Walter Cronkite Biography Quotes 18 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on November 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Missouri, and grew up largely in Houston, Texas. He developed an early fascination with newspapers and radio, an interest that led him to the University of Texas at Austin. There he worked on student publications and local radio, but he left before graduating to pursue full-time reporting. Those early newsroom and announcing jobs across the Southwest and Midwest honed the steady voice, clear prose, and disciplined curiosity that later defined his national reputation.

War Correspondent and United Press
Cronkite joined United Press in 1937 and came of age as a reporter during World War II. He covered the European theater and North Africa, filing dispatches under difficult conditions and occasionally accompanying Allied missions, including bombing runs over Germany. The work demanded both courage and restraint; Cronkite built a reputation as a painstaking verifier of facts who refused to let drama overwhelm accuracy. Those war years also connected him with other correspondents and editors who prized sober, witness-based journalism, a professional network that would follow him into peacetime and the emerging medium of television.

Joining CBS and the Rise of Television News
In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News, part of the circle shaped by Edward R. Murrow that emphasized reporting rigor and integrity on the new platform of television. In the 1950s he hosted programs that helped acclimate audiences to serious news in a visual medium, including the historical series You Are There and the documentary franchise The Twentieth Century. He also became a familiar presence during political conventions and election nights, working with producers such as Don Hewitt and, later, Sandy Socolow, as well as analysts like Eric Sevareid. The CBS News president Richard S. Salant backed the standards that Cronkite embodied, defending editorial independence against political and commercial pressures.

Anchor of the CBS Evening News
In 1962, Cronkite became anchor of the CBS Evening News. His sign-off, "And that's the way it is", paired conversational directness with an insistence on verifiable facts. When the broadcast expanded from 15 to 30 minutes in 1963, he marked the new format with an extended interview with President John F. Kennedy from the White House, signaling a larger canvas for national and international reporting. Over the next two decades, the program set a template for network news in writing, pacing, and standards. Working with a deep bench of correspondents and producers, Cronkite coordinated coverage across the country and abroad, bringing coherence to fast-moving stories without sacrificing nuance.

Defining Coverage and Public Trust
Cronkite's reputation as "the most trusted man in America" took shape around a few defining broadcasts. On November 22, 1963, he delivered the bulletin of President Kennedy's death with a composure that conveyed shock without speculation. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, after returning from Vietnam, he concluded in a rare on-air analysis that the war seemed headed for a stalemate, a judgment that resonated with a broad swath of viewers; President Lyndon B. Johnson was widely quoted as saying, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America". Cronkite also anchored coverage of the tumultuous 1968 party conventions, the unfolding Watergate scandal, and the energy and economic upheavals of the 1970s. His two-part reports on Watergate in 1972 helped bring the story to a national audience beyond Washington insiders.

The Space Age on Television
Cronkite's enthusiasm and authority were particularly evident in coverage of the U.S. space program. He guided viewers through Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, often alongside astronaut-turned-analyst Wally Schirra. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969, Cronkite's voice, momentarily wordless with wonder, captured both the scientific achievement and the human emotion of the moment. He interviewed key figures and framed the narrative so that audiences could follow complex engineering and exploration as a shared civic project, linking the work of astronauts like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to a larger story of discovery.

Succession, Writing, and Later Work
Cronkite stepped down from the CBS Evening News in 1981, and Dan Rather succeeded him after a highly watched internal competition that also involved Roger Mudd. Named anchor emeritus, Cronkite continued to appear on major broadcasts and documentaries, contributed commentaries, and lent his voice to specials on history, science, and public affairs. He published A Reporter's Life in 1996, a memoir that reflected on the craft of journalism and the responsibility that accompanies a commanding platform. He also revisited the events he had covered in the series and companion volume Cronkite Remembers, placing the day-to-day work of a newsroom in the longer arc of American history.

Personal Life and Character
In 1940, Cronkite married Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell. Their partnership steadied him through the demands of wartime reporting and decades of nightly broadcasts. They raised three children, Nancy, Kathy, and Walter Leland Cronkite III, and maintained a family life that, though necessarily public, was anchored in privacy and routine. Outside the newsroom, Cronkite loved sailing and sought out time on the water along the East Coast, a counterbalance to the deadline-driven rhythms of broadcast news. Friends and colleagues often remarked on his collegiality, his exacting preparation, and his insistence that on-air authority be earned by off-air reporting.

Awards and Honors
Cronkite received numerous professional honors, including Emmy and Peabody awards that recognized the breadth and consistency of his work. In 1981, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a capstone acknowledgment of his influence on American public life. These distinctions reflected not celebrity but trust, earned through clarity, fairness, and an ability to explain complicated events without condescension or drama for its own sake.

Legacy and Final Years
Cronkite remained an active voice for journalistic ethics, defending fact-based reporting and warning against the corrosive effects of sensationalism. He encouraged younger reporters to separate analysis from opinion, to value accuracy over speed, and to remember that credibility accumulates slowly and can be lost quickly. After Betsy's death in 2005, Cronkite continued to appear at public forums and special broadcasts. He died on July 17, 2009, in New York City at the age of 92.

Cronkite's legacy endures in the habits he modeled and the colleagues he influenced, figures such as Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Don Hewitt, Sandy Socolow, and Dan Rather, and in a library of broadcasts that became part of the national memory. He helped define what an anchor could be: a reporter first, a careful editor of information, and a steady civic presence. For generations of viewers, "the way it is" became not just a sign-off, but a standard.

Our collection contains 18 quotes who is written by Walter, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Truth - Friendship - Learning - Freedom.

Other people realated to Walter: Andy Rooney (Journalist), Harry Reasoner (Journalist), William Westmoreland (Soldier), Charles Kuralt (Journalist), Jack Gould (Journalist), Rachel Maddow (Journalist)

• 1996 A Reporter's Life (Autobiography)