walter cronkite the cbs news anchor from 1962 to 1981 and then he retired in 1981 when dan rather came in. but still a huge presence in the world of broadcast news and tonight cbs news broke into their primetime programming to announce that walter cronkite had died. he was 92 years old according to his family in the last couple months he had a degenerative disease which causes the arteries and veins in the brain to melt away. for most of walter cronkite's life and what a life he led, very healthy, very vigorous, three children, plenty of grandchildren. there was a time not too long ago where he appeared on a kid television network with his grandchild and described it as one of the great broadcast experiences of his life. certainly a family man and certainly somebody that so many of us in the broadcasting world looked up to when we were growing up and coming of age and again if you loved the news you certainly loved walter cronkite

and what cbs news was doing back in the 1960s and '70s and certainly the early '80s. we are going to just do a quick statement here that is in our file in terms of a statement that's come out from cbs. i'm sorry. from president -- i'm sorry -- from the president of nbc news. there are few who are more insightful or more dedicated to the craft of journalism than walter cronkite. it takes someone truly gifted to make the entire country feel like he was a member of the family. we are all better for his pioneering work in the journalism world and will forever be shaped by what he accomplished. on behalf of nbc news i extend our deepest sympathies to walter's family and his cbs colleagues. steve, like so many others, influenced and impacted by the incredible career and life of walter cronkite. our coverage of course will continue on msnbc with the rachel maddow show but, again, we will continue to cover the

passing of a broadcast legend, walter cronkite dead at the age of 92. i'm david shuster, msnbc coverage continues now with rachel maddow. good evening. we do have breaking news that walter cronkite who anchored cbs evening news for 20 years has died. he was 92 years old. mr. cronkite died at his home in new york with his family by his side. a cbs executive tells us mr. cronkite passed away at 7:42 p.m. eastern time this evening after a long battle with cerebral vascular disease. mr. cronkite was called the most trusted man in america in a 1972 poll, beating out the president and the vice president, and the congress for the title of course. when he was 12 years old mr. cronkite said he read about a foreign correspondent in "boy's life" magazine and then and there decided that was what he wanted to be when he grew up. cronkite got his start as a journalist working for a small

newspaper and for radio stations before joining a wire service called united press. that job took him overseas to cover world war ii. that saw him going ashore on d-day, parachuting with the 101st airborne division, and flying along even on a bombing mission over germany. legendary cbs newsman edward r. murrow offered mr. cronkite a job in radio when he returned to new york. mr. cronkite turned it down. years later murrow offered cronkite another job, this time in television, and this time cronkite took him up on the offer. here now is nbc's brian williams with a look back at the life and the massive influence of walter cronkite. >> here is a bulletin from cbs news. in dallas, texas three shots were fired at president kennedy's motorcade in downtown dallas. >> he'll be forever linked to the assassination of our young president. and with american space flights. >> man on the moon.

whew, boy. >> and the downfall of a president. >> we should try tonight to pull together the threads of this amazing story, quite unlike any in our modern american history. >> for 20 years in this country, 25 million americans each night got their news from walter cronkite. >> and that's the way it is. >> and for all those watching in living rooms across the country, it was the way it was. cronkite's audience was so big he was so influential at times it seemed more like he was addressing the nation on a nightly basis than just anchoring the news. when a survey named him the most trusted man in america, that title stuck. walter cronkite came from humble roots to get there, beginning with his high school newspaper, then as a cub reporter for "the houston post" at age 19. he covered world war ii for united press. >> i'm just back from the

biggest assignment that any american reporter could have so far in this war. >> then came the cold war and again cronkite was there. >> will be exploded at 5:20 our time. that's two minutes and 20 seconds from now. >> he was named anchor of the cbs evening news in 1962. he was 47 when his career defining moment arrived a year later in the form of a bulletin from dallas, texas. >> the flash apparently official. president kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. central standard time. >> an old promotional black and white film by cbs news, a day in the life of walter cronkite, shows us an anchorman at the height of his power in a different era when tv was still new and back then there were just three networks to choose from. with that power and his huge

