of the criticism that came out. i felt good about it. his daughter lives in austin, texas where i live a. she could not have been more generous giving the interviews when you are a biographer, it is a real plus. -- where to find missing pieces of the parents legacy and all that, so when you are a biographer it is a plus. they took on a full life and times of the father. >> he talked to a lot of people in the media business. i am going to " tom brokaw on your book. was this exclusive to you? >> yes. >> he was always open for business. he never grew bitter or unapproachable. he got up every morning knowing who he was. dan rather will cut try to -- woke up every morning trying to decide who he would be that day. rather did not have a clue. >> tom brokaw and walter

cronkite formed a great relationship. we think of the two tv anchor people, brokaw and cronkite very some ominous. cronkite knew you had to have sharp elbows. he worked very hard. he was always authentic to his midwestern roots. he is from missouri and grew up in texas. he kept his clock in central time. even when he was in new york city. it is a different animal altogether. cronkite was a little more like tom brokaw. >> dan rather was the second most quoted in terms of meetings. six different meetings that you acknowledge. why did he talk to you so much?

>> he was helpful because cronkite did not like him. he knew that cronkite did not like him. dan laid down a lot of interesting tracks for me. both have stories for disdain. it all stems back to edward r. murrow. he saw him as the last of the murrow boys. -- cronkite regretted stepping down as the cbs anchor man and turning it over to rather. the rather regime when cold shoulder to cronkite. there is not a warm way of keeping him on. cronkite floundered. he had a show called "universe" that not many people remember about science and oceanography. it was a good show but did not get ratings.

cronkite was griping about rather. rather did not do anything to extend a role. the way nbc found a great role for tom brokaw. cronkite became an old man in a way. it festered. there are many reasons why that relationship never worked. cronkite admired rather's journalism during the kennedy assassination. he knew what a good investigative reporter was, but he did not think he had the right personality to go into the public every day like he did. >> with tom brokaw, he said he never grew better. then i read one line you wrote when talking about the gulf war. he turned bitter. there are other references to how bitter he was about dan rather. why the difference between mr.

brokaw? >> tom is a friend of walter cronkite. different generations. both incidently, brokaw and cronkite, really looked up to the soldiers of world war ii and troops in general. tom brokaw knows the social walter cronkite very well. they would go out to eat and the kentucky derby once. tom's wife meredith models how you survive with a husband traveling all the time. he knew the funny walter cronkite. the bitterness was directed toward cbs, not just dan rather perry -- dan rather. there is the new regime. he thought he would be able to hang around cbs in the 1980's and 1990's and they did not have a role for him. brokaw said he always had to be the top dog. he is very darwinian.

that comes across in my research. with walter cronkite, people only see him as the friendly man, which he was, but there is another side of him that wanted to be the best. he was obsessed with ratings. he is a fierce competitor that i have written about, and that includes presidents and generals. his desire to be the best was very pronounced. >> you talked to a nixon aide chuck colson. what did you learn from him? >> he was very nice. this was before he died in florida. he was a very repentant pro- nixon person. he regrets the nixon tapes, he told me perryhe was embarrassed when i read to him transcripts

of white house tapes about walter cronkite. he was the pit bull of richard nixon. colson was on to the idea that they had to bring down the power of the big three. they liked cronkite. nixon personally liked walter cronkite personally. -- socially, when he saw them. it really spoke for the entire state. -- their surprise vote for the entire fourth estate. if you can get walter cronkite, it was the liberal media. it became quite a square off between cronkite and the nixon administration, particularly chuck colson. as i quote in the book, he was interested in bringing cronkite down. >> here's a piece of video from a 1997 video with cronkite. >> in the middle of an explanation, what was coming

down from the floor when a producer would come in and say go to mike wallace. he has the delegation. the carolina delegation did not have anything to do with that story at the moment. he made a very good story but it did not fit with the flow of what we were doing. i was saying "later, later." as a consequence, it the poor guys on the floor was some senator would not able to hold onto a very long. did they think they have a really hot story. i am trying to keep the flow going. i was considered a lens hog. >> he was. he light camera time.

