Walter Cronkite

Robert Feder: “Each year just before his birthday on Nov. 4, I would send Walter Cronkite a tie. And each year on that day, the anchorman of The CBS Evening News would wear the tie on the air before his audience of millions. Here is the piece I wrote about Cronkite for the Chicago Sun-Times when he died on July 17, 2009.

Recently Yahoo ran an article titled “Watch Walter Cronkite Tour a 21st-Century Home in 1967” that included three embedded videos of “the most trusted man in America” demonstrating what life would likely be in our homes of the future. It’s interesting viewing, to be sure. In broad strokes, you might recognize themes that we’ve met in Cronkite’s future. But in this 1960’s vision of the future, their imagination was limited. The real future is much more interesting.

Junkets. A liberal bias. And unconscionable shading of a major story. A new biography reveals how much has changed in America’s news culture.