Cronkite (92 page)

127 “You can’t write horror stories”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 73.

127 The Nazis had starved and beaten:
Goddard,
Canada and the Liberation of the Netherlands
, pp. 209–214.

128 “There is absolutely no food”:
Walter Cronkite letter, May 20, 1945, WCP-UTA.

128 “It would serve America well to listen”:
Walter Cronkite, “200th Anniversary of Friendship and Unbroken Diplomatic Relations with the Netherlands.”

129 Cronkite was able to buy wire:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, pp. 122–124.

130 “I had a curious feeling of age”:
Eric Sevareid,
Not So Wild a Dream
, p. 511.

131 he was “in a kind of mental coma”:
Ibid., pp. 511–512.

131 He attended General Patton’s funeral:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 77.

132 The courtroom was an old German theater:
Joseph E. Persico,
Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial
(New York: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 132.

Nine
: From the Nuremberg Trials to Russia

134 “They had come into the dock”:
Walter Cronkite,
The Nuremberg Trials
(transcript), PBS,
American Experience
, 2006, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nuremberg/filmmore/pt.html.

134 “We’d get drunk around the bar and debate”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 80.

134 “The real skill,” he recalled of Stringer:
Walter Cronkite oral history interview, WCP-UTA.

134 “We got a lot of damn good front page stories”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, pp. 79–80.

135 procuring “new information”:
Walter Cronkite, “Goering’s Wife Tells How She Helped Build Fortune,” UP, July 9, 1946.

135 “Göring displayed on the stand”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, p. 126.

135 “As soon as the defendants saw”:
Cronkite,
The Nuremberg Trials
.

135 “There has been much criticism”:
Timothy White, “Walter: We Hardly Knew You,”
Rolling Stone
, February 5, 1981.

136 “I have a vivid memory of Walter coming to visit”:
Author interview with Kay Barnes, July 7, 2011.

136 “I was chief correspondent”:
Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1998.

137 Moscow was to Betsy Cronkite “a last bastion of empire”:
Betsy Cronkite as told to Lyn Tornabee, “My Husband the Newscaster.”

137 “They lived a dual existence”:
Author interview with Kathy Cronkite, March 22, 2011.

137 “Life at the Metropol was a little like”:
Harrison Salisbury,
A Journey for Our Times
(New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 255.

137 With UP picking up the tab, the Cronkites spent a long weekend:
Earl Wilson, “A Visit with Walter Cronkite,”
Houston Post,
September 11, 1955
.

137 “Sprawled in a snowbank this morning I heard”:
Walter Cronkite, UP clippings, WCP-UTA.

138 “The foreign correspondent in Moscow”:
Walter Cronkite, “Newsmen in Moscow Run Get Their Stories on Papers,” UP, March 23, 1948.

139 “After the smashing of the German source of international reaction”:
Walter Cronkite, “Red Commentator Says Truman, Marshall Head Aggression Rising,” UP, September 25, 1947.

139 Whatever veneer of excitement that had glossed:
Salisbury,
A Journey for Our Times
, p. 248.

140 ending its policy of “limited friendship”:
David Halberstam,
The Powers That Be
(New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 240.

140 “If they had known we were newspaper people”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, p. 153.

141 “the best masculine garb for the video camera”:
Jack Gould, “Television and Politics,”
New York Times
, July 18, 1948.

141 needed to have a happy-go-lucky “anchorman”:
There is a dispute concerning the coining of the term
anchorman
. Three different broadcasting executives have claimed provenance: Sig Mickelson, Don Hewitt, and Paul Levitan.

141 “In a town overrun with eager beavers”:
Gould, “Television and Politics.”

Ten
: Infancy of TV News

145 a pregnant Betsy had returned to Kansas City:
Walter Cronkite interview with Richard Snow, “He Was There,”
American Heritage
45, no. 8 (1994): 42–44.

145 “I raced half way around the world”:
“Walter Cronkite: TV Biography,” Special Projects, CBS News, May 15, 1953, CBS News Archive, New York.

145 “That’s the way it was in those days”:
Author interview with Nancy Cronkite, April 4, 2011.