he became known as an amazing reporter covering the war in world war ii. wrote great articles. was it the nuremberg trials? i write about that perryhe was in moscow. in the early cold war years. he eventually came to 1950 in washington d.c. truman in the white house. he did not get to go to korea. that is where you made your name. he was shoved in a closet on camera. -- wtop camera following a boeing local news. it was the b list. he started breaking through in a new medium of television. in washington, d.c.,people not remember what he said. they would recognize you. we loved seeing you. you could have been on a game show or the morning show or the nightly news. the intellectual substance went away when people recognize you as a visual.

you are a celebrity. you are well known. cronkite recognized that and always claimed the air time. that was the top dog. that -- that goes back to the top dog of tom brokaw. sometimes he would filibuster throughout live events. he also learned to be quiet. if you watch him during the space events, he paused. -- john glenn and alan shepard, neil armstrong, apollo 11, the space program, he would pause. he also had a theatrical sense. he would say "golly gee" or something as serious person would see. -- something no serious person would say. he started talking to what he thought the hearts and minds of the american people, the average american, was thinking. he kept at a great bond with people. even when you ran that clip, his voice is very soothing. he made a bit of a self- deprecating joke.

he admitted his own flaw, that he was an air hog. it was hard to find people that did not personally like him. >> here is a clip. dan rather. [video clip] >> when my contract was up, i had an offer to go elsewhere and talk about it to my superior. they asked me if you would be one of the two successors to walter cronkite. they ask me if i was prepared to double anchor. -- which roger mudd. i said innocently,you bet. their vision thought the succession to walter cronkite might be dan rather and roger mudd in washington. i was told a day or two after

that that they had talked to roger about it and he had declined to do that. not with any hostility but he just said no. it was said to me that his belief was he was entitled to be the successor and expected to be the successor and wanted to do it alone. >> what did you learn from roger mudd? >> the question was who was going to replace walter cronkite in 1981. he was beloved. back then, it was retirement age at 65. walter cronkite decided to go out at the top of his game. and do these science specials and things. he wanted to enjoy life. there was a big fight going on. do you pick roger mudd or dan rather? cronkite sided with picking rather because of this foreign experience.

he believes in the foreign correspondents. roger mudd had a family and did not go to vietnam. he rejected serving in vietnam as a reporter. he made his name doing largely civil-rights and capital washington reports. cronkite said he regretted it later. i write movingly after talking to roger mudd about mudd and cronkite's up and down relationship. the head honcho at cbs, after cronkite did a lack luster performance in san francisco, pulled cronkite from doing the atlantic city democratic convention of lyndon b. johnson. there was a duo to compete with brinkley. cronkite thought mudd was tried to take his spot. their relationship had a lot of ups and downs.

it was very moving at the end of their lives. mudd was working at the history channel. his hearing was failing. at the end, cronkite almost tearfully said "you are a good man." they healed that relationship. >> he was born and raised in missouri. it was the hub of the pony express. his father was a dentist. he came from a family of dentists, german and dutch ancestry. in his early years, 1916-1927, he worked in the trolley system. it becomes a hallmark of his life. he is obsessed with

transportation. it is one of his many interests. why he is a reporter is his curiosity about how things work. he sold "liberty" magazine. they loaded up in the car in 1927 and they moved to houston to the montrose neighborhood. in 1927, texas was a dust bowl. houston because of the port and no banks closed their. -- there. it was a pretty good move by the cronkites. it was a jim crow city. they encountered a lot of racism. his father is into practice did not work out. he was at a dental college. he had some personnel problems. his father started drinking heavily.

eventually they got a divorce. walter is the only child raised by his mother in houston. his father moved back to missouri. cronkite got an early interest in journalism and high school. they started have in journalism classes. today that does shot people. -- it does not shock people. in the 1930's, it was unusual. cronkite started competing. it was all about the five ws of journalism, who, what, when, where, and why. basic reporting. he wrote for school newspapers.

