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Why the World Trusted Walter
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Walter Cronkite was as much a performer as today’s cable-news anchors. The difference, writes Lee Siegel, is this era of Olbermann and O’Reilly taught audiences to doubt the news.
We cynically reject any attempt at sincerity nowadays, but when it comes to the past we are as credulous as little children. You would never know from all the reverential commentary on Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at the age of 92, that this “legendary” and “iconic” news anchor was not naturally “avuncular,” “reassuring,” and “authoritative” in front of the camera.
In the last few days we have heard, like a mantra, that Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America.” The implication is that there has been a terrible falling-off, that the news has let us down and we will never be able to trust anyone like that again.
Rather, Cronkite was a consummate performer who night after night put these qualities over on an audience yearning to be authoritatively and avuncularly reassured.
Did Cronkite fiddle with his earpiece or get up and take a look at news as it came in from the wire services spontaneously? Put anyone in front of a camera and they stop being themselves and start being what the camera requires of them. Show someone what they look like in front of the camera and they will never present themselves in the same way again. Did Cronkite really break down for a moment as he reported President Kennedy’s assassination? Maybe. Maybe not.
The difference between print journalism and TV, or what you might call screen journalism, is that the former hides the physical person while the latter reveals it. Once you introduce the element of watching someone else, you are in the realm of entertainment. The person you are Skyping with on your computer screen is no longer merely communicating with you. He or she is entertaining you. The advent of the TV anchor is the advent of the journalist as actor.
This is not to say that because Cronkite was performing his delivery of the news rather than “being himself” as he delivered it, he was some type of fraud. On the contrary. He was some kind of wonder.
Proust had his madeleine, millions of people have the memory of Cronkite’s voice—his gravelly imperturbable tone is bound up with the illusion that the past is a golden country, that before Kennedy’s murder, Vietnam, and Watergate, America was a stable, innocent, harmonious place.
But America was always mad in its innocence, conspiracy-fraught, conflict-driven, ebullient, boisterous and bad. What has changed between Cronkite’s heyday and the disappearance of his type is our perception of authority. America and Cronkite both shared the illusion that public life did not consist of a series of masks that had to be ripped away. If Cronkite said that’s the way it was, then his audience happily believed that’s the way it was. We accepted his performance of sincere authority because we wanted to.
Now the Olbermanns, O’Reillys, Stewarts et al. sign off after assuring us that nothing is as it seems. Their job is to puncture anyone who in the previous 24 hours told us, with any kind of authority, that this is the way it was. And we happily accept their performance of ironic, sarcastic anti-sincerity because we want to.
Yet all we’ve done is exchange Cronkite’s illusion of knowledge acquired (all that’s worth knowing is what he told us) for the current illusion of knowingness achieved (all that’s worth knowing is that every claim to knowledge is a sham).
The question is, which is more dangerous? A situation in which we feel that news authority is to be taken at its word—thus making us vulnerable to deception? Or a situation in which we feel that the function of the news is to keep stripping away the illusion of its own authority—thus making us vulnerable to the deception that, well, we are now invulnerable to deception? Is it better to have the wool pulled over our eyes, or to be blinded with the illusion of transparency? Better to be deceived as gullible fools, or as knowing fools? Either way, we still keep getting deceived.
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But this circuitous argument about what an act and what is not an act is ridiculous.
We always believe something. Horribly enough today it is not as much the talking head news shows as it used to be. Instead it's the big "makeover" shows -- Bridezillas and all the home improvement reality crap. In fact, we LOVE to believe that the UNreality of Reality TV is real.
Haven't we gotten nuttier about the media we watch? I think so. Yes, back int the day we took the MSM for face value. News was what they told us it was. But isn't that a saner style of delusion than what we have now?
And BTW, the big difference between Cronkite and all the rest of the glitzy heads on TV serving up "news" is that Cronkite was an actual newsman for decades before he got in front of the camera. It is a person's experiences and what that person respects that makes the truth of that person. Walter Cronkite was an excellent journalist and a great anchor.
We are poorer for the fact that we no longer have real broadcast journalists.
Olbermann and O'Reilly, or rather cable "news", are not news. They are entertainment.
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I beg to differ that O'Reilly is entertainment - my head explodes if I watch him for more than a few minutes.
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Stewart is a comedienne. Cronkite was a real newsman, though wonder if he would be so popular today? The Brits have a term for the folks presenting the news today. It is 'presenter'.
they're called news readers in Australia
one of the best was Mary Kostakidis
it appears Rachel Maddow is emulating her appearance style...
the reason he was trusted was that he looked like Walt Disney.
