Perhaps if all the peoples of the world understand what war really means, we would eliminate it.
Walter CronkiteRead
I feel no compulsion to be a pundit. As a matter of fact, I really don't have that much to say about most things. Working with hard news satisfies me completely.
Interpretation
Walter Cronkite emphasizes the satisfaction he derives from reporting hard news rather than engaging in commentary or opinion.
This quote reflects Walter Cronkite's humility and focus as a journalist. He indicates that he prefers to report facts and hard news rather than partake in the punditry that often accompanies the news. Cronkite's statement suggests a belief in the integrity of journalism, where the primary responsibility is to convey information accurately and without personal bias, allowing readers to form their own opinions.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of integrity in journalism.
Perhaps if all the peoples of the world understand what war really means, we would eliminate it.
The death of Churchill at 90 was one of those watershed moments in which the obituary rises to a special calling beyond the sharing of remembered times. It gave an older generation a rare opportunity to explain something of itself to its children.
I suppose popularity is measured by ratings. If a broadcaster is known as the leader because of ratings, then that's where people most want to be seen and heard, so there's no question that there's an advantage.
Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.
I think that our comfort is in our history.
We all have our likes and our dislikes. But... when we're doing news - when we're doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we're doing the daily news, covering politics - it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism.
When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word 'I' carried a lot of fright for me.
I don't think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It's lonely out here.
Journalism, some huge percentage of it, should be devoted to putting pressure on power, on nonsense, on chicanery of all kinds and if that's going to invite a lawsuit, well, bring it on.
We have to compete in a universe of 200 networks, so we have to carve out our own niche, and to me, that niche is just basic shoe-leather journalism with some good journalists at the helm you can trust as presenters.
I kept thinking, I'm not going to do political journalism, because there's no way to keep my principles and be a political journalist, so I'll edit a popular science magazine. This will be my salvation, and I'll emerge with my integrity intact. That didn't even happen.
If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.
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