She and Olbermann are happy to spend their whole hour long programs bashing Republicans (aka shooting fish in a barrel).

I understand their desire to score a few cheap points, but where are they on discussing the various and complex health care proposals being discussed by Congress and promoted by various key players? (Even in the days of Cronkite, only rarely did a major network offer an hour long program on issues of the day. Today these clowns squander an hour a day.)

They could devote all of their air time discussing health care alone - and they should, especially because Obama wants this deal done soon, regardless of whether the change is worth the paper it's printed on.

Why are the American people being denied needed information by the 'liberals' in the media who are largely supported (watched) by Democrats and progressives?

Maddow and Olbermann are disgraceful. Only O'Reilly could make them look good.

"I'd love to surface someone with a national news conscience and authority that could focus us on what matters. I'm not sure we completely had that back in Cronkite's day, but I am utterly certain we don't have it right now."

And I am utterly certain you won't find it here at Salon, Joan. All one need do is read your previous post to see how dishonest a "journalist" you are. If you're going to grieve for Cronkite. why don't you learn something about honesty, conscience and focusing on what matters from him as well?

PS: How do you "surface someone"?

I liked his voice and his avuncular face. I had the notion that if some coworker put a hot-off-the-teletype news flash in front of him, he'd check it out before going for the scoop. If I remember him correctly, you knew what were facts and what were opinions among his utterances, and most of what he uttered were facts.

I know you're not a regular TV broadcaster (though I see a lot of you as visiting commentator because I watch a lot of MSNBC) but you could be. You have that kind of mature attractiveness that bespeaks wisdom and honesty. In your remarks to or about persons who don't share your views I've never heard you niggle or snipe. You seem not to be trapped by your biases.

I'm not sure you fit as "anchor" mostly because you play off others so well, but have you given it a thought? Has any network executive given it a thought? The world could do a lot worse, and perhaps no better.

"The News" has been descending from providing information and insight to providing entertainment for decades. I find it interesting that the comparison point for Walter Crinkle is David Halberstam. Does anyone remember Edward R. Murrow, or William Shirer, or Ernie Pyle?

It used to be that "The News" didn't make money for the network in question (radio or TV). It was being provided as a public service. The journalists gathered actual facts (what a quaint idea) and presented them, sometimes with context, sometimes not. Today, you don't get facts, you get opinions. I read an AP wire on Salon yesterday with the headline: Iran could test a nuke in 6 months. The entire article was nothing but the wild speculations of a couple of anonymous diplomats. While the article was largely fact free, a couple of bits of information made the speculations largely implausible (this was not actually highlighted, merely mentioned). This implausibility, however, was not allowed to get in the way of writing this article. This is news? I don't think so.

Since the election, Fox News, surely the epitome of fact free journalism, has enjoyed a ratings boom. That tells me that the American public wants their news predigested, not raw. Until the American public decides they want to think for themselves, we're screwed.

I am thankful that someone--Joan Walsh-- has finally had the integrity to call the faux scandal that clouded Dan Rather's career a FAUX SCANDAL. He was railroaded. Every word he said on GWB's National Guard "experience" was true--regardless of the documents shown--whether facsimiles or original. The contents were true. Every independent investigation bears this out. It is sickening that the Rove-Cheney-Bush machine was allowed to get away with this and so much more that they did to intimidate the press into circumventing and burying the truth. It upsets me to this day, and I can only imagine how much it likely upset Walter Cronkite.

Sure, and he even works for you, Joan - Glenn Greenwald. Most of the rest of you media types I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw you, but if Glenn says something, I tend to believe it. If you ask me, he's the only legitimate contender to Cronkite's trustworthiness crown. Glenn is the only one of you who strikes me as less interested in his own career than the truth.

Unfortunately, most people aren't really interested in hearing the truth. They'd rather listen to Brian Williams or Katie Couric - or Hannity, Beck, or Rush Limbaugh - feed them soothing bullshit.

I think Joan Walsh probably knows perfectly well what it would take for journalism to propel to prominence someone with the kind of integrity that clung to Walter Cronkite.

It would take money — a whole lot of it, enough to achieve real editorial and investigatory independence.

Journalists like Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein, and others paved the way for their own demise (in some cases in the course of their own careers). They made themselves into nuisances for the power establishment that funded them, which unsurprisingly has led to a professional climate in which anyone with anything even approximating integrity is swiftly identified, isolated, and driven from the business.

Bloggers and independent online news organizations like Salon can try to fill the gap, but without the same resources that were behind Cronkite they will never have the same reach.

So, money. My vote's on money.

I thought Rachel Maddow did an excellent job with Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw in her tribute to Walter Cronkite. However, her major theme was correctly, that she and all the other talking heads on cable news may have interesting opinions but they are not reporter-anchors as Cronkite had been.

She reflected a self-awareness that for all the alleged news sites on cable and the web there are very few good reporters and even fewer people who believe that honest reporting should be the goal of all news.