due to a girlfriend staying in houston, he enrolled in the university of texas at austin. he got deeply involved with the school paper. he wanted to be an engineer for a while, hoping he could get rich. he realized he had no acumen for serious engineering work so he drifted into journalism because it paid. wire services and famously later the u.p. he began his journalism in earnest back in kansas city, missouri. in texas, all his papers are at ut and he claimed it as his alma mater in though he dropped out. he started doing u.p. stories in the mid 1930's. they would have him go around.

he helped open a station in el paso. he did sports announcing. he was just like reagan in the cubs. he would just get what happens in the game,perhaps do ad lib. a lot of odd work. in overton, texas, he got national notoriety because over 230 students were blown up in a tragedy. he is all the charred bodies of -- he saw all of those charred bodies of children. he ran to a pay phone and call in to cbs radio and got his voice heard for the first time. he wrote a lot of press

clippings. he tried other jobs. he even worked for an airline for a while. he got drawn back to u.p. after getting all these clippings, he goes to new york after world war one begins. he was color blind so he could not go into the military. he could not fly planes. he tried to. east have uniform he would wear. -- he goes to new york and trains to become a foreign correspondent. he was put on assignment in europe. he embedded with the eighth air force with our bomber pilots that would do the missions. he goes from that and works as cbs after the war in stays with cbs all the way up until his death. he was getting some sort of check from cbs.

>> when i read tim brokaw he is not bitter, you wrote cronkite exaggerated his pacifism to emphasize is quaker-like aversion to war. later you right in the book, now he hopes to join the army air corps. 59 states entered the european war to help the dutch people. those are two different messages. >> the army air corps had no guns. there were not allowed to carry a weapon. he was openhanded. he could go into enemy territory and never carry a weapon. however, he was in an airplane on a bombing mission over germany and had to take over the gun and fire it around. cronkite is not someone you'd ever glamorizes world war ii heroics. he would often say i was a coward.

i would stay on the periphery of action. but his love of liberation, he understood the dutch people were starving. totalitarianism was beyond evil. he was never somebody who glamorized war or thought he was going to be and ernie pyle. his best friends developed during this time, andy rooney. they worked together for a long time. the personalities were odd couples. rooney was acerbic. walter was always very humorous and generous with people. they were completely different. >> where did your idea to get this book start? >> we always watched the vietnam war on television. i was interested as a kid. my mother was interested in a drawing i drew about the vietnam war. we were a cronkite family.

and labeling green, ohio newspaper, there is a picture of me anchoring in six grade rhymes say my favorite person as walter cronkite i was at a book festival. i had to drive from new orleans to that region. -- to baton rouge. i had read this book "the powers that be." he is what my favorite writers of history. i liked what he did. he's a hero to me. he mentioned that the most influential was walter cronkite. i never thought of that. i always think of print journalism. edward r. murrow was considered in radioed the best. i realize the television had taken over. then i checked with my agent in new york. there's no one doing a big cronkite book. all of his papers had just been donated to the university of --

texas, the briscoe center. he saved everything. it is a great archive for me. i go around and i talked to people. i remember the kennedy assassination. did they were in dallas. or this. we were consumers of watching walter cronkite telling us about the assassination. in the cold war, he was our eye witness to his history. it was interesting how people got their information, there are many places that only got one network, like cbs. people grow up with walter cronkite. he was sustainable because people did not get tired of him. you pay your ticket.

you see one movie. you go home. you might catch a movie a year later. walter cronkite was every day. you had to be comfortable. his cadence and ability, he did not irritate people. he would talk clearly to people and decisively. in the 1960's and 1970's will people lost trust with government and they were angry with nixon and johnson, there is a lot of chaos. people trusted cronkite. >> most of your interviews were in 2011. you had been as late as march of this year. what was the total amount of time spent on the book? how were you able to keep it open? >> i have my ways with harpercollins. it is easier should print a book now than ever before.

