Sean Reiser

As I'm sure you've heard Walter Cronkite has passed away at the age of 92. My parents were fond of telling me that when I was a little over 1 month old, on July 20, 1969, they had me in front of the TV to watch Apollo 11. I suspect somehow this imprinted him as the image of a journalist in my mind.

To this day I believe that journalists should cover serious stories and should be serious about the stories they cover. You should be certain about what you report and report it with confidence. It's more important to be right then it is to be fast. A journalist should find the details of the story and not become the story. News should be communicated in as many words as necessary, because sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough. I'd like to believe that if Walter was given documents with a small business' plans, the story would be how did the documents get out, the ethics of publishing the documents, because the contents of the documents really aren't newsworthy. A journalist must have integrity so he can communicate the story.

There are so many stories of the 60's, 70's and 80's which he serves as the narrator in my head. Whether it's the good (The Space Program), the bad (The Kennedy Assassination) or the ugly (The Iranian Hostage Crisis), Walter was in our living rooms telling us what had happened. He was the person America trusted to tell them the story.

When reflected on his passing and about all the recent deaths I had the following thought which I tweeted:

I just had a rather depressing thought.. Walter Cronkite's memorial will be smaller then Michael Jackson's

This in no way was meant at as a knock on MJ. I do feel his memorial was a little "over the top" (let's face it, the only thing missing was a zombified MJ corpse rising from casket to the dulcet tones of Thriller), but that has little to do with him, it's a statement on us, as a society more then Michael, the person.

Based on some of the responses I received on twitter, people felt I was knocking MJ. I have to admit, I did make a mistake and fed a troll for a few tweets and upon looking at the stream with fresh eyes this afternoon I've realized how much journalism has changed since Walter has retired. Some of the tweets that were thrown at me:

• lol...yeah by interview people he moved millions..lol get real
• Hmmmm, how many radio n TV's were around back then? Bout 12. Reporting the news and making the news kinda different..
• It's Because of Micheal Jackson, that people like him and Barbra WaWa even had jobs..

I do find it funny that Cronkite who was CBS Evening News Anchor from 1962 - 1981 has a job because of Michael Jackson who was born in 1958, MJ was a rather powerful 3 year old. When you consider that 2 networks have new anchors who came up from AM television where the news tends to be "softer", it's not surprising that there is an impression that news anchors interview celebrities.

News has changed. In a world where we are fighting 2 wars, there's upheavals in Iran and Honduras, the congress is making home farming illegal, new taxes are being passed in order to "save the atmosphere from humans" and there's a man in North Korea testing missiles, Walter wouldn't have wall to wall coverage of the death of a pop-signer. It would've been a story but not the story.

And that's the way it is.... July 17, 2009