Cronkite

by Douglas Brinkley

  208 “Murrow came and sat”: Ibid.

  209 “Who’s supposed to do what?”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 140.

  210 “the pre-eminence of CBS in news”: Jack Gould, “TV’s New Convention Look,” New York Times, July 17, 1960.

  210 admitted in retrospect that it had been “a terrible idea”: Hewitt, Fifty Years, p. 70.

  210 CBS lost viewers to ABC: “The Battle of TV News,” Newsweek, September 21, 1963.

  210 “Cronkite was not blamed at all”: David Schoenbrun, On and Off the Air: An Informal History of CBS News (New York: Dutton Adult, 1989), p. 128.

  211 “Dr. Stanton courageously stood up”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 186.

  211 “Walter Cronkite’s a Republican, isn’t he”: Halberstam, The Powers That Be, p. 414.

  211 Presidential Countdown’s first telecast: Brooks and Marsh, The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, pp. 1100–1101.

  211 “I came up with the idea”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 195.

  214 Cronkite threw unexpected questions at Nixon: John P. Shanley, “TV: A Talk with Nixon,” New York Times, September 13, 1980.

  214 The house had been a gift from Kennedy: Pauline Frommer and James Yenckel, Pauline Frommer’s Washington, Part 3 (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2007), p. 201.

  214 “When it was over, we thanked him: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 197.

  215 “I’ve got to talk to him”: Ibid., p. 195.

  215 They both saw “a fire in Walter’s eyes”: Author interview with Ted Sorensen, May 14, 2010.

  217 “CBS is not the Ministry of Justice”: Schoenbrun, On and Off the Air, p. 129.

  218 CBS radio was in a position to start fresh: White, News on the Air, pp. 22–23.

  219 And it was Cronkite, not Murrow, who was chosen as one of four reporters: Sidney Kraus, Great Debates: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 114.

  219 “The networks had insisted that the interrogators”: Sig Mickelson, The Electric Mirror, p. 211.

  220 CBS News spent a fortune taking out display ads: “Display Ad 88,” Washington Post, September 12, 1960, and “Display Ad 65,” Washington Post, November 4, 1960.

  220 the show pro-Nixon: Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

  Fifteen: New Space Frontier on CBS

  222 “Our guys,” Cronkite recalled, “were pulling cables”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 200.

  222 But all the CBSers were grumpy because they’d been outplayed by NBC News: Val Adams, “News of TV and Radio—The Inauguration,” New York Times, January 15, 1961.

  222 “I’ve been watching you and I have a big job”: Author interview with Robert Wussler.

  222 Are we sure JFK will be the youngest president?: Thurston Clarke, Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 181.

  222 Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1936, Wussler: Who’s Who in America (New Providence, NJ: Marquis, 1999), p. 5395.

  223 Wussler started helping Douglas Edwards: Gates, Air Time, pp. 329–330.

  223 He ran the CBS News special events unit: Hogan, “Televising the Space Age.”

  223 “Men are going to fly in space”: Ibid., pp. 248–49.

  224 Cronkite himself had claimed that during the Second World War: “Cronkite Believes He Saw V-2 Rocket,” UP, December 2, 1944.

  224 The Cronkite-Wussler creative collaboration: Russo, “CBS and the American Political Experience,” pp. 305–13.

  224 “It was a little bit like being along for Columbus”: Robert Wussler interview with Alfred Robert Hogan, March 13, 2003 (transcript), Hogan Archive, Washington, DC.

  226 Frank Stanton, working behind the scenes, had convinced the Kennedy gang: Sandy Socolow to Douglas Brinkley, October 20, 2011.

  226 there would be a “prime-time examination” of where NASA (the U.S.) stood: Author interview with Sandy Socolow, July 11, 2011.

  227 Cronkite and Marvin Kalb interviewed Gagarin: Walter Cronkite/Marvin Kalb, “Down to Earth,” CBS News, Eyewitness to History, April 14, 1961 (transcript), CBS News Reference Library, New York.

  227 “American prestige was jolted”: David Greene, “In Russia, Space Ride for U.S. Spurs Nostalgia, Hope,” NPR News, July 15, 2011.

  227 “There was great pressure”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 233.

