"I never had the ambition to be something. I had the ambition to do something."
In times like these, we sure could use Walter Cronkite
“As CBS News anchor, Cronkite played a major role in coverage of NASA space flight, the JFK assassination, the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, Middle East foreign policy and so much more. All the while he was ‘The Most Trusted Man in America.’”
“Nobody fought harder to protect free speech and triple-sourced accurate journalism than Cronkite,” Douglas Brinkley said. “I wrote the book as a wake-up call to remember that the Fourth Estate is essential for our democracy to survive.”
Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.
The Manufacturing of Dictators: We’ve Been Getting Human Nature Wrong for 100 Years
"In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story."
Walter Cronkite appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2001 and delivered powerful remarks about civic responsibility and the press. He stated that German citizens who applauded their government when it shuttered independent news outlets were "just as guilty" as the Nazis, and he emphasized that citizens have a "duty" to know what the government does in their name.
Uncle Walter was the voice the country trusted on the most extraordinary night of the twentieth century, the evening in July 1969 when two men set down on the Moon. At the moment the module landed, the anchor who never cracked on air briefly cracked. He took off his glasses. He said, “Oh, boy.” He rubbed his hands together like a child at a frosted window.
Set those two facts side by side, because they are really one fact in two outfits. The man who came apart at the Moon is the same man who went to bat for unglamorous buildings full of free books, and he understood something the rest of us tend to file in the wrong place.