vooupg aw viewing audience came influence. after a trip to vietnam in 1968 he concluded the war couldn't be won. >> to say we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic if unsatisfactory conclusion. >> just weeks later president johnson announced he wouldn't seek another term. >> when he saw this on the air he said that i've lost cronkite, i've lost middle america. >> cronkite took part in a kind of accidental diplomacy when he was told on live tv sadat was willing to visit israel. >> that could be within say a week? >> yes, i'd say that, yes. >> cronkite ruled the airways and the newsroom at cbs, always demanding the best, always demanding more, and he gave up the anchor chair with delay but profound regret. >> old anchormen, you see, don't fade away. they just keep coming back for more. >> years ago he was asked to sum up his own legacy.

>> that he tried as a journalist. that he had a vision of what journalism should be, and in his own practice adhered to it. >> he was every inch a journalist but he became an american icon. a true celebrity. >> it's an honor to meet you, mr. cronkite. >> call me walter. >> among the first to be known by a single word, he was simply cronkite. and there was no other. >> this is walter cronkite. good night. >> joining us now is the anchor and managing editor of nbc nightly news mr. brian williams. thank you so much for taking time to talk to us tonight. >> rachel, thank you for having me. i wish it was under better circumstances but we'll all remember this was an american life well lived. it was a great ride. >> brian, when you look back at the evolution of news and media

and broadcasting over the course of the last couple generations what do you think was different about broadcasting and news because of walter cronkite? what did he change about this business? >> no one had formed the clay model. no one had made the mold that came out of it. networks tried people in various roles, some combinations. our own were a legendary pair on nbc but the anchor and i said earlier i think don huet gets credit for that moniker, and it stuck, the anchor was walter. i also said earlier tonight to david shuster, rachel, as we keep watching the black and white of those huge glass frames that he takes off to announce the death of president kennedy in 1963, walter is 47 years old on that day and he was a man of his era and of his age and of

all things lbj gets to write the epithet because of that quote, if i've lost cronkite, i've lost middle america. that was walter's audience. it was his strength. middle america. what we used to define as middle america watched walter cronkite. it shaped their world view. >> about that idea of him as the arbiter, almost the cipher of main stream public opinion how much did cronkite share his own opinion on the things that he covered? so many of the iconic moments of his career are people recalling a crack in the objectivity. a moment where you got a sense of what he knew. how deliberate was he about letting you know his take on things? >> i think he was religious not to and others may disagree with me on this but i've always said walter cashed in the one chip you get in the so-called objective journalism career. he went to vietnam on a

so-called fact finding mission. he came home. he put on the air what he found, that the war was unwinnable for the united states. it turned out to be prescient and sadly for the many soldiers who left american treasure on the battle field he was right. that's what lbj was reacting to. i look back at his career and i saw him use that chip only once. and in every other instance he held his personal feelings very, very close. the lack of opinion in journalism was dear to him and the seepage of opinion into journalism slowly broke his heart over the years. that was very tough on him to see how television news has changed in many quarters. >> even as he quite literally i think defined gravitas in modern broadcasting, he is the model of what gravitas looks like in broadcasting, still today. there were moments, though,

where if not sharing his opinion he did share his feelings. people, i know, still recall him saying go, baby, go, when he was covering the apollo 11 mission. so showing you not his opinion about something, at least his own emotional reaction to what he was covering. >> it's hard to believe there was a day before we had television, bursting into tears on an almost daily basis. you're right. two instances that were like formtive in my childhood, crucibles when he had a tear in his eye after we lost president kennedy and after we landed on the moon. it's just freakish we're covering the 40th anniversary of that mission. absolutely hard to believe. but that's what passed for a crack in the exterior. rachel, one more thing. think of how the model has changed. in cronkite's day, almost up to the point when i started on nightly news after getting the chair from tom brokaw, here was the model.