  227 “We were quite aware that the image that NASA was trying to project”: Gerard J. Degroot, Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest (New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 106.

  228 “I wasn’t scared, but I was up there looking around”: Gene Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 201.

  228 “We feared that Shepard’s flight was premature”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, pp. 274–75.

  228 “a man was going to sit on top of all that”: “TV Looks at American in Space,” Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1974.

  229 When he praised the “depth of broadcast’s contribution”: Newton M. Minow, “Television and the Public Interest,” National Association of Broadcasters, delivered May 9, 1961, reprinted in William Safire, ed., Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in American History (New York: Norton, 2004), pp. 788–796.

  229 “You just saw the umbilical cord come away”: Transcript of Walter Cronkite covering Liberty Bell 7, Gus Grissom Launch, Friday, July 21, 1961, CBS News Archive, New York.

  230 “captured the phenomenon of Eisenhower”: Jack Gould, “TV: An Elder Statesman,” New York Times, October 13, 1961.

  230 credited Cronkite with conducting a “brilliant historical interview”: Jack O’Brian, New York Journal American [nd], WCP-UTA.

  231 Cronkite’s CBS team focused on Boston’s police: Bliss, Now the News, pp. 392–93.

  231 “At this point, you may be inclined to say”: Walter Cronkite, “Biography of a Bookie Joint,” November 30, 1961, CBS News Archives, New York. The show was rebroadcast on March 20, 1963.

  231 he was a “relentless adversary”: Lapham, “The Secret Life of Walter (Mitty) Cronkite.”

  232 “There’s no physical exhaustion”: Joan Crosby, “Hectic Night Due for Anchor Men,” Abilene Reporter, November 6, 1962.

  232 identical to the Eisenhower administration, only “thirty years younger”: Chalmer M. Roberts, “Kennedy Moving Ahead ‘Decisively,’ Lippmann Says, Lauding Crisis Acts,” Washington Post, December 22, 1961.

  232 For the Glenn mission, it had a team: CBS News, Seven Days (privately published), July 1962, John Glenn Papers, Ohio State University, Columbus.

  233 “Space travel was so new”: Author interview with John Glenn, October 27, 2011.

  233 “a glorified radio broadcast”: Ron Bonn, “CBS News and the Landing of the Moon,” speech draft, June 18, 2011, Bonn Archive, Naples, FL.

  233 At the CBS News control center: “Cronkite Brings Enthusiasm for Space to CNN,” Houston Chronicle, July 30, 1998.

  233 the orbit that “united the nation”: Jack Gould, “Radio-TV: Networks Convey Drama of Glenn Feat; Give Dazzling Display of Modern Electronics,” New York Times, February 21, 1962.

  233 “The best moment”: Walter Cronkite, “Outstanding Moments During TV Coverage of John Glenn,” New York Herald Tribune, April 29, 1962.

  234 “When President Kennedy comes to pin a medal”: CBS News, Seven Days.

  234 “I think we have a lot more knowledge”: “The Interpreters and the ‘Golden Throats,’ ” Newsweek, October 8, 1962.

  235 it was “a one-up”: Sacknoff, In Their Own Words, p. 194.

  235 “Can you imagine how great it would be to say”: Joe Adcock, “Walter Cronkite,” Texas Magazine, November 27, 1966.

  235 Cronkite outshone the competition: Barbara Matus
ow, The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), p. 126.

  236 “instead of looking down despondently, we could look”: Sacknoff, In Their Own Words, p. 195.

  236 “This is not just Cronkite the old reportorial warhorse”: Cecil Smith, “Cronkite Flees NY—by Design,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1962.

  236 Cronkite was treated as the new Murrow: CBS News, Seven Days.

  236 “we all took to calling Walter ‘Mr. Space’ ”: Author interview with John Glenn, October 27, 2011.

  237 “Just as Noah once sent out a dove”: “T-Minus 4 Years, 9 Months, and 30 Days,” CBS Television Network, March 1, 1965 (transcript), CBS Research Library, New York.

  Sixteen: Anchorman of Camelot

  241 “How many times have you been around?”: Lawrence Laurent, “Walter Does Get Around,” Washington Post, March 27, 1960.