when i get into a book and my curiosity goes, i was trying to get interviews with a lot of big people. they have busy schedules. others i had to keep peppering. >> who? >> i got to talk to everyone i went after. i never got to diane sawyer. barbara walters and ted turner i interviewed. john glenn, and he is the gold standard as far as i'm concerned. he did see i spent a lot of time talking to people collecting stories. my challenge was to keep it pared down. everyone had a couple of great cronkite stories. he had a long career. he lived into his 90's. he knew everybody. he was with all presidents.

he was an usher at the democratic and republican conventions of 1928. he defied convention coverage. he was the political maestro. there were so many people to talk to. i got it just in the nick of time. there were others that have died since i started interviewing. they're all in their 80s and 90s. getting to people like jimmy buffett or mickey hart you were great friends, i really wanted to get in an interview as many people as i could of families and friends and adversaries. >> when did he die? >> 2009. >> when you began your book tour, the first review i saw, i am going to read the headline

and first paragraph. >> he dents his halo. an unconscionable shading of a story. how much has changed in america's new story. -- news culture. this is by a man named howard kurtz. he does reliable sources on cnn. let me read the first paragraph. unbeknownst to the billions to -- millions -- >> when people call your book

masterful, you say "thank you howard kurtz." that was my first feeling. what he did was tell you how the new standards change. keep in mind, cronkite could pretty much do what he wanted. it was a boy's club. it was difficult to break it up. when he was in world war ii, it was all about the propaganda machine, we're going to win the war together. cronkite was slow to change to that. he stayed with what ever the boys' club was. he was friends with pan am and the top executive. i deserve a little r and r. it was a mistake. all the points he mentioned are in the book. i consider them our mistakes. i am trying to write a real biography. i think the line was what he had a halo.

how many people in life had a low? -- have a halo? when you do a full biography, may you will see the high and lows. cronkite was not meanspirited. he endures as a great journalist. -- journalism's hero. cronkite could sort of do what he wanted and it would not cut mustered today. look at john f. kennedy. could he have done things he did in his personal life and? it was blurred a little more. you had a little group of people controlling washington. it was not the internet era. >> i came to realize that the man that once dominated television was more complicated >> i would not use the word "unethical" but he was a child of the left. he was a fan of progressive democrats.

a great admirer of friends and roosevelt -- henry wallace, george mcgovern progressive democrat. he camouflaged that because there were many people in the depression. he was always worried about losing his job. he need a box office from both right and left. he tried to be centered. he liked getting mail from both the right and left. he was able to stay so long as mr. center. mr. objective today. as i write about, he always had a bit of a liberal agenda. they came there in different ways, not necessarily in headline news. in 1962 when the cbs news went from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, the back end of cbs news started covering civil rights. you can look at it and see the revolution, the great society, a kennedy.

it was given play on the evening news. cronkite was not just the anchor, he was the managing editor. he knew how to manage all the reporters. he always back to deep, investigative journalism. that was his forte. people at cbs was tilted to be toward [unintelligible] -- in that period was tilted toward being pro great society, new frontier. it was. >> here is your quote. the horror of nixon's continuation of the war tries cronkite to be a left-leaning --

obliged cronkite to become a left-leaning editorializer. it raises the question -- how did he get away with such an over the top commentary. i must connect that to chuck colson. whether of not you talked to him about that. they went after cbs. >> cronkite did cbs radio. they forget that because his nightly news was such a ritual. he also did radio reports. the cbs radio, the script writing -- the reports were much more left tilting. one thing they noticed was that cronkite had a mr. center feel, but if you listen to him in the afternoon, his radio reports, johnson listened to cronkite and he said that they would see that cronkite was on their side.

