Singer has already served 100 hours of community service.
Walter Cronkite Dead at 92
Legendary newsman took America through everything from the assassination of President Kennedy to the Vietnam War and the Apollo space missions.
Legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, once voted the “most trusted man in America,” died Friday. He was 92.
The anchor of the CBS Evening News for 19 years, Cronkite had been suffering from a cerebrovascular disease, which affects the blood vessels in the brain.
Affectionately known as “Uncle Walter,” he was best known for his trusted reporting and his sign-off catchphrase, “And that’s the way it is,” which he followed with the date. He reported on most of the world's major events, including Watergate, the Vietnam War and the Apollo space missions.
Most memorably, the usually stoic news anchor cried on the air while reporting the death of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963.
Though not the first network news anchor, the term was coined after his coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 1952 -- the first time conventions were nationally televised.
"For decades, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted voice in America," President Obama said in a statementThursday night. "His rich baritone reached millions of living rooms every night, and in an industry of icons, Walter set the standard by which all others have been judged. He was there through wars and riots, marches and milestones, calmly telling us what we needed to know. And through it all, he never lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland."
Cronkite ascended to the role of evening news anchor in 1963. He initially trailed the NBC team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley in the ratings, but CBS began to invest more in its evening news and Cronkite came to dominate the profession.
When he reported that the Vietnam War was unwinnable after witnessing the Tet Offensive, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Similarly, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee credited Cronkite with keeping the “Watergate” story alive. “Somehow many other editors felt when Cronkite -- the great white father of the American people -- said that the Washington Post was right, the story suddenly was worth their attention and coverage,” Bradlee said in a forum published in his old paper.
While Cronkite did not become a titan in the industry until his '50s, he was drawn to journalism from an early age. He was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, on Nov. 5 1916 and after moving to Texas for middle school and high school, he attended the University of Texas at Austin. While at school, he worked for the Daily Texan; he dropped out of college in 1935 to begin working as a radio announcer.
He went on to work for KCMO in Kansas City,where he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, known by her nickname “Betsy.” The two married in 1940 and remained together until Maxwell’s death on March 16, 2005, just two weeks short of their 65th anniversary.
While still in Kansas City, Cronkite joined United Press, for whom he covered World War II, the Nuremberg trials and Soviet Russia.



Comments
wert5 Says
McConnell is correct: Bush applying pressure (continuously criminally stalking Margie Schoedinger) purposefully to force Schoedinger to commit suicide does in fact constitute murder where it culminated in her death.games
Devoirs Says
WALTER CRONKITE'S JOURNALISM WAS EXCELLENT.
CRONKITE LEAVES BEHIND A GOOD LEGACY.
CRONKITE POSITIVELY INFLUENCED OTHERS.
_____________________
SCANDALS! SCANDALS! SCANDALS!
DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
GEORGE W. BUSH IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CRIMINAL STALKER AND SERIAL KILLER!
“In her suit, Margie Schoedinger states that George W. Bush committed sexual crimes against her, organized harassment and moral pressure on her, her family members and close relatives and friends. As Schoedinger said, she was strongly recommended to keep her mouth shut. . . . Furthermore, she alleges that George Bush ordered to show pressure on her to the point, when she commits suicide” (go to Google, type “blog of drizzten Margie Schoedinger,” and hit “Enter”).
“George [Bush is personally complicit] in the death (murder to be precise) of my friend Margie Schoedinger in September of 2003. Determining the exact whereabouts and contacts of . . . George Bush on September 21 thru 22, 2003, should be entirely lacking in difficulty” (Leola McConnell—Nevada Progressive Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010).
McConnell is correct: Bush applying pressure (continuously criminally stalking Margie Schoedinger) purposefully to force Schoedinger to commit suicide does in fact constitute murder where it culminated in her death.
Bush’s method of murdering Schoedinger cannot exist in a vacuum: he must have murdered other people in the same way.
