First, let me say that I have found Walter Cronkite’s coverage of significant world events endearing and impressive, as his audience did over the years. I never saw him as a broadcaster and have only known him as a public figure (and fellow Texas Longhorn) due to my rather young age, but I am aware that many people have great affection and regard for him.
Cronkite has a reputation for having been “an objective journalist.” Just two weeks ago during a visit to my family in Texas, Cronkite’s name was mentioned to me during a vigorous discussion as a paragon of how “journalism used to be,” and how it “ought to be” – like Cronkite, you know, back in the day, objective. When anchors could sign off with “That’s the way it is,” and viewers didn’t feel it appropriate to laugh.
I feel that the nostalgia for this particular aspect of Cronkite’s journalistic era demonstrates an unfortunate and damaging misunderstanding of the journalistic enterprise. Cronkite was remembered during this particular discussion as a paragon of objectivity who kept his opinions out of the coverage. However, what this perspective does – and what many discussions of media bias issues do – is to assign the responsibility for objectivity in the production of journalism to the individual journalist. This perspective says that if the news seemed more objective back then, it was because Cronkite alone made it so.
I comment on this not to critique Cronkite’s individual performance as a journalist in any way; as I’ve said, I wasn’t even alive for most of his career. What I am instead concerned about is that we be careful to regard journalism not as the product of a single journalist who makes all the decisions about how news is covered, but as the product of a much more complex system of which the journalist is but one small part. An important part, yes, but only one part.
In today’s journalism – and this is, to a degree, different from Cronkite’s era – other influences are much more definitive factors in which and how topics are covered than a single journalist’s choices ever will be. These include the influences of the professional standards of journalism, of corporate ownership of journalism organizations, of advertisers, and of other interest groups such as corporate public relations.
Journalists do not have completely free rein in determining their stories’ topics or composition, contrary to the implied view of many who argue that whatever form of “bias” they perceive is actually caused by journalists advancing their own personal political agendas. Instead, journalists are taught – beginning, for many, with training in university journalism programs – what the norms of their field are, and how to become and remain employable in the profession. (Disclaimer: yes, as a journalism professor, I teach about these norms, though I do my best to get students to assess them critically.)
Cronkite worked within that same journalistic system, and had similar issues to contend with every day in his work. He might have had a bit more freedom to make decisions about his coverage, because during his career (especially its earlier years), corporations, advertisers and public relations efforts were perhaps not so routinely involved in the news production process. News was regarded as a public service that broadcasters were obligated to provide in exchange for the right to use the public airwaves, and was even required of broadcasters by the FCC to maintain their licenses. But that’s no longer the case. And even during Cronkite’s career, the professional guidelines about how to cover the news that journalists internalize through education and experience did exist, and did shape their decisions. After all, even the decision to cover one story and not another is a decision that affects the nature of the news. That basic decision is unavoidable in the creation of “journalism.”
So though I am sad to see Cronkite leave us, I think that what many people are mourning along with his loss is not so much the disappearance of objective journalism, though that is how it has been labeled in coverage of his passing. “Objective journalism” always has been and will remain a myth. Instead, I think audiences are grieving for something more difficult to name. We look back with nostalgia at a time in which journalism appeared to have meant something, to its corporate producers, to the government, to its audience. Citizens could use journalism actively for democratic purposes if they desired – as compared to today’s too-often vapid and inconsequential coverage that leaves us ill prepared for civic participation, when those participatory opportunities exist.
Maybe what we mourn today is the passing of an era in which news seemed to be worth something more than mere profits to its producers and audience. Journalism was then, though never perfect, at least in a somewhat better position to serve as the democratic foundation of the nation. We have yet to figure out how to get it there again.
Tags: cronkite, history, journalism
