Cronkite (106 page)

610 “I greatly regret that President Bush and his campaign managers”:
“President Bush, Harkin Say ‘No’ to Special on Discovery,” New York
Daily News
, March 7, 1992.

610 Cronkite held a round table forum on journalism:
Ray Richmond, “TV’s Selling Power Puts Perot in Race,”
Orange County Register
, July 5, 1992.

611 “sound bites, shell games, handlers, and media stuntmen”:
J. Michael Kennedy, “It’s a Thankless, Slimy Job; So Why Is Perot After It?”
Los Angeles Times
, April 19, 1992.

611 “Perot can stumble into an answer that is meaningful”:
Ibid.

611 “Clinton has Carter’s intelligence”:
Bill Zwecker, “As a Political Wit, Walter Cronkite Leaves ’Em Gasping,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, November 22, 1992.

611 “There’s one more honor to be paid tonight”:
Godfrey Sperlin, “Why Bush Lost,”
Christian Science Monitor
, December 22, 1992.

611 President Bush got a long standing ovation:
State Journal-Register
(Springfield, IL), February 22, 1997.

Thirty-Four
: “The World’s Oldest Reporter”

612 Los Angeles was in the midst of the Northridge earthquake:
“The Magnitude 6.7 Northridge, California, Earthquake of 17 January 1994,”
Science
266, no. 5184 (October 1994): 389.

613 “He hadn’t lost his drive to own a news story”:
Author interview with Bernard Shaw, June 10, 2011.

613 “I think Walter was shaken by Northridge”:
Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

614 “Walter was always open for business”:
Author interview with Tom Brokaw, August 2, 2011.

614 “People put their faith in what they see”:
Gerard, “Walter Cronkite Speaks His Mind Instead of Just News.”

615 “The fact that you can’t find a new Walter Cronkite on television”:
Jack Fuller,
What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and Crisis in Journalism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 73.

615 “How many of you”:
Ted Koppel’s final
Nightline
broadcast, November 22, 2005, LexisNexis Academic transcript.

616 “Eric was one of the best of that small number of news analysts”:
“Eric Sevareid, Commentator for CBS-TV,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 10, 1992.

616 “I couldn’t believe I got to hover in the same sphere”:
Author interview with Brian Williams, September 2, 2011.

616 When Cronkite spoke at a library lecture series:
Bruce Lambert, “Richard Salant, 78, Who Headed CBS News in Expansion, Is Dead,”
New York Times
, February 23, 1993.

617 “I was excited beyond belief”:
Author interview with Brian Williams, September 2, 2011.

617 “It became our running joke”:
Ibid.

617 “Doesn’t that man over there look like Walter Cronkite?”:
Author interview with Michael Finley, March 1, 2010.

618 “He would always ask everybody he met”:
Author interview with Marlene Adler, December 9, 2011.

618 “Get lost!”:
Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

619 “It was shameless”:
Ibid.

619 he insisted that old-fashioned investigative journalism was a prerequisite:
“Integration Never to Be Realized,”
New York Amsterdam News
, October 9, 1993.

619 confounded Cronkite, Ward and Company in 1993:
Terry Behrman, “Remembering My Former Boss Walter Cronkite,” July 21, 2009, New Lantern blog for business innovation.

620 “Come on, Walter. It’s time to get to the orgy”:
Ray Richmond, “Cronkite Report: America’s Most Trusted Man Still Sets Pace,”
Los Angeles Daily News,
May 26, 1993.

620 “they used to say Walter Cronkite could get elected president”:
Anne Gowen, “Down Home at the White House,”
Washington Times
, September 14, 1963.

620 “Any question I had about the Battle of Normandy”:
Author interview with Wolf Blitzer, September 7, 2011.

621 “Let me give you three pieces of advice, Al”:
Author interview with Al Ortiz, May 12, 2011.

621 “I meant my martini”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, pp. 15–16.

621 “I wouldn’t have a problem with that”:
Verne Gay, “Cronkite on Credibility,”
Buffalo News
, March 10, 1996.

622 “Walter sent us his notes and a long oral history”:
Author interview with Shirley Wershba, August 31, 2011.

623 “I thought that we Americans overreacted to the Soviets”:
Walter Cronkite, “The Cold War,” Discovery Channel, January 16, 1997.

