A thorough new biography of Walter Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley reveals that he was not the unbiased journalist his supporters have always claimed him to be. In fact, he was a liberal who used his position as America's top anchor to promote the left and damage the right. And that's the way it is.
All of this apparently comes as a surprise to Howard Kurtz, who grew up idolizing Cronkite and can't quite shake off the worship of his false idol even when confronted with the facts. Still, there is an interesting admission early on in Kurtz's piece about how the media landscape has changed:
Had Cronkite engaged in some of the same questionable conduct today—he secretly bugged a committee room at the 1952 GOP convention—he would have been bashed by the blogs, pilloried by the pundits, and quite possibly ousted by his employer. That he endured and prospered, essentially unscathed, until his death in 2009 reminded me of how impervious the monopoly media were in those days, largely shielded from the scrutiny they inflicted on everyone else.
Indeed, he would have been. Kurtz might have spent more time discussing the new media landscape and how it benefits the country by allowing alternative points of view to penetrate the public's awareness. Instead, he mostly cops out.
Cronkite's idea of ethical behavior seems to have been pretty broad. Kurtz opens his account of the new book with the fact that Cronkite had a secret deal with Pan Am which flew his family around the world to vacation spots like the South Pacific for free. The President of the CBS News Division knew about the arrangement but did nothing about it.
Cronkite's behavior wasn't just personally unethical, it was also professionally unethical.
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