colson honed in on that. he was not a fool but he cannot sell that to the american people. -- he never could sell that story to the american people. they decided they liked walter cronkite. they did not want to hear about it. he gave them the news. they did not feel like picking on him. he cannot get traction, and the nixon white house, when they were aiming at cronkite. cronkite would give a speech on the defender against the nixon -- defender of the fourth estate against the nixon white house. all the reporters would cheer. cronkite would work with the print reporters all the time in the wire service guys.

all the other reporters like walter cronkite. he almost became a saint. >> in 2009, here is frank mankiewicz. >> he had come back from vietnam. he immediately called me and ask to see robert kennedy. the two of them met. he began by saying you have to run for president. the war is going to end. he said how unlivable it was. -- unwinnable it was. we would with a village in the daytime and have to give it back at night. the vietnamese in the south like us less. kennedy said i will run for

president if he would run for senate in new york. but cronkite said -- i do not live in new york. i live in connecticut. i am not a democrat. i am an independent. i knew he had those feelings about the war. [end video clip] >> what would happen the marker rubio win and said you had to run? -- what would happen today and brian williams went to marco rubio and said you have to run for president because the country is in such a mess? >> he would not survive because of the blogosphere. he would be seen as a partisan figure. that happen because vietnam tore our country apart in a way afghanistan is not. iraq almost did but didn't. cronkite was very much pro war. 1965, 1966, 1967. he loved morley safer -- and personally he saw the thought it was a hell of a piece about the

marines -- but he had a cold war lens that our troops could do no wrong but he went and 68, february and toward vietnam offense of any came to believe that the jobs and ministration and mcnamara were lying. others thought so as well, that there was no quick victory. and cronkite -- did not do it on the evening news when he had to be mr. center but he did a cbs special report, walter cronkite said, this old reporters said that it is at a stalemate. and everything went off. what luntz correctly said that cronkite was so obsessed with getting out of vietnam all calls that he asked robert kennedy to

run against lyndon johnson who was the presumed the guy running because kennedy was against the war in vietnam. it tells you how passionate cronkite got against the vietnam war. because he was friends with lyndon johnson. lyndon johnson and lady bird were friends of walter cronkite. johnson had owned the cbs affiliate in austin and a lot of properties with cbs and dr. frank stanton, cronkite's offendable boss at cbs was one of the crew of -- closest friends of lyndon johnson. it is seen as the turning moment, i call of the cronkite moment where he denounces the income and at that point it could've gone either way for him, but he started becoming a hero of liberals. >> we had had demonstrations in 1965, '66, '67, and this came on in 1968. what proof is there that walter cronkite had that big an impact in changing things if the war did not end in 1973. >> i do not think he had a big

impact. it became symbolic. what it did is gave a boost of adrenaline to the new left or the anti-war movement, that they had cherry picked off an establishmentarian who was pro war ended in see the light. it encouraged the doves to stay on the attack. i think it has been over hite, that the influence lyndon johnson's decision not to seek reelection in march of 1968. johnson had health problems and did not need walter cronkite to tell him there were problems in vietnam. but from the press secretary of lyndon johnson that lbj apparently say if i lost cronkite, i lost the country, and another country, if i lost cronkite i lost middle america. it is not very hard to document lbj -- hard to document he precisely said that but say i am starting to lose the mainstream

media -- media. he did not feel like losing a character like that. i but it was a born crating the anti-war sentiment that continue but not on john's of's decision to drop out. i do not think he turned the lyndon johnson. >> another quote from your book, chrisianne armanpour -- after lots of chitchat over stiff whiskey's i asked him whether anyone today could do what he did back in vietnam after tet and to my abiding disappointment he gently told me, no. in this time there are multitudinous voices and channels out there today. just parse that whole sentence

right there. she was disappointed that he could not do that today. why do people in the media do those kind of things in the first place? first off, cronkite liked her a great deal because she was a foreign correspondent in these pieces on bosnia and the middle east. his beef was when he left cbs is that they gutted foreign correspondents and that was cronkite's pride, that we cover the world. he had a huge crush on armanpour and she is suggesting that there used to be a feeling that a journalist -- bob woodward, woodward and bernstein or walter cronkite could do something, a gesture for humanity to call loud -- it goes out -- back to edward r. murrow or howard p. smith, the notion that we have to confront evil and when we see it --

