The Cronkite Doctrine

By Lisa de Moraes
Monday, January 16, 2006

PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 15

Walter Cronkite has been old for a really long time.

So long that he thinks it's a good idea to poke fun at people who stutter in front of a room of reporters.

So long that he remembers when the network news operations weren't required to make money.

So long that he thinks the effort of news operations to make money does not affect content.

So long that virtually every story he told at Winter TV Press Tour 2006 Sunday he'd told a dozen times before.

At age 89, Walter Cronkite hasn't been the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" since 1981, but no one has ever replaced him as The Most Trusted Man in America. And so his appearance at the tour to tout PBS's July "American Masters" biography on him drew The Reporters Who Cover Television to him like Jedi trainees at the feet of Yoda, gobbling up his every word on the state of journalism, politics and the war in Iraq:

Mr. Cronkite, can you talk about how that weekend you did a marathon anchor stint during the Kennedy assassination changed the way news is covered?

Mr. Cronkite, how much has the role of the network anchor diminished in recent years?

Mr. Cronkite, what do you think of the anchor team at ABC?

Mr. Cronkite, who do you think should be the replacement for Bob Schieffer at "CBS Evening News"?

Mr. Cronkite, did you see the movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" and what did you think of it?

Mr. Cronkite, what advice would you give to the next CBS anchor?

Mr. Cronkite, we have some vivid memories of some rare moments when you betrayed more emotion. Do you think for an anchor, when it comes to betraying emotion, less is more?

Mr. Cronkite, has CBS recovered from the Dan Rather Memogate fiasco?

At one point, two reporters got into a shouting match over who would get the floor to ask Cronkite a question. It reminded Cronkite of how, in the old days, reporters would always ace out New York Herald Tribune correspondent Homer Bigart, who spoke with a stutter, under similar circumstances, until Bigart would finally shout, "Wait a damned minute!" -- with a stutter, which Cronkite faithfully imitated to tittering from the room.

It played so well that, like a seasoned comic, Cronkite went back to it a couple more times during the very long and often entertaining Q&A session.

Asked what was his proudest moment as a journalist, Cronkite quickly said it was the night he delivered his editorial on the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Nearly 38 years ago, he closed a broadcast with an editorial that is credited with hastening the U.S. pullout from Vietnam.

"To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past," Cronkite said that night. "To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. . . . It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could."

On Sunday he was asked if he thought the Iraq war had reached the same point and would he have tried, if he were anchor today, to deliver a similar editorial (good luck on that).

"Yes, I would!" Cronkite blurted out before the reporter even got to the end of his question. The editorial he said he would have delivered following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, would have been: "Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves terribly missing in the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation, to help rebuild some of our important cities of the United States, and therefore we are going to have to bring our troops home."

He told the reporters: "We would have been able to retire with honor.

"We've done everything we can. We're going to have to leave it with [the Iraqis] someday, and it is my belief that we should get out now."

* * *

Speaking of old things at Winter TV Press Tour 2006, the Q&A session with organizers and participants of the Miss America pageant was a real doozy.

As happens so often when the subject of the Miss America pageant comes up at a cocktail party, political convention or congressional hearing, people become sharply divided into two camps: Pro-Bathing Suit and Anti-Suit.

This year, to mark its move to Country Music Television -- CMT, as it prefers to be called -- the pageant is returning to its "traditions" and "values," according to pageant CEO Art McMaster, which means the return of the Miss Congeniality competition and raising the swimsuit competition to account for 20 percent of each contestant's total score. (When Deidre Downs was named Miss America 2005, it was only 15 percent. That's from her own lips at the Q&A, up onstage.)

Creeping bathing suit-ism alarmed several critics -- especially in an event its keepers promote as a "scholarship competition" -- and they said so in no uncertain terms.

Miss America started off as a bathing suit competition and it can't get away from that, McMaster said. Besides, he added, studies show that pageant fans want it to continue.

This argument may have played well in Atlantic City, but it did not go over big with TV critics in Pasadena. But McMaster, a sly fox masquerading as a dumpy, balding, beige kind of guy, had another trick up his sleeve: A bathing suit competition is not a skin show, he said: It's "all about health and fitness."

I'm sorry to report that did not float, even with the Pro-Suiters, and groans and snickers were heard in the crowd.

"No, it's true!" said McMaster.