623 “With newscasters like Mr. Cronkite, Who Needs
Pravda
?”:
Washington Times
, June 25, 1997.

623 an anti-Cronkite website titled “Walter Cronkite Spit in My Food”:
“Cronkite Not Amused by His Online Spitting Image,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, January 29, 1997.

623 “wrapping their harsh right-wing views in the banner”:
“Cronkite Attacks Religious Right,”
Dayton Daily News
, March 6, 1997.

623 underwent quadruple bypass surgery on April 1, 1997:
John Carmody, “The TV Column,”
Washington Post
, April 3, 1997.

624 “The music seemed to heal his soul”:
Author interview with Chip Cronkite, July 3, 2011.

624 “I took one look at you”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 13, 2012.

624 “It must be terrible leaving with so many family memories”:
Author interview with Tom Brokaw, August 2, 2011.

625 Cronkite sent a note to the White House inviting them to go sailing:
Author interview with Sandy Socolow, October 16, 2011.

625 “At that time I could have done with a picture with Walter Cronkite”:
President Clinton Speech at Cronkite’s Memorial, 2009, Lincoln Center, New York.

626 No leaks about the discussion occurred:
Peter Johnson, “Cronkite Refuses to Talk,”
USA Today
, August 2, 1998.

626 “Bill and Hillary didn’t speak to each other the entire time”:
Author interview with Sandy Socolow, July 8, 2011.

626 “historic opportunity for young Walter”:
Author interview with Walter Cronkite IV, December 5, 2011.

626 “President Clinton was in awe of Cronkite”:
Author interview with Dee Dee Myers, July 23, 2011.

627 “Or I could go with him, play canasta up there”:
David Kronke, “Cronkite—A Look Upward at Space, Downward at the Demise of Television,”
Los Angeles Daily News
, October 21, 1999.

627 Johnson asked Cronkite—still under contract with CBS News—to co-anchor:
“Walter Cronkite to Co-Anchor CNN’s Coverage,” CNN transcript, July 29, 1998.

627 “Gosh, we wish we’d thought of it”:
“CNN Beat CBS to the Punch,”
San Jose Mercury News
, October 14, 1998.

627 Cronkite, in an effort to allay CBS concerns about him:
60 Minutes
, October 18, 1998.

627 “John Glenn going back into Space is serving the purpose”:
Dave Walker, “Cronkite Suits to Cover Glenn Trek,”
Arizona Republic
, October 23, 1998.

628 “Mike, if they want the questions in advance”:
Author interview with Mike Freedman, November 20, 2011.

628 the “Cronkite School of Broadcasting and Space” on CNN:
Bob Betcher, “Cronkite Tells Flight the Way It Is,”
Vero Beach Press Journal
, October 30, 1998.

628 “Walter waved me to sit next to him”:
Author interview with Jimmy Buffett, July 18, 2011.

629 “I had people from our affiliate stations around the country calling”:
Interview with Michael Freedman, February 27, 2011.

630 Trump claimed Cronkite was a “totally preposterous” man:
“This Just In: Cronkite Slams Trump Project,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, August 20, 1999.

630 “Walter, it is soooooooo good to see you again!”:
Sandy Socolow to Douglas Brinkley, December 13, 2011.

630 spent a week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena:
Kronke, “Walter Cronkite—A Look Upward at Space.”

630 the notion of “unlimited national sovereignty”:
Myron M. Kronisch, “Toward a Democratic World Government,”
Newark Star-Ledger
, January 14, 2000.

631 “Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must”:
Walter Cronkite, “Speech Before the World Federalist Association” (transcript), October 19, 1999, WCP-UTA. Also see “Cronkite Champions World Government,”
Washington Times
, December 3, 1999.

631 “I don’t understand the need for speed”:
“Cronkite Sees Good, Bad in News Gathering,”
Charleston
(WV)
Gazette
, November 26, 2000.

632 Uncle Walter was “irreplaceable”:
Jeannie Williams, “No Kennedy Gala for Cronkite,”
USA Today
, November 30, 2000.

632 “I had to think more about the millennium than anyone”:
“Names in the News,” AP, May 16, 2000.

Thirty-Five
: The New Millennium

634 “I suggested that he stay out of New York for a while”:
Author interview with Chip Cronkite, July 3, 2011.