sometimes you have to lose your object city in order to talk about a genocide or talk about -- good journalism can shift public policy. like "and uncle tom's cabin" on avolition or rachel carson on the environment and there is still a hope. edward r. murrow's maybe long dead but the shadow is all over our foreign correspondents. they want to get in there and go after the bad guys. >> let's run a clip of edward r. murrow for those who have never seen him. this is from "person to person." was not exactly top journalism. >> good evening. i'm ed murrow. the name of the program is open " person to person." what sort of fellow is my to live with? -- mike to live with?

>> the real answer? he is the nicest person i have met before. >> this little after eight months and two days. >> is he wearing makeup? he is retired. >> when mr. demille found out we were the one to have a baby he said if it is a boy he can play the infant moses in the 10 commandments. >> hereby engage to play the part of baby moses and the 10 commandments. he had to sign it in ink and his own foot writing. >> this is peter vinson douglas. >> the son of michael douglas. why is it some money -- you mention dan rather wanted to be the new ed murrow. >> the romance was he was the voice of north carolina, did not come from much and that he lived

up of washington state and got his degree up their in washington state and got in our early on radio. by the time cbs had ed murrow and europe the moral voice started doing live broadcast from europe and it was quite dramatic. just imagine being in a farmhouse in the iowa and suddenly you are hearing and not on the leg of hearing him saying here we are, the fire trucks are going, the bombers are overhead. it was the beginning of mass communications going right into the living room -- living room. edward r. murrow became gigantic with this will war ii coverage. many americans lived the war through edward r. murrow. he was a good talent. if you could become one of his boys you on the top of the heap of radio journalism. so, they all strove for that. he had almost a messianic appeal to reporters, that they were

part of a sacred tribe that was going to right the world. at buchenwald, seeing the bodies of the holocaust. and in the 1960's the -- 1950's, he went after joe mccarthy on his program and became disdained by the right. edward r. murrow -- and beloved by the left. "person to person close " showing his uncomfortable this with television. his heyday was in radio. he did do great document of the specials, but by the late 1950's and 1960's these kind of shows, merrill was not made for tv. use of the cigarette there -- was not his form. cronkite's form was. but look hourly uc newsmen doing celebrity journalism and cronkite was susceptible to that, to. once he became the anchor man of cbs, he spent a lot of his life

denouncing what he called entertainment as news. >> going back to the amanpour quote -- sitting, no, but could not do what he did in vietnam because unlike in his time there are multitudinous voices and channels of the day. soundalike that is a bad thing. >> well, that is what -- what her quote is. i think there are reporters who want to believe, let's say there is a genocide in rwanda, that there megaphone would become big enough that they could do a story. you see it. look at anderson cooper's coverage of the by piece build, for example, or cooper in haiti -- could go down there and change the news by getting people to focus on it. i think that is what she meant. but the breakup came in 1962 with telestar, will focus on the

nasa program and cronkite, and to that the, when and what murrow went after joe mccarthy and the 1950's, steady eddie walker cronkite, but not want to make waves and wanted to be mr. center, focused on military aviation -- air force and pro missiles, the missile gap with the soviet union. he was for america, america. so he became really the voice of space, which everybody liked. that is a collective thing. everybody was pulling for john glenn and alan shepard and apollo 11. even if cronkite's via number and civil rights irritated people, how the space program unified americans was very key. >> you quote les bigley -- any kennedy story generated ratings. he wanted to ride on the kennedy coattails. how much was this ratings?