146 Cronkite theorized that he could pick up the slack:
Detroit News Magazine
, September 24, 1978.

146 “It was a very fine, responsible radio station”:
Ibid.

146 “Solid as a mountain”:
Miller and Runyon, “And That’s the Way It Seems.”

146 “When Walter got into radio”:
Author interview with Bob Schieffer, July 13, 2009.

147 “Cronkite is in Washington to establish headquarters”:
Jim Carson, “Listen!”
Atchison Daily Globe
, January 9, 1949.

147 Having the Missouri connection would give Cronkite:
White, “Walter, We Hardly Knew You.”

147 The Cronkites rented a small house:
Author interview with Nancy Cronkite, April 4, 2011.

147 Edward R. Murrow was a semiregular guest:
Ann M. Sperber,
Murrow, His Life and Times
(New York: Freudlich, 1986), p. 225.

148 “I couldn’t believe that anybody was going to take McCarthy seriously”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 114.

148 “Walter being Walter, he got to know Sam Rayburn”:
Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

149 “The people who say TV will destroy”:
Joseph E. Persico,
Edward R. Murrow: An American Original
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), p. 301.

149 “the Murrows, Collingwoods, Sevareids wouldn’t deign”:
Felicity Barringer, “Sig Mickelson, First Director of CBS’s TV News, Dies at 86,”
New York Times
, March 27, 2000.

149 Murrow, along with producer Fred Friendly, had been doing:
Ben Gross, “Looking and Listening,”
New York Sunday News
, June 28, 1953.

149 Born in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1917, Edwards began a career:
Denis Hevesi, “Douglas Edwards, First TV Anchorman, Dies at 73,”
New York Times
, October 14, 1990.

150 “First it was
television
”:
Conway,
The Origins of Television News in America
, p. 2.

150 Edwards’s fifteen-minute show on CBS:
Halberstam,
The Powers That Be
, p. 123.

150 NBC started its own TV news program:
Barbara Matusow,
The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), p. 60.

150 Swayze could ad-lib a bit:
Frederick Jacobi Jr., “Video Newscaster,”
New York Times
, September 10, 1950.

151 “didn’t know how to query me for information”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 101.

151 “Ed said that not many guys get a second chance”:
Ibid, pp. 102–103.

152 “KMBC-KFRM Washington Correspondent has taken an indefinite leave”:
Carson, “Listen!”

152 Stanton was the provost type:
Holcomb B. Noble, “Frank Stanton, Broadcasting Pioneer, Dies at 98,”
New York Times,
December 26, 2006.

153 “ ‘Go out and do five minutes on the evening news’ ”:
“News Commentator Walter Cronkite,”
Detroit News Magazine
, September 4, 1978.

153 Cronkite drew arrows on the map:
Tom Wicker, “Broadcast News,”
New York Times
, January 26, 1997.

153 “We were still trying to figure out how to do news on television”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 104.

154 his was the only name CBS would promote:
“Display Ad 28,”
Washington Post
, November 7, 1950.

154 “Within six months he was the talk of the town”:
Shadel, “An Uncharted Career,” p. 8.

154 “How do you do the news so perfectly”:
Author interview with Shirley Wershba, July 6, 2011.

155 “[Shadel] came every Wednesday night”:
Walter Cronkite, Foreword to Shadel, “An Uncharted Career.”

155 “Walter Winchell drops a line to the effect that”:
Joe Wershba, “A Real TV Ace Doesn’t Need a Script,”
Washington Post
, January 23, 1951.

155 Cronkite and Lindley aired new combat footage:
“Display Ad 60,”
Washington Post
, June 24, 1951.

156 “I went on and I did the news”:
Walter Cronkite, oral history interview with Don Carleton, p. 198, WCP-UTA.

157 Murrow had been influenced by the immediacy:
Persico,
Edward R. Murrow
, p. 300.

157 “The television performance,” he admitted about the Kefauver investigations:
William Manchester,
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America
(New York: Bantam Books, 1975), p. 601.

