Walter Cronkite,face of TV news,dies at 92

He became something of a national institution,with an unflappable delivery,a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: “And that’s the way it is.” He was Uncle Walter to many — respected,liked and listened to.

In 1995,14 years after he retired from the CBS Evening News,a TV Guide poll ranked him No. 1 in seven of eight categories for measuring television journalists.

On July 20,1969,when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon,Cronkite exclaimed,“Oh,boy!” On the day John F Kennedy was assassinated,Cronkite briefly lost his composure in announcing that the President had been pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Taking off his black-framed glasses and wiping away a tear,he registered the emotions of millions.

“I am a news presenter,a news broadcaster,an anchorman,a managing editor. Not a commentator or analyst,” he said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. But when he did pronounce judgment,the impact was large.

In 1968 he visited Vietnam and returned to do a rare special programme on the war. He called the conflict a stalemate and advocated a negotiated peace.

On October 27,1972,his 14-minute report on Watergate,followed by an eight-minute segment four days later,“put the Watergate story clearly and substantially before millions of Americans” for the first time,the broadcast historian Marvin Barrett wrote in Moments of Truth?.

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr was born November 4,1916,in St Joseph,the son of Walter Leland Cronkite Sr and Helen Lena Fritsche. He peddled magazines door to door and hawked newspapers. As a teenager,he got a job with The Houston Post as a copy boy and cub reporter,inspired to go into the news business by a journalism teacher.

Cronkite picked up journalism jobs with The Houston Press and other newspapers. He left college in 1935 without graduating to take a job as a reporter with The Press.

He became one of the first reporters accredited to US forces with the outbreak of World War II. He gained fame as a war correspondent,accompanying the first Allied troops into North Africa.

In 1954,when CBS challenged NBC’s popular morning programme Today with the Morning Show,it tapped Cronkite to be the host.

In 1952,Cronkite was chosen to lead the coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The conventions made Cronkite a star. In 1961,Cronkite replaced Murrow as CBS’s senior correspondent,and on April 16,1962,he began anchoring the evening news.

In September 1963,CBS stretched his programme to half-hour. This is when he inaugurated his famous signoff “And that’s the way it is”. Cronkite interviewed Kennedy on CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite.

Cronkite retired in 1981 at 65. He won the Emmy,a Peabody and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (in 1981),and he continued to pile up accolades. Arizona State University named its journalism school after him.

Cronkite is survived by his daughters,Nancy Elizabeth and Mary Kathleen; his son,Walter Leland III,called Chip; and four grandsons.