>> a lot. the burst of tv news and how it affects all of our lives. eisenhower was not great ratings. he may have been, in my view, one of our best president, but he did not do great ratings. even his famous farewell address, talking in a monotone. kennedy was telegenic. incidentally, cronkite taught a course before the 1952 convention which john f. kennedy took on how to be telegenic. it is a longer story. but kennedy came in and as you know, the inaugural was fantastic television of kennedy, and then the press conferences were just dynamite. then the whole hyannis port, cape cod mystique that came up -- don hewitt, the crucial figure, saying kennedies do well. and it was not just kennedy for the nightly news but cbs had all these new shows.

you could get on "eyewitness to history." in fact, cronkite covered america's cup up there and got interested in yachting and sailing hang and run the kennedys. but the kennedy era brought television into our lives, the main way people started getting news. and famously, cronkite did a maracas job broadcasting the kennedy assassination to the american people. so, history connects cronkite with the kennedys a lot. he ended up living in martha's vineyard, buying his house and in many ways was part of the set of cape cod. >> at last count, i think barack obama, the president, appeared on "60 minutes" 11 time and i did not think anyone else has appeared that many times in the ratings are good. are you -- do you think "60 minutes" is giving him the platform about ratings? >> all television is about ratings. >> what you advise someone

watching television? how much is news judgment and how much is ratings? >> it cronkite credit for an idea i never heard are to deliver it elsewhere, he said it in his 80's. he thought that this was good. walter cronkite also did great work with discovery channel later and with pbs. he ended up liking the diversification of c-span. he liked the cable world. but he was worried about consumers. he thought there should be a class on how to teach not just writing journalism but how you navigate the new world of journalism of the internet, cable, so how you find factual information. >> you write about sig mendelso n, cbs news that back in the 1950's. he came here in 1990 and he talked about a changing moment in the television news business. >> between the two conventions

we were taking a walk up michigan avenue to go to dinner up in the near north side somewhere and all of a sudden -- told me, i have just been approached by a couple of agents and they want me to sign up with them. what do you think? my answer to that was, i think you better signed up with them because we are going to want you for a lot of engagements of this sort and i would rather not negotiate with you directly. i would rather have your agents negotiate with my agents and we would have a much better relationship. i did not know about he is going to be in a $2 million, $4 million category. i have no idea, but i knew he was going to become a famous public hero. >> i think you quote richard liebner who is an agent -- for dan rather. >> and for cronkite, too.

after cronkite did great coverage of the conventions in 1952 and in 1956, he was not recognized as one of the most recognizable people in the united states and they started negotiating big and tough contracts. walter cronkite bit of anger was one barbara walters became the million dollars a year and lady and he was getting paid something like $600,000 a year. but when cronkite left cbs he got paid a million dollars just for being on retainer. >> how many years? >> all through. he continued to renegotiate his contract. a million dollars today sounds small compared to what's star -- come there to what star anchor people get. look at what katie couric's contracts was. but a lot of that was before the bust of 2008.

but nevertheless, people get paid hefty salaries. cronkite was one of the most well paid. although i have to say money was not always walter's motivation. it was more that he got so used to being on tv he did not feel complete if he was not on. >> what was the story of mike wallace and dan rather at the banner? >> mike wallace is a whole other case. he was the toughest interview or cbs ever had and chris wallace is awful good. it is a style of how you interview people. wallace and cronkite had their differences over the years, but they became a crook -- close in later years. but the battle of the bathroom at cbs, when les moonves -- well, a long story but the bottom line is when rather did what is called memo gate about george w. bush and the national

guard, the whole brouhaha, the was sentiment expressed by mike wallace and morely schaffer that rather just quit and taken the knife. edward r. murrow said in journalism be ready to clean your desk out and half an hour. one big mistake, you are going to be gone. rather kept fighting for his job and eventually suing and keeping this open wound, so other producers got unfortunately fired. wallace -- thought rather should take total blame and leave the career people who were behind the scenes alone and just be in his you man enough to quit and just take the blame. and people would have looked up to him more. so, he confronted dan rather and the bathroom at cbs, and mike wallace -- there was fury in his voice. >> you also say in that same area of the book, walter

