There’s no story that breaks, including a five-alarm fire in Brooklyn, that I don’t wish I were covering. – Walter Cronkite
I can’t go into a mob scene and sense the mood and the attitude of the crowd. I can’t conduct man-on-the-street interviews or even get reactions that I can be sure are honest, because they know who I am. – Walter Cronkite
I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy. – Walter Cronkite
I never ceased to be surprised when southern whites, at their homes or clubs, told racial jokes and spoke so derogatorily of blacks while longtime servants, for whom they quite clearly had some affection, were well within earshot. – Walter Cronkite
A liberal to me is one who – and it suits some of the dictionary definitions – is unbeholden to any specific belief or party or group or person, but makes up his or her mind on the basis of the facts and the presentation of those facts at the time. That defines what I am. – Walter Cronkite
I worry that we’re not getting enough of the news that we need to make informed judgments as citizens. – Walter Cronkite
Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine. – Walter Cronkite
As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: ‘And that’s the way it is.’ To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue. – Walter Cronkite
Give news a little more time, and don’t request that they also, in their news time, entertain. We’re not entertainers. We’re journalists. And we need more time to do our job well. – Walter Cronkite
I think there are a lot of good pieces that can be covered in 20 minutes that don’t need an hour, but by the same token, there are things that need an hour or more. – Walter Cronkite
We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders. – Walter Cronkite
Maybe I’m just a slow learner or something, but I like to have things laid out as plainly and simply as possible. – Walter Cronkite
The whole period of the ’60s changed a lot of us; there was never a decade like that in American history… to have the decade capture one of the great accomplishments of this century: man landing on the moon. – Walter Cronkite
History must share with reading, writing and arithmetic first rank as the most important subjects in the curriculum. Understanding the issues on which citizens of a republic are expected to vote is impossible without an understanding of the past. – Walter Cronkite
Our job is only to hold up the mirror – to tell and show the public what has happened. – Walter Cronkite
I suppose popularity is measured by ratings. If a broadcaster is known as the leader because of ratings, then that’s where people most want to be seen and heard, so there’s no question that there’s an advantage. – Walter Cronkite
The military people don’t like it; the government probably doesn’t like it, but the people should know what they’re sending their young people into when they permit their governments to declare war and engage in war. – Walter Cronkite
I think it’d be great if the evening news broadcast, for instance, were unsponsored and unrated. – Walter Cronkite
You think you would react one way when a situation develops and, and when the sharp shells are flying, you don’t quite stand up like you think you might. – Walter Cronkite
I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor – not a commentator or analyst. – Walter Cronkite
The death of Churchill at 90 was one of those watershed moments in which the obituary rises to a special calling beyond the sharing of remembered times. It gave an older generation a rare opportunity to explain something of itself to its children. – Walter Cronkite
I never took any elocution lessons, no diction lessons. I might have been a pretty decent broadcaster if I had, but what you see, I’m afraid, is what you get. – Walter Cronkite
I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the ‘CBS Evening News’ for 19 years – well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever. – Walter Cronkite
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. – Walter Cronkite