And most of the time, that was the way it was. Or pretty darned close.

I will not say that Walter Cronkite, who died today at 92, never let his liberal politics influence his reporting. But he was good enough at keeping his politics and his journalism separate that I didn't know for sure until after he retired whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. Whether you're in the habit of excoriating the bias of Fox News on the Right, or that of pretty much the rest of the mainstream media on the Left, there aren't many national news figures you can say that about today.

For me, and for my generation, the avuncular Mr. Cronkite personified journalistic integrity. When Walter Cronkite told you something, you believed it. "The most trusted man in America," they called him- and they may have been right.

We all have our memories of probably the greatest TV news anchor in history. There were those three, terrible days in November 1963, when a nation in which such things just didn't happen anymore first watched in horror and grief as a young president was assassinated, and then mourned his death. Walter Cronkite held our collective hands through the horror. I, who was in the midst of the event, still recall from the snippets I caught that night and the rebroadcasts later the eloquent outrage of Walter Cronkite as Chicago's police, provoked beyond the point of human endurance, finally threw the law and all professionalism to the winds and assaulted the innocent and the guilty alike on Michigan Avenue during the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago. I recall the childlike wonder in Cronkite's voice as human beings left the gravitational bonds of Earth for the first time, and planted Old Glory on the surface of the moon.

The list of Cronkite memories is endless for a person of my generation. And plenty of tributes have been written already to the last American television journalist to inspire a trust which truly transcended the passions of partisan politics. To recall how well he concealed his political views- and they were indeed far to the Left- until after he left the anchor role at CBS News is perhaps the best tribute he could be given. Sadly, no network anchor has come anywhere near matching his example in the long years since.

The death of Walter Cronkite is more than the passing of one more iconic figure from
my own past, and that of my generation. It's the loss of a reminder that it's possible to have strong opinions without allowing them to overcome one's objectivity entirely, and to disagree agreeably with those who reach opposite conclusions. Back when I aspired to a career in journalism, it was freely conceded that even journalists couldn't avoid having opinions. But they were under a professional obligation not only to conceal them for the sake of their own credibility, but to strive to transcend them for the sake of their own objectivity. Walter Cronkite succeeded amazingly in doing the first; he may not always have won that second battle, but no journalist truly ever does. But he came closer to doing so than any national journalist I can think of off hand, and that is reason enough in this uncivil age to honor his memory.

HT: Drudge