157 “This is an old team trying to learn”:
Quoted in Persico,
Edward R. Murrow
, p. 303.

157 His voice inflections always seemed:
Walter Cronkite, oral history interview with Don Carleton, p. 200, WCP-UTA.

158 “a real slick job”:
John Crosby, “White House Tour a Real Slick Job,”
Washington Post
, May 10, 1952.

158 “Do the clocks run”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, p. 170.

158 “saw Cronkite as Douglas Edwards’ successor”:
Hewitt,
Tell Me a Story
, p. 55.

158 “Walter Cronkite was not one of the Murrow Boys”:
Halberstam,
The Powers That Be
, p. 238.

158 they offered Cronkite a job as substitute host:
“Radio-TV Notes,”
New York Times
, June 29, 1951.

158 Cronkite, the substitute, became the host in 1954:
David Schwartz, Steve Ryan, and Fred Westbrook,
The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows
(New York: Checkmark Books, 1999), pp. 106–7.

Eleven
: Election Night and UNIVAC

159 “It seemed then that a revolution”:
Sig Mickelson,
The Electric Mirror: Politics in an Age of Television
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972), p. vii.

160 “I used to see him fairly frequently”:
Jay Perkins, “Television Covers the 1952 Political Conventions in Chicago: An Oral History Interview with Sig Mickelson,”
Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television
18, no. 1 (1998). Perkins used sections from a number of oral histories Mickelson conducted from July 30 to August 2, 1993. Those interview tapes—recorded in San Diego—are on file at the Middleton Library at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Two other Mickelson oral histories exist at San Diego State University and Columbia University.

160 morphing CBS Radio and CBS TV:
Gary Paul Gates,
Air Time: The Story of CBS
News
(New York: Berkeley, 1979), p. 59.

160 “I held to my [pro-Cronkite] position”:
Perkins, “Television Covers the 1952 Political Conventions in Chicago.”

161 “I am not sure if that term was ever used”:
Ibid.

161 “political shell-game . . . rigged, traded”:
Sperber,
Murrow, His Life and Times
, p. 385.

161 the idea was nixed as an illegal corporate contribution:
Martin Plissner,
The Control Room: How Television Calls the Shots in Presidential Elections
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 35.

161 “I had little contact with Edward R. Murrow”:
Perkins, “Television Covers the 1952 Political Conventions in Chicago.”

162 “all in the eyes”:
Michael A. Russo, “CBS and the American Political Experience: A History of the CBS News Special Events and Election Units, 1952–1968,” PhD dissertation, New York University, June 1983, pp. 86–88.

162 The 1952 coverage of both Chicago political conventions:
John Crosby, “Too Much Coverage?”
Council Bluffs
Non Pareil
, July 13, 1952.

162 “TV had been radio’s little brother”:
Plissner,
The Control Room
, p. 36.

162 “Those 1952 conventions were not only the first”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, p. 182.

163 “We were young,” Mickelson recalled:
Perkins, “Television Covers the 1952 Political Conventions in Chicago.”

163 CBS planned to find a “common man”:
Val Adams, “How Much Commentary Is Necessary?”
New York Times
, July 20, 1952.

163 The 1952 Democratic Convention is remembered in the annals of U.S. political history:
Plissner,
The Control Room
, p. 36.

164 “proclaiming that they favored television”:
Reuven Frank,
Out of Thin Air
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 55–56.

164 “He ran a wire,” Cronkite recalled, “up the outside of the hotel”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, p. 91.

164 “ethical considerations did not deeply disturb us”:
Mickelson,
From Whistle Stop to Sound Bite
, p. 37.

165 CBS’s convention coverage ran for 13.9 hours:
Plissner,
The Control Room
, p. 38.

165 “Walter Cronkite,” he wrote, “the slot man for CBS”:
Crosby, “Too Much Coverage?”

165 “Television,” David Halberstam wrote of early 1950s journalism:
Halberstam,
The Powers That Be
, p. 130.

165 “I am succeeding in maintaining objectivity”:
Walter Cronkite to Don Michel, Michel Archive (personal), Dallas, Texas.