WC tried very hard to be nonpartisan and fair. He didn't succumb to trying to be celebrated. He didn't emote for the sake of ratings or critical acclaim. He tried to report what was meaningful and didn't hype any particular point of view. He was a great American. Sic transit gloria mundi. George Patton
This is the most perceptive piece of Siegel's I have read. Cronkite was a limousine liberal who play-acted at giving us the news straight down the middle. The clowns today give us want they think we want. It's more honest.
Television news has changed since the days of WC. It used to be that the news department wasn't a profit center. Reporters of all types (as opposed to news readers or commentators) populated the news division and worked to actually investigate/report on what was happening and let the chips fall where they may. Now the news departments have to turn a profit and they dare not offend the company owners, such as GE or Disney and they are afraid to ask tough questions of the pols because of fear of losing access (always an issue), but today it seems worse. International coverage is terrible because the bureaus in many cases have been closed because they cost so much to keep open. Cable "news" is often the worst of the worst. Fox News, which is just a propaganda arm of the right wing, is in part designed to create mistrust/doubt of the media among news consumers. Even PBS is contaminated by advertising these days. There is no longer a pure public news entity. If you want to know what is really going on you have to dig and consume many different sources for a clearer picture to come into view.
Don't kid yourself. PBS is as much to the left as Fox is to the right. The "talent" like Jim Lehrer speak in a modulated tone of voice so you think you're getting an honest report. Putting a weenie like David Brooks on to represent the conservative point of view is a dead giveaway.
You're kidding yourself now. If David Brooks is a weenie, what do you call Fox's token liberal, Juan Williams? Liberals could just as easily complain that the NewsHour features Mark Shields!
The news today is about ratings, entertainment, ratings, political bias, and ratings.
Well said.
Comparing Cronkite and the news of his era with todays 24 hour news cycle is a bit of an apples and oranges situation. Walter Cronkite reported the news. No spin, no opinions. He only had 15 minutes to do it as an anchor at first and later expanded to 30 minutes. Now, even with all of the news outlets, you have to sift through the B.S. to find the actual news. It's all opinion, conjecture, and in some cases fear mongering. If I have the news on, and the comentator says "here representing the left is so n so, and here representing the right is so n so", I change the channel. I already know what each side is going to say and I don't really have time for the B.S.
The fact is, I feel sorry for folks who have to get their fix from one particular commentator or one particular network. I seems as if they tune in to find out what their opinion should be. Difficult as it is, seek out the actual news and form your own opinions. If you can't I'm sure the news networks have plenty of time to form your opinions for you. Where's Walter Cronkite when we need him?
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Hopefully you aren't crowing about Couric asking Palin questions -- that my 4yr old niece could answer.
note to america: you are not the *world*
this is a minor readjustment to make to your worldview which would be highly beneficial for everyone on the planet.
TV was different when Walter got started, because TV was relatively new. There was no class of professional TV news anchors. So they often put ACTUAL REPORTERS on TV. The folks on TV today are just copies of copies of copies, growing fainter and weaker with each generation.
Cronkite had a rich ,deep tone to his voice that also projected kindness. Now most reporters sound angry to me. Some on Fox sound really bitchy You can see the anger in the eyes..The kindness comes from the heart.You cannot teach that.
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Why the World Trusted Walter
ok
Why I Don't Trust Siegel
he doesn't have his facts right
Fine, then just stop watching the news altogether. If you don't have your own damn internal b.s. editor, you might just deserve being deceived. Siegel makes it sound like we have no free will to chose to accept "the way it is" or to just say, "Hmm, clever of Walter to come up with that gimmicky sign-off at the end of his delivery."
For cryin' out loud, does everything have to be an indictment of self-delusion?
comparing jon stewart & walter cronkite is patently absurd. the author reduces cronkite to a 'performer' of the news, & the telling of JFK's death as measured for its affect on his audience. that is cynical & ridiculous. i watched this as a child & wept. I wept again when he told the nation the MLK jr. had been slaughtered.Mr. Siegel is exploiting the death of a great man to score points. shame on him.
Sharp piece.
I would contend we are much, much better off today to know that what we hear and, increasingly less, read is likely biased, distorted or not to be trust. Yet you make a good point about mindless cynicism--it, too, is destructive.
In the end, though, ignorance is a greater evil than cynicism. I'm happy the public knows Couric and company shamelessly lie. That the knowledge can become on a personal level the self-parody of a Keith Olbermann is not too great a price.
Thank you.
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