Cronkite, the 'Newspaperman,' Lays Down His Pen

As a child, I remember that my parents simply could not stand Cronkite. At the time I didn't understand why. After all - anytime his name came up on television, he was called "the most trusted man on television". Didn't my parents understand that they should be watching him? Didn't everyone watch him?

Thus the mind of a child is easily swayed by advertising. And no my parents never changed their minds. It took until I was about 12 years old to understand how terribly idiotic the news anchors were. What happened at about that age that suddenly brought the harsh light of reality to shine upon the news nuts?

-- they listened too closely to the hippies

That's all it took. The nightly news nuts would hang on the lips of these college aged blow hards. These were kids who had never had to support themselves a single day of their lives. They hated everything the USA stood for, even though the reason they were able to go to college and have long hair, be dirty and smelly, have big protests, was because they were IN the USA.

Oddly enough, this did NOT inspire confidence on my part with regard to people presenting the news. Anyone who didn't agree with said hippies was firmly placed in the "square" category and derided accordingly.

So, what does old Walt have to say about the news currently?

"We're talking about covering one of the most complicated and important nations of the world ... and it's patently impossible to do an adequate job of covering the major stories of the day, around the world, in 17 minutes," Cronkite recently told Reuters, alluding to the on-air time in any half-hour news telecast.

Apparently poor old Walt is still living back in the 60's. Someone please remind the man that we now have a number of 24 hour news stations. If we go with old Walt's time estimate, this means that the 24 hour news stations have 816 minutes per day or 13.6 hours. Do ya think they might be able to fit in a few things about world affairs in that amount of time? I'm not sure it's enough...

What does old Walt see as the future of internet reporting?

The newsman said he values the Internet as a research tool, but he finds some stories published on the Web -- scandals especially -- play too fast and loose with the facts.

"I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet. I expect that to develop in the fairly near future," he said.

I have only this to say...

Bush - AWOL
Kerry - Cambodia

Have a nice retirement Walt... Don't let the pen poke you in the backside on the way out!

Posted by: Teresa in Television at 03:24 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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