I miss Walter Cronkite, and you should too. It was not a fluke that he was coveted as the “most trusted man in America” for decades. Americans knew that when tuning in to the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite they were going to get a factual, unbiased, apolitical delivery of the most important “hard news” items for that day.
As much as we trusted him, he trusted us as individuals and as a Republic to know that if he gave us the facts, Americans were capable and ready to understand, ponder, discuss and decide with a majority, the ramifications to our country for any given reported event. That was made possible because Cronkite practiced the skills and craft of the discipline of journalism.
Our founders, when envisioning application of the First Amendment to our Constitution, they blended the concepts of freedo! m of speech and freedom of the press to reach a concept of Freedom of Expression in as such one can not exist without the other. As a Nation, we have veered precariously away from the intent of the designers of our United States. We were entrusted with the First Amendment and we have failed its authors and signers.
Our founders, as modernized by the Supreme Court, intended the craft of journalism, as it relates to freedom of the press to be writing, speaking, broadcasting or any other means of mass communications characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation or utilizing bias. (emphasis added)
The First Amendment is supposed to protect us from government dictating what we must believe and how we should worship. In this day of the 24 hour news cycle and the thirst for sensationalism at the cost of facts, it appears to me that the media has become a polarizing quasi government that! violates the intention of the founders every second of every day. As a society we now make our decisions as citizens by ingesting worthless drivel and untruths spewed out at us from totally polar and equally destructive perspectives. The American ability to determine facts from fiction and arrive at our own fate is dead due to the disappearance of the craft of journalism.
Like I said, I miss Walter Cronkite …….
James Sayles
Mason City, Iowa
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12 thoughts on “Opinion: The Sad Disappearance of Unbiased Journalism”
Today in print and multi media journalism there is news and opinion, the lines between the two has become blurred, This challenges us to become responsible consumers of information and do the research as best we can. Its a good thing
Walter Cronkite was far more neutral than anyone I have seen on tv today.
All news has become tabloid.
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
Oh i guise-Wow, I think you have finally lost it. You are one screwed up person and I kind of feel sorry for you and the world you live in. My world is nothing like that.
https://youtu.be/ZwMVMbmQBug
“Coveted as”?!
cronkite is the father of fake news like odummy is the father of ISIS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwdMAYGYVG0
Yes, until he chose to speak of his opinion on the Vietnam War, then I think is where the news caster became the news maker
I can relate to this, as I was getting closer to voting age i started paying more attention to the news. I never questioned the personal agenda of the faces on tv giving me the news. They simply reported what the priority of the day was with out leaving one side of the story for us to question. I never had to sit back and wonder what party affiliation he or she was representing, they were simply reporting the news. I’m sure that’s not to say things weren’t framed in different light but it wasn’t the first thing you thought about. Peronal opinions with one sided reporting is certainly the norm. I miss those days too. Thank you for reminding me and others.
Walter Cronkite was a LIB!
you wont get that with the globe gazette….they have john skipper…the worse reporter in the whole state of Iowa. For the last 25+ years the man has been in the pocket of all of the mason city’s leadership…latest conquest is Mayor Bookmeyer . Bookmeyer coughs Skipper is there with a hankie . His column’s stick of biased reporting. .and since he is in Iowa and a small towns newspaper he has managed to make a career of being in the right pocket of any councilman or mayor who wants to have their great ideas reported on and pushed for…. I miss Walter Cronkite and reporters in his generation..they reported the facts and never voiced their opinions like they do now.