we talk. audience listens. we go home. we do it again the next day. and now it's much more of a conversation. now i talk and i get e-mails and i talk then again with the viewers who wrote me e-mails and i write a blog every afternoon on deadline. it's a different industry. it's a different business. it was an on high kind of platform when there were just three networks and walter was the dominant force. it was kind of like "time" and "life" magazine. it was how america saw itself or was told to see itself. in that way he reflected his times, too. but the model changed. journalism kind of dispassionate, nonopinion journalism, though, walter cronkite had a huge hand in shaping. >> do you think that we'll never again be in a position of having an anchor or a journalist being the most trusted man in america because of the way that journalism has changed? as you noted with david last

hour, when he was found in that poll to be the most trusted man in america nobody quarrelled with it. it seemed like almost an obvious conclusion. are we in an era now that there's no going back to that? >> yeah. that's right. it made perfect sense. we'd all let him watch our kids when we went to the supermarket if we had the chance. we'd all want to hear world news from him first, if it was sad or bad news i wanted walter to break it to us. because of changing times, because of the changing view of the journalism business, remember journalists weren't ranked, you know, as lowelowly were back then. it was still believe it or not held in some esteem. i don't ever think you'll have anyone with that much sway over the american people. we're too fragmented now. and i think just, it was like a, landing on a carrier deck. walter aced it. he had his chance in american journalism and television history and he stuck the

landing. and he got it right. >> brian, i know that you had somewhat of a personal relationship with mr. cronkite. when you talked to him about his career, he looked back on his career, what did he think was the hardest thing he did? what did he find most challenging about what his work? >> i think keeping his head in check and his beloved wife betsy was a -- the senior vice president of keeping walter's head in check. and he loved the acouterments of his job. my god he was known just about as well as the coca-cola logo throughout the united states and as media proliferated around the world. he wanted to keep working. it'll be said in various forms of truth over the next couple of days that he was, he left cbs news not in a way he would have liked. and he missed it and he regretted retiring. that gave a certain sadness to his retirement years. he never stopped reading

newspapers just voracious. he never totally left the game and in that case his life resembled the front page. >> brian williams, anchor and 8pnews being very generous his time to join us tonight. thanks so much. >> thanks, rachel. we've lost a great guy. >> walter cronkite, legendary cbs news anchor died tonight at his home in new york at the age of 92. we'll be joined next in studio by dan rather. when i was told i had diabetes, i felt amazingly boxed in. (announcer) joe uses the contour meter from bayer. (joe) my meter absolutely adapts to me and my lifestyle. i'm joe james, and being outside of the box

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continuing now with breaking news tonight legendary cbs newsman walter cronkite has passed away this evening at the age of 92. mr. cronkite had been suffering from cerebral vascular disease for a number of years. we're told he passed away a little less than two hours ago at home surrounded by his family. joining us now we're very lucky to say is dan rather. he stepped in for walter cronkite as anchor of the cbs evening news when mr. cronkite stepped down in 1981. mr. rather, thank you so much for coming in. >> thank you. >> this is obviously a very sad day for everybody whose lives were touched by walter cronkite. for you, personally, this has to be a very emotional night. >> it is. first and foremost because of the cronkite family, his son and

daughter who i was privileged to know for a very long time, haven't seen them lately, but to say the least i'm saddened to hear about walter's pass iing a i keep thinking about his family, how proud he was of his son and daughter, his wife betsy whom brian williams mentioned earlier. he called her the vice president of keeping walter on an even keel. i would say that she was the president and ceo not just of the walter cronkite fan club but she had been a newspaper woman being on television, particularly being a supernova star such as walter cronkite was in the news, it's an ego centric, narcissistic business. but you rarely, if ever, saw that in walter cronkite. and one reason was his wife, betsy. i've seen her saying, hey, come on, big guy.

