Our discussion today about Classen's book and how we would spread the word regarding his research and findings got me thinking about how I would do so, and I thought: duh, the news. But that turned into a loaded thought: am I putting this information in print or am I using a broadcast news service? What about the internet? What network am I sending it to? Which reporter is delivering my news? What time? Is this local or national? International? All of this news thought, as well as the reading we have been doing about television and the civil rights movement got me meditating on the national broadcast news reports during this time period. And then I thought, "Cronkite".
Walter Cronkite was an anchor for the CBS Evening News for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981. Actually voted as recently as the 1990's (after he had been off the air for a decade) "The Most Trusted Man in America," Cronkite was (and still is) the model for television news anchors. Anchors ranging from katie Couric to Bernard Shaw rank him as one of their primary influences in their careers.
So what does this mean for the news reports Cronkite delivered? While Cronkite rarely let his personal opinions affect the way he reported the news, it is not to say that he didn't struggle:
"'Those of us who reported civil rights stories then often felt uneasy with the protocols of objectivity,' Cronkite reflected in a National Public Radio report on the events surrounding the 1964 slaying of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi.
'It seemed dishonest to pretend that a Ku Klux Klan leader had the civic or moral equivalence of Rosa Parks or Medgar Evers. But CBS management reminded us often that that was not our judgment to make.'"
Whose judgment is it to make? If Walter Cronkite, one of the most reputed broadcast news reporters, is still being controlled to some degree by CBS management, who was pulling the puppet strings back then? What effect do you think this had on Cronkite's reports on the civil rights movement? How do you think Cronkite's presence and station as "the most trusted man in America" affected the way his news reports were consumed? What has changed in terms of broadcast news between then and now? And, to bring this back to our discussion in class, what can we do as consumers, especially when we are up against huge corporations that dominate the media?
To whet your appetite, here is a clip of Cronkite reporting on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I know he reported on the Medgar Evers assassination, but I couldn't find a clip. Cronkite had almost finished reporting the news when he was told about the assassination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite
http://www.mije.org/richardprince/cronkite-inspired-all-races-both-genders
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