It's always hard, after you've been in command, to take a lesser role.
— Walter Cronkite
All through my life, I have never disguised my sentiments about politics in general.
I'm so tired of stories starting, 'Maud Jones was walking her dog down Broadway.' You've got to go over to the back page somewhere to finally find out the damn dog was run over by a truck. Get the thing told, for heaven's sake. Everybody doesn't have to be an O. Henry.
The civil rights fight was a very important fight.
I can't go into a mob scene and sense the mood and the attitude of the crowd. I can't conduct man-on-the-street interviews or even get reactions that I can be sure are honest, because they know who I am.
We all have our likes and our dislikes. But... when we're doing news - when we're doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we're doing the daily news, covering politics - it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism.
The very first time a politician puts you in his target is sometimes a disappointment, because perhaps you thought you were friends and getting along well... But it is not something that you dwelled on. At least, I did not.
Sometimes a famous subject may even outlive his own obituary writer.
I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst.
I'm one of the best condensers in the business.
I think people make way too much of ratings.
When I stepped down from the evening news at the age of 65, in '81, things were still going well. Immediately after that, the whole tenor of the CBS News Department changed.
The whole period of the '60s changed a lot of us; there was never a decade like that in American history... to have the decade capture one of the great accomplishments of this century: man landing on the moon.
Court proceedings, except for certain limited situations, are open to the public. This is for the protection of the accused, to be certain to ascertain that there is a fair trial.
For heaven's sakes, in the newspaper days, when we had competing newspapers, and the newsstands sale was as important as the circulation - as the agreed-upon circulation, whatever you call that - in those days, why, gosh, the sensationalism was tremendous.
I looked at the world with the humaneness, I think, which is one of the hallmarks of being liberal in my mind.
A liberal to me is one who - and it suits some of the dictionary definitions - is unbeholden to any specific belief or party or group or person, but makes up his or her mind on the basis of the facts and the presentation of those facts at the time. That defines what I am.
I did not believe that the public was sophisticated enough to understand that a newsman could wear several hats and that we had the ability to turn off - nearly, you can't say perfectly, but nearly - all of our prejudices and biases.
I miss particularly the managing editor role on the 'Evening News.'
We have overcome some terrible blows to our democracy, to the future of our democracy, to the future of our nation. We survived the Civil War and the strife that tore this nation apart.
There's no story that breaks, including a five-alarm fire in Brooklyn, that I don't wish I were covering.
I suppose popularity is measured by ratings. If a broadcaster is known as the leader because of ratings, then that's where people most want to be seen and heard, so there's no question that there's an advantage.
A journalist covering politics, most of us are aware of the necessity to try to be sure we're unbiased in our reporting. That's one of the fundamentals of good journalism.
The death of Churchill at 90 was one of those watershed moments in which the obituary rises to a special calling beyond the sharing of remembered times. It gave an older generation a rare opportunity to explain something of itself to its children.
In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared. Presidents, former presidents, and certain heads of state are at the top of the chain.
I guess taking a stand is valid for a commentator. But that's not what I am.
Maybe I'm just a slow learner or something, but I like to have things laid out as plainly and simply as possible.
Advertising's always been a considerable pressure on publishers.
I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the 'CBS Evening News' for 19 years - well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever.
It's hard for us to really understand the immensity so far of the conquest of space.
I think cameras ought to be everywhere the reporters are allowed to go. I think, furthermore, reporters and cameras ought to be everywhere that the Constitution says the public can go.
I write pretty quickly. Write pretty fast. I was an old press service man. That was part of the necessity of that occupation.
I think the whole policy of pre-emptive war is a serious, serious mistake.
I do not consider a liberal necessarily to be a leftist.
On television, I tried to absolutely hew to the middle of the road and not show any prejudice or bias in any way.
Helping set the day's agenda and deciding what we used and editing it, that was a journalistic high point. I liked reporting as well. Just doing the news - the live performance - wasn't important. Working on the desk was.
I think that our comfort is in our history.
A lot of the questions raised about television's power and influence on events have applied throughout history to every mass-communications medium - most particularly print, because that's the medium we've had the longest.
Anybody who's spent thirteen or fourteen years in print journalism has a lot of stories he thinks were inwardly satisfying as far as preparation, understanding, and diligence.
I'm a liberal, but I'm not biased. Seriously.
Beyond being timely, an obituary has a more subjective duty: to assess its subject's impact.
I feel no compulsion to be a pundit. As a matter of fact, I really don't have that much to say about most things. Working with hard news satisfies me completely.
Watergate just happened to come along at the same time as the demand for honesty in relations between the sexes, in advertising, in ecology, in almost everything. It just stumbled into that great big elephant trap that had already been built for it.
I don't believe in these headline-hunting interviews. That's just not my style.
You think you would react one way when a situation develops and, and when the sharp shells are flying, you don't quite stand up like you think you might.
I had as much time to prepare for that moon landing as NASA did, and I still was speechless when it happened. It just was so awe-inspiring to actually be able to see the thing through the television that was a miracle in itself.
I don't think it's in any way harmful, this marriage of media and politicians. I think it enhances the communications process considerably and makes it possible for the public to be far more aware, far more up-to-date on issues and the opposite sides of the issues.
I certainly think cameras ought to be in courtrooms.
It's a little hard not to be an elitist when you're making millions of dollars a year.
I have never voted a party line. I vote on the individual and the issues.
