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Volume CXXXIII, Number 14 |
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Cronkite converses with Maine students
ALISON L. MCCONNELL
ORIENT STAFF
Walter Cronkite was already 65 years old when most of today's college students were born. Some may never have heard of him.
Yet while he belongs to a different era of broadcast journalism, Cronkite still possesses the ability to captivate an audience at the ripe old age of 87.
He spoke via conference call yesterday to a small group of students from Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. Sandor M. Polster, adjunct instructor at Thomas, set up the call. He worked with Cronkite at CBS News for seven years and called those experiences "the most fun, most challenging, and most rewarding years of [his] career."
Students from Polster's Introduction to Journalism and Contemporary Political Reporting classes each posed a question to Cronkite. The queries ranged from presidential campaign coverage to his election as the nation's most trustworthy public figure by a magazine opinion poll years ago. Regarding that accolade, Cronkite said he was honored but "just continued to do what he was doing."
One Thomas student asked if Cronkite had ever himself considered a political career. He joked about being offered nominations "for everything from dogcatcher to Senator" and added that several women from Vassar once tried to draft him as President. He said he never thought it wise to mix broadcast journalism with public office.
As the anchor of CBS's Evening News broadcast from 1962-81, it is estimated that Cronkite reached 21 million viewers each night. "He is one of the few that represents everything good about the profession," Polster said.
Cronkite cited Eisenhower as one of his most interesting interviews and added that if he were still working in television, George W. Bush would be at the top of his list. "I thought the interview on Meet the Press was well done, but there were some questions left unanswered," Cronkite said. "I'd like a shot at him myself."
Another student asked whether Vietnam or World War II was more difficult to cover. "We had a great deal of freedom in World War II-we were permitted to move freely around the front," Cronkite said. "Vietnam was vastly different. It was jungle warfare. We lived like soldiers in the same dangerous conditions."
He said he notices a "very close parallel" between hostilities in Iraq and Vietnam. "We are facing intensifying guerilla warfare in Iraq.... It is taking young people and a great deal of our treasury. To me, it definitely has the markings of Vietnam."
According to Cronkite, technological innovations have dramatically improved the media's reach. "We have the ability to broadcast live from anywhere in the world. Correspondents are able to broadcast with the action as it took place. We saw it live in our living rooms. That's an incredible advance."
Cronkite said that in his day, news coverage was often days behind a story. "Nearly every event we cover now is on the air that night," he said.
Yet some of those advances have changed the nature of television news, and not for the better, he said. "[There is] far too much coverage of the trivial [and] an awful lot of time spent on the trials of movie stars, their social lives-if you can call them social. [Broadcasters are] merely feeding public curiosity, not improving their sense of the world around them."
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