  242 “Walter wanted to ride on the Kennedys’ coattails”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

  242 “first television president”: Halberstam, The Powers That Be, p. 316.

  243 Midgley was first hired by CBS in the mid-1950s: Douglas Martin, “Leslie Midgley, 87, Prolific TV News Producer,” New York Times, June 20, 2002.

  244 “Once Cronkite came to Newport with his director Vinny Walters”: Author interview with Lew Wood, January 10, 2012.

  244 “turned Cronkite onto the yachting world”: Ibid.

  245 “all the women who’ve made Cronkite men”: David Friend, “Guess Who’s Going Up in Orbit,” Life, August 19, 1984 (unpublished interview notes), Friend Archive.

  245 his CBS superiors were ready with the hook: Dennis Hevesi, “Douglas Edwards, First TV Anchorman, Dies at 73,” New York Times, October 14, 1990.

  245 When President Kennedy summoned Murrow to run USIA: Fred W. Friendly, Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), pp. 126–27.

  245 Smith lashed out: Harold Jackson, “Howard K. Smith,” The Guardian, February 19, 2002.

  246 “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil”: Daniel E. Ritchie, ed., Edmund Burke: Appraisals and Applications (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), p. xiii.

  246 “I have heard all this junk before”: Howard K. Smith, Events Leading Up to My Death (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 275.

  246 the days of Murrow’s ACLU-infused mania were over: Friendly, Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control, p. 127.

  246 “Walter was in the studio sucking on cough drops”: Smith, Events Leading Up to My Death, p. 258.

  247 his love of Russian caviar and French espionage: See Charles Collingwood, The Defector (New York: Ace, 1970).

  248 “Sig had begun at ground-zero and built”: Smith, Events Leading Up to My Death, pp. 268–69.

  248 “We were naturally terribly worried”: Walter Cronkite, “Reflections on Dick Salant,” New Canaan (Connecticut) Public Library, November 24, 1996.

  248 “We were,” Cronkite recalled, “all depressed”: Walter Cronkite, “Salant Memorial Service,” February 22, 1993, Museum of Television and Radio Archives, New York.

  249 the Wallace-Edwards team became fondly known as the “Cunningham Aces”: Susan Buzenberg and Bill Buzenberg, eds., Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism: The Memoirs of Richard S. Salant (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), p. 37.

  249 “not the right image for an anchorman”: Schoenbrun, On and Off the Air, p. 143.

  250 nicknamed “one-take Walter”: Robert W. Butler, “From One Legend to Another, Good News,” Kansas City Star, June 12, 1996.

  250 “We didn’t pick Walter to anchor”: Buzenberg and Buzenberg, Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism, p. 37.

  251 “That’s the news”: Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, April 16, 1962 (broadcast transcript), CBS News Research Library, New York.

  251 “The suits—as we used to call them—went crazy”: Tom Watkins, “How ‘That’s the Way It Is’ Became Cronkite’s Tagline,” CNN, July 18, 2009.

  251 “Over on CBS tonight Walter Cronkite takes over”: Cynthia Lowry, “Cronkite Won Respect of Rival Newscasters,” Associated Press, April 29, 1962.

  251 “He was the father figure of television journalists”: Ben Bradlee, “Walter Cronkite, 1916–2009,” Newsweek, July 27, 2009.

  252 “Doug Edwards used to brag that he had the highest rated newscast”: Author interview with Mervin Block, July 27, 2011.

  252 “knows the future of CBS news is riding on him”: “The Battle of TV News,” Newsweek, September 23, 1963.

  253 Cronkite and director Don Hewitt: David Schoenbrun, On and Off the Air, p. 84.

  253 “Cronkite would foresee the Next Big Story”: Ron Bonn to Douglas Brinkley, January 4, 2012.

  253 Cronkite as part of communications history: Val Adams, “U.S. and Europe Exchange Live TV,” New York Times, July 24, 1962.

  254 Cronkite’s profession had been revolutionized with the transmission of images: Ibid.

  254 “The reality of live telecasts to Europe seemed so unbelievable”: Ibid.

  254 “He’s nervous,” Fred Friendly said: “The Battle of TV News,” Newsweek, September 21, 1963.

  255 “Turns out Helen was a swinger”: Author interview with Bill Small, March 22, 2011.