that sort of thing. and she really kept him on an even keel. that's to take nothing from himself. it is very easy to forget on recognizing that a lot of people in the audience never saw walter cronkite, were not of memory age. but he was the proverbial household name. it's an over worked phrase. he was a living legend and his legend will out live him by far. he was, again, down home doesn't quite say it but he was regular, walter. i think the audience recognized that. they ripgzed that he was trying to be as honest, as truthful, as integrity filled as he possibly could. there was another side to him. he loved race cars. race cars when he was a younger man. loved sailing. was an excellent sailor. really did sail a pretty good sized sail boat for a long while. but one of the things that i

haven't seen, paid attention to much, i'm sure it will be as time goes along, is that walter cronkite was a very brave and very good combat correspondent in world war ii. for example when they sent gliders into france, a disastrous plan by the military, walter cronkite was on one of those gliders. it roughly corresponded with d-day. he came out with his newspaper and wire service in world war ii and became a pioneer in what was then the new thing of television and in so doing he defined the craft of television anchor. he was an extremely strong ad liberal which is to say that he knew how to talk without a script. when he first started i don't think there was any teleprompter. and he could talk about a political convention or a space shot or the korean war, which is how he got his big television break. he was working at wtop in

washington and he stood up in front of a map and talked about the korean battle field and from that, that's why cbs hired him. very strong ad libber. other things to say about him, as a television news anchor, without question, he set the standard. he set the standard by expanding the public's understanding and connection to big stories. before walter cronkite i don't think there was anybody on television who could do that. the combination for nbc came as close as anyone but walter as a sole anchor as opposed to huntly-brinkley, a dual anchor, he connected. walter had that ability, what we call in television, the ability to get through the glass, which is to say connect with people in the living room. i think the biggest thing about him is he loved reporting and present k the news. he had a fashion for it.

i believe the audience recognized he deeply cared about it, had a passion for it, and that's one reason why they made him by far the most popular anchor person of his time or for that matter probably any time. and enough cannot be said about what he gave to the craft. one other thing about him is that walter stood up for his correspondents and producers. when the pressure was on about controversial stories, vietnam and watergate come to mind, he was rather like an uncle, a caring, loving uncle and he earned the tag with the audience and with the press of uncle walter. >> when you stepped in, it was announced in 1980 and you stepped in in 1981 when he retired and you were stepping into not only a position held by a man who was quite truly a household name, even more than

that if there is a metaphor that gets bigger than that, but also somebody who wielded incredible power and had to have been aware of that, that his take on things however objectively put did define main stream public opinion. he not only had access to anybody in the country he wanted access to but his direct communication with the movers and shakers of the country and the world was something that he had to have been aware of and that must have defined that role for you stepping into it in 1981 in a way that must have sort of almost felt awesome just because it was such a powerful position. is that what it felt like at the time? >> no. and it didn't feel like that at the time, partly, mostly because of walter. walter did not think in terms of power. what you said was exactly true but he didn't think in terms of power. walter was all news all the

time. full power, tall tower, we break in when news breaks out. we want to go for the big story. franchise it. that's what was in his head. not the power he wielded. and much is made and i think it should be of his famous and rightly so broadcast from vietnam when he went to vietnam to see for himself the war. and he delivered as brian williams earlier described it pretty much saying, these are my words not his, but at best the war is a stalemate and it probably is unwinnable. that was his objective opinion at the time. it was one of the rare times that he expressed an opinion on anything but it was based on his objective reporting but he didn't think in terms of power. and because i had seen and proudly served as a field correspondent under walter cronkite, i had seen his approach to this business of power. walter never talked in terms of power. he never saw himself as a powerful person. he saw himself as an honest

broker of information, that he gathered information. and walter was one hell of a reporter. he wasn't just an anchor. and he knew good reporting and he demanded good reporting. but he didn't think in terms of power. he just thought, this is my role. my role is to present quality journalism of integrity. i'm going to put around me people that i know believe the same thing. his long-time right-hand person had been with walter through all kinds of things, sandy sokolo. the point is institutions and broadcasts do take on the character and personality of their leaders and the cbs news of that era, the cronkite era, which stretched roughly from the late 1950s he came to the anchor chair in what, i think 1962, perhaps '63, all the way up to

