Of all the accomplishments of Cronkite’s career, to think his greatest was talking off his glasses, biting his lip, and saying that Kennedy’s death was official, is kind of odd. But then again, Bing Crosby is seen as nothing more than a Christmas singer these days..

-- JKP1000

I get and understand your point. And I sure don't think that Cronkite's most important or remembered "accomplishment" should be that now famous bit of television drama. But, for me, it stands alone and apart from all the glorifying, eulogizing, bloviating and so forth, and I'll tell you why.

I was a young boy in an elementary school classroom at the time. A teacher from another room burst through the door of our classroom and, with grief and urgency exuding from the expression on her face, told our teacher to turn on the television, which was in the corner of the classroom. And then, after saying something about The President that couldn't possibly have sunk in to us immediately, she hurriedly ran back out and to her classroom.

So then I , along with all of my classmates and our teacher, proceeded to watch the entire Cronkite report that everyone, now, has been referring to. Watching that unfold, in real time, was something that I'll never forget. It was traumatizing. No less than that.

- A song with me -

Okay!!

A one!

A two!

A three!

"We are the world we are... Come on - You are not singing!!

let's also take a moment to remember and pay tribute to Natalya Estemirova, another real journalist of the type nowhere to be found in the American mainstream media anymore. She may not be as much of a household word as Cronkite, but that's because unlike him, she will never have the long and productive career that she should have had. She risked her life, and lost it, pursuing the truth behind the official lies of a corrupt government.

"We are the world we are... Come on - You are not singing!!

-- pieceofcake

That was pretty good comic relief. If we could see you conducting while wearing one sparkly white glove we wouldn't be able to resist singing along, I'm sure.

Via Talking Points Memo (but you can obtain the information directly), South Carolina's invaluable The State newspaper carried through on journalistic obligations first by using Freedom of Information Act (or local variants) requests for public emails sent to and from the governor's office, and second by publicly posting those emails, apparently now 750 pages worth.

Here's David Gregory's last, most excited, most supplicant pitch to get the invaluable Governor AWOL Sanford on as a guest:

[DAVID GREGORY E-MAILING TO MARK SANFORD'S PRESS AID]

Look, you guys have a lot of pitches .. I get it and I know this is a tough situation ... Let me just say this is the place to have a wider conversation with some context about not just the personal but also the future for him and the party ... This situation only exacerbates the issue of how the GOP recovers when another national leader suffers a setback like this. So coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to... and then move on. You can see (sic) you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/nbcs_gregory_to_sanfords_office_meet_the_press_all.php?ref=fpb

TPM Muckraker's Zachary Roth sums up:

When you read the emails by Gregory, King, Stephanopoulos and others, you start to understand why most major network interviews with politicians tend to be a lot less hard hitting than they need to be to really hold their subjects accountable. The politicians themselves have the power to make or break the networks, by granting or withholding access. That ends up meaning that, consciously or not, the networks soften their approaches -- both in their pitches, and in their actual interviews -- in exchange for that access.

That's how the world works, and it's hard to know what to do about it.

Whose role is it to discern fact from fiction? If it's not the establishment media's, what is their role? Those are two questions I'd like to ask David Gregory (or any of the "honorary professors" teaching media and journalism classes this Fall, if I were a student). I suppose that David Gregory would say that his role is to bring both sides of the story to the table, and that it's up to the reader to make sense of it all ("We Report, You Decide"). Then, it's no wonder why blogs and independent journalism have flourished in such a marketplace. Clearly, there is a lot of misinformation going around. But why is this my job, as the reader? I already work 50+ hours a week; I can barely find the time to cook dinner, let alone go on a fact-finding goose chase through all of the news stories published that day.

We're spreading freedom and democracy and we're winning. There's nothing to criticize. Big difference.

As we mourn the passing of the last network anchor who understood what journalism was supposed to be and did it effectively (with apologies to Brokaw and Rather, who never could quite pull it off), it is depressing to see how today's news organizations are no longer simply failing to live up to the Murrow/Cronkite standards, but are actively running in the opposite direction.

A lot of the time, we seem to be caught up in the actions of individuals, and refuse to cast the larger net. But let me say something bluntly: the Boomers are never going to be referred to as "the Greatest Generation", or anything remotely as flattering. The "Me Generation" seems to have poisoned every sphere of American activity, from politics to banking to journalism. The values that were the foundation of the US have been discarded in favor of TV values, exemplified by the worship of Ronald Reagan and his inattentive attitude towards government.

It is no coincidence that the State of California is leading the states over the cliff of fiscal insolvency. This is the state which led the way with Prop. 13, a public proposition based on the nonsensical notion that voters could have their cake and eat it too. Our foreign policy is based on the false notion that it is still 1948, and the world requires our moral leadership and active participation in every area of the world. And yet, this generation of TV jockeys, coddled by suburbia and wealth, has zero experience with what the struggles of life really entail.

When our political and media leaders drone on about how difficult the United States has it today, based on the "terror" generated by an impoverished population half a world away, I shake my head at how cowardice has become the ruling spirit of the day. And no, the willingness to use massive force against essentially defenseless people is not a sign that a person is bereft of cowardice. Indeed, bullying is often the surest sign of a coward.

It is a real problem that our main sources of information transmittal have allowed themselves to slide into the pit of propaganda. While it is true that newspapers have always been more than willing to engage in jingoism and warmongering, what is particularly sad about Cronkite's passing is that, with the possible exception of Bill Moyers, his departure from the stage leaves us with a generation of infotainers who are completely clueless about what is actually important in American life.

Hunter S. Thompson had his flaws, but he at least understood the decay of the American spirit. When we see the absurd priorities of our ruling elite, we miss Thompson's acerbic wit, calling out the "Generation of Swine". While Cronkite was far less confrontational, he at least cared about the notion of truth. It seems that today's leaders have no concept of truth or ability to measure the relative importance of various issues. Has the entire generation fallen into relativism?