634 “He
had
to see Ground Zero for himself”:
Author interview with Marlene Adler, December 19, 2011.

634 Instead of canceling his La Sapienza speech:
“Cronkite Praises U.S. Broadcast Coverage,”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
, September 15, 2001.

635 “This is your Kennedy”:
Aaron Brown, “On Walter Cronkite,” Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, http://cronkite.asu.edu/node/689 (accessed July 9, 2011).

635 to “get even, for heaven’s sake”:
Walter Cronkite on
Late Night with David Letterman
, September 20, 2001 (video transcription).

635
Cronkite:
“Well, how do you think it felt”:
Ibid.

636 “I was hot under the collar about Bush overreacting”:
Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

636 “if [Falwell and Robertson] are worshipping the same God”:
“Falwell = Terrorists, Says Cronkite,”
New York Post
, September 28, 2011.

636 he saw his public role as championing:
Kirkus Reviews
, review of
Around America: A Tour of Our Magnificent Coastline,
by Walter Cronkite, May 15, 2001, http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/walter-cronkite/around-america/#review.

637 “Somehow knowing that Walter was still around”:
Author interview with Katie Couric, September 22, 2009.

637 “ideological eunuch”:
Gerard, “Walter Cronkite Speaks His Mind Instead of Just News.”

637 Refusing to be intimidated by Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity:
Author interview with Marlene Adler, June 4, 2011.

638 “No longer was he trying to be Mr. Center”:
Author interview with Katie Couric, September 22, 2009.

638 Democrats engaged in silly fights:
Richard Zoglin, “10 Questions for Walter Cronkite,”
Time
, October 26, 2003.

638 “Walter liked being in the ring”:
Author interview with Dale Minor, August 18, 2011.

639 “Bush is setting an example”:
“Cronkite Condemns Decision to Go to War,”
St. Louis Dispatch
, October 11, 2003.

639 “At the networks, Cronkite’s heirs were not even practicing journalism”:
Frank Rich, “And That’s Not the Way It Was,”
New York Times
, July 26, 2009.

639 “We met in the restaurant of the Mark Hotel in Manhattan”:
Christiane Amanpour to Douglas Brinkley, January 17, 2012.

640 “If 1988 taught us anything”:
Walter Cronkite, “Senator Kerry Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Admitting He’s a Liberal,”
Ventura County Star
, March 18, 2004, from King Features Syndicate.

641 “This was an error made in good faith”:
Josh Getlin, Elizabeth Jensen, and Matea Gold, “CBS Apologizes for Its Story on Bush Memos,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 21, 2004.

642 “There’s nothing there”:
Howard Kurtz, “Osama Who?”
Washington Post
, January 24, 2005.

642 “But that ol’ boy danced a jig when Dan went down”:
Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

642 What surprised him wasn’t Memogate:
Sidney Blumenthal, “Dan Rather Stands by His Story,”
Salon.com
, September 27, 2007.

642 “that they tolerated his being there for so long”:
Walter Cronkite remarks on
American Morning
, CNN transcript, March 8, 2005.

642 Team Rather had “myopic zeal”:
“CBS Ousts Four for Roles in Bush Guard Story,” AP, January 10, 2005.

642 To Moonves, it was a “black mark”:
Author interview with Les Moonves, June 10, 2011.

643 “We know it as the battle of the bathroom”:
Author interview with Jeff Fager, January 10, 2012.

643 “I just want you to know you did the right thing”:
Author interview with Les Moonves, June 10, 2011.

644 “You’ll never know what that meant to me”:
Ibid.

644 with what Barbara Walters called her “wry and acidic” bluntness:
Author interview with Barbara Walters, August 24, 2011.

644 “They didn’t poll my wife”:
Walter Cronkite remarks at roast in Phoenix, Arizona, November 15, 1985.

644 “Betsy was the glue that held him together”:
Author interview with Deborah Rush, February 21, 2012.

645 “Walter was bereft and lost”:
Author interview with Joanna Simon, January 13, 2012.

645 “All I do is puddle up and cry from morning to night”:
Author interview with William Small, March 22, 2011.

645 “It’s not a bad idea”:
Ibid.

645 “I could talk to Walter about anything”:
Author interview with Aaron Brown, September 7, 2011.