1981, that this permeated the organization the cronkite way. you don't think of yourself as powerful. you're a working reporter. your job is to be the people's surrogate. where they can't be you listen to news conferences, you come on, you tell it straight. and you hope that they absorb the information. >> incredible, authoritative, trustworthy source. dan rather is our guest. we're going to take a quick break and come back with more with dan rather. we have just learned this evening that walter cronkite has died at the age of 92. we'll be right back. (announcer) this is nine generations

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we're continuing our breaking news coverage of the death of legendary cbs news anchor walter cronkite. mr. cronkite passed away tonight at the age of 92. the news comes to us from mr. cronkite's long-time chief of staff who confirmed tonight that he lost a long battle with cerebral various lahscular dise. former president george h.w. bush has already released a statement tonight that says, quote, barbara and i join the nation in mourning the passing of walter cronkite as a pioneer in television journalism he was a towering, respected figure. many americans heard it from walter first that president kennedy had died or that a man had walked on the moon. he's already missed.

we're joined again by dan rather who took over the anchor chair at the cbs evening news after walter cronkite retired in 1981. thanks very much for staying with us. >> thank you, rachel. >> today we have 24-hour, wall-to-wall cable news. this is one of the studios in which we sit right now which is a place for that. network news is still in a model that essentially started with walter cronkite. the idea of a half hour evening network newscast. it hadn't been that way before. had it? >> no, it had not. it was a 15-minute evening news broadcast on nbc and cbs, the only two who over the years had an evening news broadcast. beginning in roughly 1956, for the first time in television news history, the combination of huntley-brinkley for nbc overcame cbs. and i don't have to tell you that in the sweeps the ratings

dominate and so they decided to change the anchor. a man named ern sclize, now deceased and former cbs correspondent he and the president of cbs news laid out a plan. how do we return to dominance? and part of it was to change anchors. i wouldn't say there was controversy. there was a lot of debate but they settled on cronkite partly because he was a superb ad libber and was able to take air without a script and if you needed 15 minutes he could give you 15 minutes. if you needed 15 hours he'd give you 15 hours. he was a very strong ad libber. the first thing they did was move from douglas edwards to walter cronkite. that was in roughly 1961, maybe later, '62. it was later. it was '62. then the idea of doing a half

hour evening news broadcast had been around newsrooms for a long time. but again, on the corporate side of things, people said, nobody's going to sit still for a half hour evening news broadcast. the public won't sit still for it. our affiliates won't sit still for it. much the same arguments given today about moving the present half hour evening news broadcast to an hour. but the decision was made and walter of course was a champion of it. and ernest and richard said we'll go to a half hour. so walter cronkite did the first network national half hour evening news broadcast. nbc followed pretty quickly behind that. and then he had milestones in between but the kennedy -- the evening news went to a half hour in 1962. president kennedy was assassinated in november of 1963. and walter stayed on the air for i don't know how many hours during the kennedy assassination and he became associated in the

public's mind with the kennedy assassination. he also became a very identified with the space program. having said that walter loved fast cars, fast boats, he loved space. he loved the idea of going to the moon. let me say as a footnote, i don't know that it's been said, walter was a tremendous competitor. yes, he was uncle walter. yes he had all the social graces and professional graces which made him a legend, but down where he lived, he was determined to win. and everybody was climbing on the space program. "life" magazine, nbc, everybody. but walter became such a champion of the space program that in many ways he was seen as the extra astronaut. he went to cape canaveral and florida, covered the space program, and so through most of the '60s, the new half hour cbs evening news, it began to

