being part of the "liberal media" as his successor; Dan Rather was, so Cronkite must have done a good job of separating his personal views from his broadcast. A definite exception was his ultimate opposition to the Vietnam War, but he made it clear up front that he was editorializing based on his extensive coverage of the war.

Anchors and journalists can sometimes help make news, and one of Cronkite's most notable interviews hasn't been mentioned in the obits, at least not that I have seen. At the 1980 GOP convention, there were intensive behind the scene efforts by Gerald Ford admirers to have Ronald Reagan pick him as his running mate. As the movement picked up steam, it became public and a huge media story. Ford was interviewed by Cronkite and used a poor choice of words in Reagan’s view, "co-presidency." It was that interview as much as anything that moved Reagan to pick George Bush 41 instead of Ford for VP.

Grant is correct. Walter Cronkite WAS more than just a news anchor. I’m surprised that Carla’s piece does not pay tribute to Cronkite’s most “progressive” passion – the creation of a global world order.

In a 1999 ceremony at the UN, the World Federalist Association awarded Cronkite the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award. As the presenter put it, “World government is the structure necessary for global justice. You, sir, have been a lifelong advocate of this principle.”

In his acceptance speech, Cronkite said the following:

"It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen. " "We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity," he warns. "Time will not wait. Democracy, civilization itself, is at stake. Within the next few years, we must change the basic structure of our global community the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic U.N. federation."

Huh?? 'Yield up some of our sovereignty,' Mr Cronkite??? Silly me…and here all this time I thought the American colonies fought for INDEPENDENCE from foreign domination and allegiance.

Great man, great newscaster. You are correct, Carla...we will not see his like again.

Farewell, "Uncle" Walter.

Just to clarify, I admire Cronkite for his activism and views and wanted to mention those in honor of him. I think it was a proud part of his life. I don't share DJ's views, and, in fact I have donated to World Federalis Assoc., perhaps because of a fundraising letter from Cronkite. Believe it or not, even Ronald Reagan was a founding member of WFA back in the day.

Yes, Cronkite was absolutely right about Vietnam, and was right to state his views up front after careful deliberation, and I think most people accepted his views and that helped turn the tide against the war, I contrasted that to Dan Rather, who got in trouble at times for revealing a bias while trying to hide it. Cronkite himself was ultimately critical of Rather because of that.

Just to clarify, I admire Cronkite for his activism and views and wanted to mention those in honor of him. I think it was a proud part of his life. I don't share DJ's views, and, in fact I have donated to World Federalis Assoc., perhaps because of a fundraising letter from Cronkite. Believe it or not, even Ronald Reagan was a founding member of WFA back in the day.

Yes, Cronkite was absolutely right about Vietnam, and was right to state his views up front after careful deliberation, and I think most people accepted his views and that helped turn the tide against the war, I contrasted that to Dan Rather, who got in trouble at times for revealing a bias while trying to hide it. Cronkite himself was ultimately critical of Rather because of that.

Let's split some hairs as regards the point of view Walter Cronkite took as regards SE Asia:

http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change%20--Cronkite.html

This is a transcrpit of Walter Cronkite's broadcast, which he made after having visited Vietnam in 1966. The gist is that the war(s) (not sure he knew what was going on in Laos, beginning in 1964) are unnwinnable, and he ends with this: "...negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could."

So, I give Mr. Cronkite a great deal of credit for being an early (1966) major public voice that was giving a the American audience a dose of truth as regards the prospect for "victory".

On the other hand, of course the U.S. lost all honor as far back as 1946, when the U.S. merchant marine was ordered to ferry French troops back into Vietnam. And lost more honor in funding the French war/occupation and offering nuclear weapons in defense of Dien Ben Phu. And lost all credibility for claiming to defend democracy by disallowing the terms of the 1954 Geneva agreement to be carried out, which called for a reunification referendum to happen in 1956 (it was known that Ho Chi Minh's slate would win in a landslide).

Actually, I didn't take this back far enough: the U.S. had its honor comprised as regards Vietnam beginning at Versailles in 1919, when Woodrow Wilson would not take the question of Vietnamese self-determination seriously (despite Wilson's overt rhetoric in defense of national self-determination). Ho Chi Minh had borrowed a suit to meet Wilson at Versailles.

So, sure Cronkite should be respected for trying to shorten a catastrophe, but the truth about how evil the U.S. was as regards SE Asia did not make it into his broadcasts.

Grant: ’Believe it or not, even Ronald Reagan was a founding member of WFA back in the day.’

Reagan the young Democrat, maybe. Reagan the cold warrior and proponent of SDI?...Not. Here is what Walter Cronkite had to say in 1989 about SDI (precursor to the missile defense system Obama recently sent to protect his home state of Hawaii): “We know that Star Wars means uncontrollable escalation of the arms race.”

Furthermore, Reagan opposed the Law of the Sea Treaty, a key goal of the WFA.

Kevin: ‘What great statesmen like Thomas Jefferson advocated was very much the creation of a new world order out of the then-existing chaos. It absolutely was the 18th Century version of what Mr. Cronkite advocated.’

(And this is for Chris as well). In separate letters to James Madison and Abigail Adams, Jefferson wrote the following: “A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical…It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all."

Jefferson’s ideas are the antithesis of that of the WFA. His words embody the preservation of sovereignty and individual rights through the restraint of government, unlike Cronkite’s perverse analogy that promotes 'yielding' sovereignty in the name of ever more and greater government.

<h2>Hey, I remember when you told that story in our journalism class in high school. I actually clicked into this article just to see if you would tell that story to the masses.</h2>