RIP, Walter Cronkite

[pyat]

Walter Cronkite (who has just died, aged 92) and Charles Kuralt (who died in 1997) were the first television personalities I could name who weren't on Sesame Street or Star Trek. You don't seem to get news anchors like them anymore, at least not on U.S. news.

You get blustering demagogues like Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, or empty suits with good hair who argue with newsroom staff about whether a 2nd plane just hit the World Trade Centre.

(No, I don't like Keith Olbermann, even if I usually agree with him.)

Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The really depressing thing about THAT is that it wasn't a steady downhill progression from a Golden Age. That time of honest, honorable news was a few brief decades between the end of the Depression and the middle of the '80s.

The days of the Hearsts and Yellow Journalism aren't that far removed from today's cable tabloid networks.