improve with the ratings but it wasn't until the moon landing, again, walter became identified in the public consciousness and i think correctly so by being the voice of the effort to put men on the moon and it wasn't until sometime in 1969 that cbs and the cbs evening news with walter cronkite finally and definitively overcame nbc news and the huntley-brinkley report. probably too much television news history for most people but here's the point. walter cronkite was the leader and all the while he covered the kennedy assassination, became the extra astronaut, identified with the space program, he led coverage of the civil rights movement, cbs news led in coverage of the civil rights movement. walter was a tremendous champion of in-the-field coverage of the civil rights movement even when it was very unpopular. and some cbs stations in the

south, in the deep south, refused to carry the broadcasts because the cbs evening news with walter cronkite was concentrating on dr. martin luther king and the civil rights movement. during the vietnam war, again, walter was a champion of covering the war. he always had, you know, deep concerns of whether it was the right thing, the right place for the right reasons but he recognized that it was one of the defining stories of the decade if not the half century and he championed the total coverage of the vietnam war. but with the advent of the half hour edus which he was the first to do, the kennedy assassination, civil rights, vietnam war and capped by -- other people on the air were doing the moon landing but his was the most recognizable and most admired voice on television at that time. what a decade for him.

and the decade of the 1960s was the decade of the making of walter cronkite and the revival of cbs news. then all during the 1970s in which walter scored, you know, one scoop after another and how he loved a scoop, you know, it's become a little trendy in journalism these days to say, well let's don't be too scoop oriented. walter wouldn't have any of that. he wanted to beat the competition. and all during the '70s he was, prevailed in the ratings, was dominant in the ratings. it may be worth noting, rachel, because you live in a different world now in the 21st century, the new age television news. they had ratings in those days but ratings mattered far less. having said that, they certainly mattered to the corporate owners and operators and stations cared about ratings but my recollection is even as late as the mid to late '70s they might look at ratings once a week at

most. now you probably get them next morning and probably minute by minute. but the point here is it was a different era. the standards that walter cronkite set, i would argue and i think the record clearly shows, are alive, perhaps not so well to this day. he was by any measurement a giant of the journalist's craft, a pioneer, early pioneer in television news as a whole. television news went through tremendous changes during walter cronkite's time. the advent of videotape, rapid and easy accessible jet travel, satellite communications, all of these came into being while walter sat in the anchor chair and was that very likeable, trustworthy uncle walter. >> dan rather is the former anchor of cbs evening news. please stay with us as we continue our coverage of the news tonight that the great walter cronkite has died at the age of 92.

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breaking news tonight the death of legendary cbs news anchor walter cronkite. mr. cronkite passed away at his home in new york at 7:42 p.m. eastern at the age of 92. mr. cronkite anchored the cbs evening news from 1962 to 1981. he famously became known as the most trusted man in america. as many as 18 million households tuned in every night to see walter cronkite's newscast. he passed away this evening after a long battle with cerebral vascular disease. we're joined by dan rather, a friend and colleague of the late walter cronkite and of course his successor at the cbs evening news. mr. rather, thanks for staying with us. >> thank you, rachel. >> when you started in 1981, when you were having those responsibilities handed off to you after 20 years of walter cronkite holding that position at cbs and in the country, did he give you either advice or direction about what he expected from you at that time?

>> well, he certainly gave me advice and direction because i sought it. i can't say he wouldn't have done it otherwise but i sought it and he did. but it wasn't the kind of advice and direction of whom i should try to become or how to handle it. it was more along the lines of, that there's a tradition at cbs news that goes back to the early 1930s, a tradition that ran through the founder of broadcast news as we knew it, edward r. murrow, and there was a tradition that he hoped that i could uphold the tradition. he told me some of the problems he thought i would have. >> a tradition defined by what, though? as opposed to things that he thought cbs might drift into if that tradition wasn't upheld. what were the tenants of it? >> first of all, to be the best. and in the best sense of that. we are the best.

