people who worked with him or were influenced by him quite a lineup, morley safir, leslie stahl, roger mudd, harry smith, the list goes on and on and on. >> and they're all here over the next two hours. you will not see a lineup like this anywhere. we have so much to get to as we celebrate, like i said, walter cronkite. this morning, we remember the life and times of the cbs news anchorman, walter cronkite, who passed away at his home in new york last night. he was age 92. here is katie couric. >> that's the way it is. that's the way it is. >> that's the way it is. that's the way it is. >> reporter: for half a century, walter cronkite told it the way it was, delivering the news straight, and unvarnished. >> good evening, everyone. here is the news. >> reporter: among the pioneers who built television news from the ground up, he forged a special bond with audiences. trustworthy, plain spoken, unflappable. >> and you were there. >> reporter: walter was there. he had lived the history of the century and reported it. born in 1916, in st. joseph, missouri, as a young man, growing up in houston a

. >> reporter: we spoke by telephone tonight with former cbs news anchorman roger mudd from his home in mclean, virginia. >> when you worked for him or with him as i did for 20 years and a lot of other men and women, he enabled us to take pride in our work and to be proud of our work and i think almost single-handedly he gave television journalism a fine name. >> reporter: fox news sunday host chris wallace also remembered the man many would come to refer as with complete admiration as uncle walter. >> i think he kept the mentality, who, what, when, where, why, just the facts, trying as hard as he could for objectivity and withsole exception of his expressing annal sis in 1968 -- analysis in 19 of 8 that we were stalemated in vietnam and it was a war we couldn't win, i can't think of another opinion he ever expressed. >> president kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. >> reporter: whether it was delivering the shocking news of a young president's assassination or almost gleefully reporting on the first moon landing 40 years ago this week, walter cronkite was for a time during the past century co

think of this, dan rather at the white house, roger mudd on capitol hill. our contributors, at the state department. overseas coverage in vietnam was morley safer. and bernard talbot. bob schieffer was around covering the pentagon. in the list went on. david shoemaker bruce morton covered politics. and so on down the list. and at the beginning of the cbs evening news at night they would always tick off a list of correspondents that they have on hear that night, and then they would very frequently the attitude by the name of eric sever eyed for analysis. it was an extraordinary role of the behaviors that backed up this great anchorman. and it was a dominant force in the news for years and years. it wasn't just cronkite, it was cronkite backed up by a tremendous team. and he liked them, trusted them, encourage them, and you could sense on the air the report with the correspondence. >> clayton: he talked about his love of the wire service, working for united press international back in the day covering d-day, famously, and he has always been turned to in momen

they'd come on and tell you who was going to be on, and it would be dan rather at the white house, roger mudd kalb at the state department and covering the war in vietnam morely safer, bernard kalb, bob schieffer, these were the names, very famous correspondents in their own right, and then eric sevareid's analysis, and then one of the reasons he was never attacked, sevareid was never attacked during the nixon administration was that the people in the nixon white house thought sevareid looked a little like what god looked like, so it was quite a team they put behind cronkite, and cronkite was open to all of that, liked reporters, honored correspondents, treated them well, and you could sense the rapport on the air, and it made for a very powerful combination. >> he is such a part of the fabric of america's last half century or so. i want to read a statement from former president george w. bush. his office released this statement upon the death of walter cronkite. he was an icon of american journalism who shaped his profession while he was on the air. tonight his family is in our thoughts and

they'd come on and tell you who was going to be on, and it would be dan rather at the white house, roger muddn capitol hill, marvin kalb at the state department and covering the war in vietnam morely safer, bernard kalb, bob schieffer, these were the names, very famous correspondents in their own right, and then eric sevareid's analysis, and then one of the reasons he was never attacked, sevareid was never attacked during the nixon administration was that the people in the nixon white house thought sevareid looked a little like what god looked like, so it was quite a team they put behind cronkite, and cronkite was open to all of that, liked reporters, honored correspondents, treated them well, and you could sense the rapport on the air, and it made for a very powerful combination. >> he is such a part of the fabric of america's last half century or so. i want to read a statement from former president george w. bush. his office released this statement upon the death of walter cronkite. he was an icon of american journalism who shaped his profession while he was on the air. tonight his family i

he ran the cbs show there when you had roger mudd, schieffer, daniel shore doing investigative work and robert perpoint. it was quite a group around cbs and cronkite was the orchestra leader, duke ellington type of figure with all these figures. cronkite loved print reporting and he believed that cbs news television in that era was as fine as any newspaper because people that worked for him had to do the digging and had to read the wires. so i think what people remember about cronkite's voice is for one thing his street voice was the same as his tv voice. it wasn't an act. that was walter cronkite. secondly, when he said something like, named a soldier's name, let's say bob jones died. the way he would say that, you didn't need to have flourishes. you didn't need a lot of language. that's one of the things to me that comes through when you read his speeches, notes letters, his succinctness of language. both on the air and off the air. >> historian douglas brinkley. we thank you for your reflection tonight. we look forward to your continued work and research here. you mentioned walter's

number one broadcast through, oh, most of the '60s, but cronkite with his great team of reporters, roger mudd at the capitol, later dan rather at the white house, marvin kalb at the state department, daniel shore who covered watergate, they were the horsemen he led in the sense that you watched that broadcast because of walter cronkite and because of the people that he was surrounded with. and into the '70s, of course, no one could touch him. >> and, sam, stay with me. we just read president barack obama's statement. i want to read you a statement now from senator john mccain who, of course, was president obama's opponent in the last election, but a man who has a personal history with walter cronkite. here's senator mccain's statement. i'm saddened to learn of the passing of walter cronkite, one of the most influential newsmen of our time. i will never forget our memorable visit together to hanoi on the tenth anniversary of the fall of saigon. sam donaldson, help us understand how important the voice of walter cronkite was at the turning point of american public opinion in that war? >> well,

i thought it was very moving when roger mudd said, when he extraordinary washington correspondents backe said walter cronkite made them all proud to be tv journalists because, at a time when tv was in its infancy, he really shaped the medium in a way that i think no one else could have. and i think we owe2y him a huge nz doing that for emphasizing things likeh&h@ accuracy, fairness, objectivityá to the story and making the news more important than the person delivering it. you know, a lot of things have changed, obviously, and the media landscape is much more there are a lot of other pressures that i think were not necessarily taenant to the news in that day although iqzf think there were some certainly. juy person first, i think. and an extraordinary journalist second. >> you know, one of the first stories i did at cbs, i found myself -- it was the 50thu@tñ anniversary of a disaster in texas. as i'm going through the archives, i found the first story reports that had been filed by walter cronkite, and he was right so often about so many things. but he worked so hard at that. it wasn't

and, by the way, once they tried to replace walter cronkite with a combination of bob trout and roger muddelt once stayed below deck on ship just to say how long can he go? cronkite carried that further. he became the ultimate ad-libber. >> and i think what's so impressive with his gravitas, he wasn't a pretty boy but he was extremely talented and worked hard. that was so singular about him that he had this work ethic and yet he was so talented and that's a pretty unbeatable combination. >> doris? >> i was just going to say, mika, we had dinner on saturday night with senator george mcgovern, his 88th birthday. he told us a fabulous story about cronkite. in '72 when he was elected and the question of who should be vice president, he really began to think what about walter cronkite and, oh, no, he'll never go across the line but he later found out cronkite said you should have asked me. i would have said when do i report? and that would have been a huge change in our history possibly and mcgovern said it made him so sad when cronkite died remembering what might have been if something like th