cronkite did not call rather for lunch, but instead he remain hateful toward him to his death. what surprised you -- in this book, what did you find that surprise you? you said the two or three most important things you learned. >> one i was stunned to touch on and did not finish the thought, when john glenn -- the connection between john glenn and walter cronkite. douglas edwards was the head of cbs news that in 1962 and it was just because cronkite just did a great job with the three sub or g-7 orbits that by april 1962 he became the anchor man. the connection between cronkite 's kiteflying hi and john glenn and nasa in general. second, the power of 30 minutes of news. 15 minute broadcast, you could not do the back and feature stories. the power that the 30 minute

news did. >> who went first? >> walter cronkite was the first 30 minutes news broadcast and brinkley " we try to catch up. but it changed the lot of things. then it became the culture of the anchor getting the big interview. it used to be a white house correspondents, bob -- who died, told me he was livid cronkite's first news broadcast cronkite bigfoot him and got to do the big can of the interview, when he was covering kennedy as the correspondent of the time. but there became kind of a celebrity status afforded to these journalists. but what about cronkite that interests me the most, i knew it, but just how he liked talking to everybody. his real genius was even though he lived in new york and operated in social circles, he loves talking to cabdrivers and

gardeners, a man on the street. he never said no to anybody. in many ways, many people used to laugh at that side of him. but that is where his genius was. he never lost touch with the average american people. >> how did you do this? give us some insight how you write 800 pages in a very short time and do all of their research? some people work for 12 years. >> the book is 660 -- but i put a lot of that material because i wanted a cast of characters for people and my voluminous notes. i am an academic, so notes are part of my training. >> where do you find times? >> that is all i do -- i teach at rice, three classes in the fall. my three little kids, they go to school. my wife comes back. i have a big library of all of my books and that focus. this book was easy for me because all of cronkite's papers are just down the road.

the hard part is traveling to do research. interviewing people -- i have been around the business awhile, and i have been able to talk to people and these people so maybe i can get some of the interviews quicker. then it is just the intense curiosity, great hard work. editorial help. i am not a good natural right here. a recent book i wrote, i was worried that left to my own devices i can get repetitive, tend to get long winded. in this book we really try to pare it down. i really wanted this to be a book that could read. i think when you live to be 90 years old and be as famous as walter cronkite, 600 pages is not that much considering all the material i had on cronkite, including letters galore, particularly here wrote his wife from europe. so i am talking about d-day, of

the bulge, norma byrd trial. it could have just been cronkite and what ii, the book. >> anyway, last question. sandy sacalow -- 12 different days you talked to him and he said about 100 conversations. >> sandy was the official kind of friend. he was the executive producer, ran the cbs evening news. cronkite had great relationships with producers -- gordon manning, but benjamin, but sacalowe was last of the group that was a fierce cronkite low list and was not only able to tell me great stories but point me in directions of a former scriptwriter or a cameraman. what did the camera people thing when they went with cronkite to vietnam? or what was like on the bicentennial? the new the insights and new walter well, an amazing capacity

not to the content on a pedestal. he even told me that he was not there for the kennedy fascination, but the fidgeting with the glasses when kennedy was shot, almost seemed like an actor's movie, a steady move. he was a wonderful source for me because he dealt with cronkite as the real guy. i wanted people to know the man, not just the icon. >> the name of the book is just one word "cronkite." author, douglas brinkley. thank you very much. >> thank you, brian. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> for a dvd copy call 1-877- 662-7726. for a free transcript or to give us your comments, visit us at www.q-and-a.org "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts.

>> coming up on c-span, "washington journal" with your calls and e-mails. later at 1:00 p.m. eastern, chris matthews speaks at the gerald ford presidential awards, followed by a panel on the european debt crisis, and later, president obama and bill clinton at a fund-raiser in new york city, also live at 8:25 eastern. today on "washington journal," -- at 7:45 a.m. eastern, we will talk to bill adair about accuracies of the presidential campaigns and other races. and then daniel rosen looks at chinese investments in the u.s. d