  256 “the half-hour news show was a communications creation”: John Horn, “News—But Not Good News,” New York Herald-Tribune, November 30, 1963.

  257 “CBS is expanding Cronkite to a half hour”: Frank, Out of Thin Air, p. 180.

  257 CBS’s news expansion “revolutionized” the American political process: Buzenberg and Buzenberg, Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism, p. 43.

  258 “Hewitt wanted to get all the kinks out”: Author interview with Sandy Socolow, November 14, 2011.

  258 script makers would “rip stories off the half-dozen wire service Teletypes”: Ron Bonn to Douglas Brinkley, June 7, 2011.

  258 Having won a Peabody Award: “Networks Divide Peabody Awards,” New York Times, March 28, 1963.

  258 CBS had been chosen by lot to coordinate the pooled coverage: Stephen C. Rogers, “March to Get Full News Goverage,” Washington Post, August 25, 1963.

  259 “They called it the March on Washington for jobs and freedom”: Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News broadcast transcript, August 29, 1963, CBS News Archive, New York.

  259 Not everybody at CBS thought Cronkite’s coming to Cape Cod: Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 586.

  259 “As I drove up to the motel”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 246.

  261 “I was getting a little fed up”: Author interview with Robert Pierpoint, March 19, 2011.

  261 Cronkite—following questions about: Harold W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, eds., Kennedy and the Press: The News Conferences (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1965), pp. 484–86.

  261 “It is their war”: Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), p. 444.

  261 Salinger complained vehemently to CBS: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 589.

  261 the Kennedy administration was distancing: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 244.

  261 “partial distortion”: Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), p. 125.

  261 “Salinger was preparing a preemptive defense”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 248.

  261 The features unfolded like articles in a glossy magazine: John Horn, “News—But Not Good News,” New York Times Herald Tribune, November 30, 1963.

  262 the shows didn’t seem to offer anything more: Ibid.

  263 his nightly catchphrase “caught on instantly”: Walter Cronkite interview with Archive of American Television (April 28, 1998, and October 18, 1999), Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation, North Hollywood, CA.

  Seventeen: The Kennedy Assassination
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  264 eating a low-calorie cottage cheese and pineapple salad: Bliss, Now the News, pp. 335–337.

  265 he clearly did not have this forty-six-year-old Newsweek cover star in mind: Alex S. Jones, Losing the News: The Future of News That Feeds Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 46.

  265 “Hell, yes, there’s a battle”: Ibid.

  265 Flummoxed by his Florida experience, Wood recommended: Lew Wood, “Dallas and JFK,” Reporter’s Notebook (blog), November 20, 2008.

  265 “loaded for bear”: Author interview with Lew Wood, January 9, 2012.

  266 “Dan Rather was downtown to cover the motorcade”: Ibid.

  266 “Hold on, Lew . . . don’t go away”: Wood, “Dallas and JFK.”

  267 “We figured there might be some good footage for Walter to run”: Author interview with Robert Pierpoint, March 19, 2011.

  268 “My God, they’ve killed Jack”: Smith, Grace and Power, pp. 447–48.

  268 “THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED”: Patrick J. Sloyan, “Albert Merriman Smith,” American Journalism Review (May 1997).

  268 “DA IT YRS NY”: Small, To Kill a Messenger, p. 135.

  269 Although Rather’s version of events has self-servingly changed: In March 1964, Rather told author John Mayo that he was stationed along the expressway and saw the motorcade speed past after the shooting. This version of events was later published in Mayo’s book, Bulletin from Dallas: The President Is Dead. Rather then stated in his 1977 book, The Camera Never Blinks Twice, that he was in fact next to Dealey Plaza (on the other side of a railroad overpass) when the shooting occurred. Wood insists that Rather was at KRLD-TV when Kennedy was shot. It’s confusing. But Rather did great work.

  270 “Let’s get on the air”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 202.

  270 but the cameras needed ten or fifteen minutes to warm up: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1994.

  270 the studio lights weren’t “hot”: Bliss, Now the News, p. 336.

  270 “Here is a bulletin from CBS News”: “As 175 Million Americans Watched . . . ,” Newsweek, December 9, 1963.

  271 “We beat NBC onto the air”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 305.