he was good about saying because we are the best people such as you and he named other cbs news correspondents. we want to be the best. he talked about the responsibility and to be passionately involved in the responsibilities of doing the cbs evening news and things like, this is not just another broadcast. this is important to the democratic process. it's important to a constitutional republic based on the principles of freedom of democracy. you know how we fit into that, dan. and it's a public trust. and you should see it as a public trust. it has, one of the few times we talked about power. yes, it has power. but with that power goes tremendous responsibility. this may strike some people as corny or they may say, did he say that? he did really say those kinds of things and it wasn't corny at all. i took it seriously. keep in mind i had been a field

correspondent under walter cronkite for the better part of 20 years. and i remember we had a conversation in either his library or living room when he lived on the upper east side of new york and later moved down to midtown close to the u.n. and among the problems he said the business is changing. satellite time had become far less expensive. it had been around for a while but it was expensive and becoming far less expensive. jet travel was increasing. you could hop on a jet plane and get almost anywhere. cnn had been founded. and he was concerned about the rise of abc news. for a long time it had been a two polar world in news. cbs and nbc. but under the late grate leader abc was coming like a ton. i think that's the way walter put it. and he said you'll have to try

to be persuasive with your bosses and superiors. because abc is gathering a lot of resources. they're hiring a lot of good people. and it was a version -- these are my words not his -- a version of your' going to hear the patter of their little feet, which is to say they're gaining on us and i know it. and he talked about what cbs news was, had been, was then, and he hoped it would continue to be, quote, a hard news outfit. serious journalism, we're not serious about ourselves. walter had a marvelous sense of humor by the way. not serious about ourselves. we are serious about our responsibilities to the public and this public trust. he said that i shouldn't be reluctant to talk to william bailey, bill bailey, the founder of cbs news and a great supporter of the news operation including being a tremendous supporter of having air space or

a wall between the corporate interests and the news interests. so he talked about all of those kinds of things. he encouraged me to be myself. i said to him because i meant it, walter, there is no way i can be another walter cronkite or a new walter cronkite. the best thing i can do is be the best dan rather i know how to be. and he said, that's exactly the way you ought to be thinking. and in the early stages when i first took over the evening news, walter left and my recollection is he went sailing for a while but he left but we had lunch several times and he was always urging me to stay hard as in hard news. >> yeah. >> resist the -- what he already saw as the first edges of the trivialization of news and warned me against it. we had those kinds of conversations. >> just received a statement issued by the president on the

passing of walter cronkite. it says, for decades walter cronkite was the most trusted voice in america. his rich baritone reached martin luther king jr. -- reached millions of living rooms every night and walter set the standard by which all others have been judged. he was there through wars and riots, marches and milestones, calmly telling us what we needed to know and through it all he never lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland. walter was always more than just an anchor. he was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day, a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. he was family. he invited us to believe in him and he never let us down. this country has lost an icon and a dear friend and he will be truly missed. joining us now by phone is the former anchor and managing editor of nightly news now nbc news, a special correspondent tom brokaw. mr. brokaw thanks very much for joining us this evening. i appreciate it.

>> rachel, i'm not going to go on if you refer to me as mr. brokaw. listen, we've all been hoping that this day would not come but at the same time no one can look back on walter's life and have anything but an enormous sense of admiration. and i think that dan and i both have an enormous sense of gratification as well because walter cronkite set the standard, set the bar very high. and we owe so much to those early pioneers of network news, david brinkley, chet huntley, and walter cronkite and the people who put them on the air for taking this mission so seriously, establishing the standard when they did, and making sure that broadcast news would become as it has i believe such a critical element in american life. and no one personified that more than walter cronkite did.