During Bush’s presidency, of course Bush would have desired to kill people whom he hated or get them out of his way. Insofar as Bush was clearly capable of murdering Schoedinger—even in “broad daylight”—and is clearly capable of getting away with it, in consideration of common sense and the laws of human nature, Bush of course murdered numerous people in the disgusting way he murdered Schoedinger. One can examine public information; in various situations where people who sought to oppose or disadvantage Bush ever so frighteningly ended up “committing suicide”—specifically—Bush murdered them just like he murdered Schoedinger. For example, Bush murdered James Howard Hatfield by continuously criminally stalking Hatfield to the point that Hatfield could not get away from it—purposefully to force Hatfield to commit suicide—and Hatfield committed suicide in desperation to escape. However, the vast majority of such scandalous cases will never come out (the grisly details are typically hard to substantiate). A prosecutor really can lawfully charge a former president with murdering one or more people in the disgusting way Bush murdered Schoedinger. The American people unfortunately live in a world where evil presidents can murder any number of people—figuratively—with a wave of a magic wand and get away with it.
(There are thousands of copies of the information above on the Internet. Please feel free to go to any major search engine, type “GEORGE W. BUSH IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CRIMINAL STALKER AND SERIAL KILLER” or “George W. Bush continuously criminally stalked Margie Schoedinger to the point that she could not get away from it, and she committed suicide in desperation to escape: he murdered her” or “George W. Bush applying pressure (continuously criminally stalking Margie Schoedinger) purposefully to force Schoedinger to commit suicide does in fact constitute murder where it culminated in her death” or “George W. Bush murdered James Howard Hatfield by continuously criminally stalking Hatfield to the point that Hatfield could not get away from it—purposefully to force Hatfield to commit suicide—and Hatfield committed suicide in desperation to escape,” hit “Enter,” and readily find hundreds of copies.)
(Please feel free to go to Google, type “GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY blog of Andrew Wang,” and hit “Enter.”)
_____________________
Andrew Wang
(a.k.a. “THE DISSEMINATING MACHINE”)
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
Sharon Waxman Says
“It is fair to say there would be no Discovery Channel without Walter
Cronkite. When we struggled for funding and viability in the early 1980s,
Walter was one of the first to see the possibility of a 24-hour channel
dedicated to high quality storytelling about the world around us. His
guidance, support and commitment were instrumental in securing the
resources and distribution to first launch Discovery in 1985. He remained
a friend, mentor and invaluable counselor to me. Walter also contributed
many outstanding programs to help inform our global audience including
telling his life story to Discovery Channel viewers through a remarkable
8-part series called CRONKITE REMEMBERS in 1996. I will miss him greatly,
and on behalf of the 4000 Discovery employees worldwide, we mourn the
passing of our dear friend and colleague who inspired the world with his
boundless sense of curiosity. We will continue live up to his standard of
excellence and integrity in everything we do each and every day."
-- John S. Hendricks, Founder and Chairman of Discovery Communications
Sharon Waxman Says
"He was the most important voice in our lives for thirty years And that voice made people reach for the stars. I hate the world without Walter Cronkite. "
George Clooney, July 17, 2009
David A. Andelman Says
Above all, Walter was a kind and wonderful human being, a true gentleman.
In the late Fall of 1980, when I had just joined CBS News from The New York Times as a newly-minted and extremely green correspondent, I produced the first piece that aired with my voice and name on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. It was, of course, one of the last broadcasts he would anchor before being forced, quite unceremoniously, from the anchor chair by Dan Rather. I stood in a far corner of the studio, behind the cameras watching the entire spectacle of a network evening news show going on the air. With all those bright lights on the set, and my small corner bathed in darkness, I had no idea Walter had any idea I was even there. At the end, though, after he'd signed off the air, he rose from the anchor chair, strode straight across the set to where I was standing, stuck out his hand and shook mine firmly.
"Thank you very much for your wonderful contribution to my broadcast," he said warmly and smiled his gentle, thousand watt smile. "I'm sure it will be just the first of many." Unfortunately, four months later, on March 6, 1981, Walter signed off the air at the CBS Evening News for the last time.
Still, it was not the last time that he would be in my corner, as it turned out. More than six years later, when Laurence Tisch bought CBS and fired more than 300 people who were the heart and soul of CBS News, closing a half dozen bureaus including the Paris bureau where I was serving as correspondent, Walter went to bat for me and the twelve other senior correspondents whose career Tisch was about to end.
Walter had never earned a seven figure salary, even at the end of his illustrious career. And, he told, Tisch, to little effect, it would be far preferable to trim the salaries of a few at the top (his successor Dan Rather was clearly in his thoughts), than to lose those on the ground who'd made CBS News the industry standard.
It was Walter who was then and remains an industry standard we should all respect and follow.
David A. Andelman
Editor
World Policy Journal
NEW COMMENT