That’s the way it was.

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 16

That’s the way it was.

By

ANTHONY HOLDEN,

“Observer,” London.

At the 1976 Democratic convention in New York city, Walter Cronkite of CBS News was asking Edward Kennedy about his decision not to run for the presidency. Surely it would mean, suggested Cronkite, that Kennedy would make “less of a difference” to American society.

"You don't have to be a President of the United States to make a difference.” said Kennedy. “You don’t even have to be a congressman.” He paused, and fixed television’s original anchorman earnestly, almost enviously, in the eye. “You make a difference, Mr Cronkite.” 'Millions of Americans have been wondering whether there can be such a thing as life after Cronkite. After 18 years hosting America’s most watched evening news broadcast, everyone's “Uncle Walter” has finally hung up his headphones, leaving the nation asking itself if the news — which is to say the world — will ever be the same again. I do not exaggerate. Walter Cronkite did not merely read the news; lie decided what the news was, and had a way of implying how you should feel about it. If it was bad — if America was losing ' a war, or someone had shot the President Walter’was somehow reassuring. If it was i good, or dramatic, or fthiny,he helped you enjoy it. “Go, baby, go,” enthused Walter as Apollo II lifted off for the Moon, willing it on its way on the nation’s behalf. Events did not seem to be news unless Walter was there to explain them. He came, in effect, to articulate. his fellow countrymen's emotions. With Walter gone, many of them won’t know what to think any more. Since inventing the job in 1961 — the Dutch word for anchorman is “Cronkiter” — Walter has always been a dominant public figure, transcending politics, representing the aspirations of the little guy, making events take place by his very presence.

It took his retirement this month to demonstrate the full and extraordinary .extent to which a television newscaster can establish a hold over a nation’s psyche. It was not just a question of his immense celebrity, though it was always entertaining to see the cameras turn away from presidents and prime ministers to record Walter's arrival on the scene. (When he travelled on the Kennedy’ campaign

plane last year, his own CBS jet flying escort, the Senator was left to talk to himself as everyone rushed off to interview Walter.) It was, and is. much more a question of the ultimate anchorman's unparallelled, almost Orwellian, influence on events. He is credited, for instance, with swinging American public opinion towards withdrawal from Vietnam. In 1968, after a trip to the war zone, Cronkite concluded an evening special by urging the Government to negotiate “not as victors, but as an honourable people.” It was as if, said “Newsweek,” Lincoln himself had ambled down from his memorial and joined an anti-war demonstration.

Watching in the White House, President Johnson turned to his Press secretary and said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Highly aware of his unsought power, and not altogether comfortable with it, Crorikite rarely loaded his newscasting deliberately. It just came out that way, the way he and so many other Americans felt about things. He became a kind of incarnate national conscience. . When it suited the Carter campaign to play down the Teheran hostage crisis last summer, Cronkite refused to let them get away with it, adding “on the X-hundredth day of captivity for 52 Am'ericans in Iran” each evening to his famous pay-off line “and that’s the way it is.” He was accused, of course, of everything from political bias to abuse of power, but somehow, with Walter, such charges could never quite be made to stick. Cronkite's farewell broadcast was in itself such a major news story that his last “and that’s the way it is” was carried live by the two other major networks, NBC and ABC. whom he had humbled in. the ratings all these years. He had - become such a national institution that his power was, as Johnson once conceded, greater than that of the President. Opinion polls over the last two decades have consistently shown him to be. “the most trusted man in America.”

Few care to speculate what would have happened last year if Walter Cronkite had accepted John Anderson’s invitation to join him on the independent presidential ticket. — Copyright, London Observer Service.