>> tom, when you think back over the types of milestones that mr. rather milestones mr. rather was describing earlier, the kennedy assassination, the space program, civil rights, vietnam, all the things we associate this great voice of authority, this great voice with american authority with, what stands out to you in terms of broadcast excellence? in terms of setting that bar so high, being the gold standard in terms of integrity and broadcast excellence? >> i think two things. you left out the beginning of his career which is that he covered world war ii. i wrote a piece for "the washington post," which he assume will appear tomorrow morning, where i said nowhere else in american history has been at the center every historic stories as walter cronkite. going back to world war ii, being in moscow at the beginning of the cold war and coming to america and becoming that most trusted figure.

i think would be very hard to single out one over another. i think the great tribute to walter was he was more than the sum of his parts. he was more than just one story we always remember. obviously, he played a critical role in the national dialogue on vietnam. when he went to vietnam after the offensive and came back and concluded it was a war that could not be won, as president johnson said, we lost walter. as dan was saying, he was all news all the time. he thought of himself, i think it's fair to say from across the street where i was watching him, that he never lost that wire service of passion for just getting the news out to the american public and letting them make the right judgment. that was a big step for him to do what he did about vietnam. of course, he was there

watergate, landing on the moon, he gets wrestled to the ground as he looked like he was going to put down his microphone and go back-to-back with people man-handling him. i also loves is sense of adventure. he was a sports car racer and a sailor, obviously. he loved the idea of being in the middle of whatever was going on. i think that it's important we pay tribute to bessie, his wonderful life who had a sardonic sense of humor. r he was a humble anchorman. bessie had the lightest touch of letting the air out of him. >> i am having a humbling moment

sitting here with dan rather and tom brokaw. i feel like a kid let at the table at thanksgiving. dan, i start with you. that is the idea of the reporter anchor, the anchor who is not only from the world of reporting, but brings reporting as their first and primary compass in terms of what drives their decision-making, what makes the news and how they do it. what's changed about that? what's different about the air of walter cronkite and how cronkite defined that? what distance have we travelled? >> i'm interested to hear what tom has to say about this. we travelled a long way from that. i'm happy to say with the anchors of the present news broadcast, some of what walter cronkite pioneered, some of what

made him the most trusted man in america, part of what made him a giant of eternalistic craft by any measure, he didn't just play a reporter on tv. he had been a reporter, wire service, newspaper reporter, combat correspondent before he came to television. he never ceased being the reporter. walter loved reporter. he loved the news. he had a passion for it. i think the public recognized it. walter cronkite, the person bringing you the news, was a person in large measure responsible for reporting the news. walter did pioneer the idea of the reporter/anchor. walter took that several steps beyond that. as he left the anchor chair in

1980, he had sought and succeeded in taking the cbs "evening news" to a lot of different venues. the technology had not quite caught up with walter's i am bigs, determination to bring the news where it's happening. by the time i came to the anchor chair in 1981 and the technology was becoming such that less expensive satellite time, the portable telephones and that sort of thing allowed the anchor to be much more moving around. walter would have dreamed what we have been ail to do in the mid to late '80s. the point is he started this tradition, i'm not just going to

sit in the studio and be a hot house plant here and receipt the news. i'm going where news is happening. when i get there, i'm going to break news. >> tom brokaw listening on the phone here, do you feel that is the distance we have travelled versus the reporter/anchor, the idea of the anchor who not only delivers the news, but the person who collects it, as well? >> i think that is true. walter made it colleague for dan and our beloved colleagues peter jennings. i remember in 1989 when the soviet union was collapsing around the world, dan, peter and i probably logged more overnight flights than any other reporter in history. we were continuing the legacy of walter cronkite.

as dan pointed out, we had all those marvelous tools of technology so when we landed in some god-forsaken place in the middle of the night, there would be a satellite dish to help us get on the air. we came from a reporter background that was our instinct. we partly had grown up watching walter cronkite and that generation of people who brought to broadcast news whose instincts were going out just being a reporter. >> tom brokaw is an nbc correspondent, former anchor of "nbc nightly news." it's so kind of you who have phoned in to help us cover this. we appreciate your time, sir. >> thank you, rachel. i just came from yellowstone with my grandchildren. i was reminded of the story of walter being there about eight