It was only a few weeks ago we broke hiatus to help make sure the word was out....
And now comes news that we have indeed lost him. It's assuredly a blessing in the end for "Uncle Walter" and his family, but what a loss and a time of reflection for all of us.
You will of course pardon this intrusion into Trekland, for Walter Cronkite was a resident, too—and we noted before.
What sad, ironic timing with the Apollo 11 anniversary. Weeknights growing up, we watched NBC and Huntley-Brinkley, my maternal grandparents watched Walterand CBS--but for the space shots, where you have Frank Reynolds on ABC and Frank McGee on NBC as the usual anchors, we surfed but usually stayed with CBS. (That's Cronkite above during Scott Carpenter's Mercury shot.)
Oh, how we need old-fashioned, unmoney'ed media and his kind of straight-arrow reporting now. All those colleagues rushing to praise him would do well to stand back and remember not just the sound bite moments such as Apollo and JFK's murder, but the really tough times he delivered not just the usual news but the extremely—and thus powerful—on-air rare editorial, like the post-Tet Offensive summation. Or connecting the dots of Watergate in prime time when no "mainstream media" would touch yet the story out side of the lowly Washington Post.
Say something, Wally, I'm speechless.
And now, back to our regular Trekland programming ...
1 comment:
In Canada, we still have something of that in the CBC. Crown corporation that it is, it's vulnerable. Not to becoming a propaganda arm of the government of the day, but to budgetary starvation in spite of the Canada Broadcasting Act's obligations.
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