“And that’s the way it is.” – Walter Cronkite.
On a hot Sunday afternoon in 1969, much of the neighborhood was gathered around the console television in our family room. It was July 20, and the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle was descending toward the Sea of Tranquility. Like much of the nation – and more than a half billion people watching from around the world – we held our collective breath. Then Eagle transmitted history.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
Walter Cronkite, broadcasting from the CBS News desk with Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, took off his glasses, shook his head ever so slightly, and said, “Oh, boy. Wally, say something; I’m speechless. I’m just trying to hold on to my breath.”
Growing up, Cronkite was a staple in our home. From the early days of watching the evening news broadcast in black-and-white to his final sign-off on March 6, 1981, his presence was ubiquitous. My parents only watched Walter Cronkite; they trusted him like no other broadcaster.
A Reporter Goes to War
The son of a local dentist, Walter Cronkite was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on November 4, 1916. His family eventually moved to Kansas City, and later to Houston. There, as a young boy, a magazine article about foreign correspondents captured his imagination and never let go. He wrote for his high school newspaper, worked on the Daily Texan at the University of Texas, and dropped out after his sophomore year to chase his dream – newspapers, radio, even recreating college football games for an Oklahoma City radio station from bare-bones telegraph reports.
In 1937, he joined United Press. Five years later, the wire service sent him to war.
He sailed with the invasion fleet for Operation Torch and recorded the North African landings in 1942 from the deck of the USS Texas. A few months later, he was one of eight reporters selected to fly aboard B-17s with the Eighth Air Force during bombing raids over Germany – a group of journalists that called itself the Writing 69th – and during one mission manned a machine gun against a pursuing German fighter. During Operation Market Garden, he landed by glider in Holland with the 101st Airborne Division and followed them into Germany during the Battle of the Bulge.
Although Cronkite never wore a badge of rank, he shared the risks of the men he wrote about. He returned home understanding war the way they did – not as big blue arrows on a map, but as cold, noise, fear, and loss. It was an education no journalism school could offer. And it shaped everything that followed.
From the Front Lines to the Anchor Desk
The war didn’t end for Cronkite in 1945. He remained in Europe to cover the Nuremberg trials, then spent two years as the United Press bureau chief in Moscow as the Iron Curtain descended. America’s most respected journalist, Edward R. Murrow, tried to lure Cronkite to CBS, but United Press raised his salary. Finally, in 1950, Cronkite made the jump, joining the network in Washington just as television was gaining a foothold.
He quickly took to the new medium. His calm, unhurried delivery suited the camera, and his wire-service instincts – a finely tuned balance of speed and accuracy – served him well. When CBS assigned him to lead coverage of the 1952 political conventions, his moment arrived. With Cronkite center stage before the American public, his ability to hold a broadcast together helped popularize a new broadcasting term: anchorman.
In April 1962, he replaced Douglas Edwards as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. The following September, the network became the first to expand the nightly newscast from fifteen to thirty minutes, opening with Cronkite’s interview of President John F. Kennedy. Less than three months later, it was Cronkite who told the nation that its young president was dead – removing his trademark glasses, glancing at the clock, and pausing to compose himself. It was a moment of intense, shared grief, and it bound him to his audience in a way that few broadcasters ever experience.
And THAT’S the Way it Is
Over the next two decades, Cronkite guided the nation through the Civil Rights Era, assassinations, Watergate, and the space race. In the wake of the Tet Offensive in February 1968, he went to Vietnam to see the war for himself. When he returned, he shared his personal opinion with the country: the United States was “mired in a stalemate.”
Washington noticed. So did the country.
By 1972, a national poll found him to be the most trusted public figure in America – ahead of the president, cabinet secretaries, and members of Congress. The title stuck. Long after he signed off for the last time in 1981, that trust remained unchanged.
Cronkite’s legacy, both as a war correspondent and as a broadcaster, offers five enduring leadership lessons:
1. See it with your own eyes.
From a B-17 over Germany to Vietnam after Tet, Cronkite followed the story where it happened. Leaders who rely on secondhand reports will always lead on secondhand truth.
2. Earn trust nightly.
Trust isn’t built with a single broadcast or a single action. It accumulates through thousands of small moments of steady, accurate, and reliable effort.
3. Separate fact from opinion.
When Cronkite offered his opinion, he said it so plainly and honestly. Leaders owe their people a clear delineation between what they know and what they believe.
4. Keep your composure.
On the darkest day, the nation watched a man wrestle with his emotions – and master them. Calm is contagious. So it panic.
5. Serve the audience, not the ego.
Cronkite saw his job as holding up a mirror, not just standing in front of it. The best leaders stay focused on the people they serve.
The newsroom Cronkite knew is a relic of the past, replaced by endless feeds and fractured audiences. The need he filled is not. People still want a leader who will tell the truth and remain composed when the world around them isn’t. That’s the way it was. It’s still the way it should be.
