Walter Cronkite passes

[Donna Halper]

At 09:32 PM 7/18/2009, Bill O'Neill wrote:

>I suppose, then, only time will tell if moderately liberal 
>alignments among media recapitulates a similar or like skepticism 
>now that decision makers at the federal level are no longer of the 
>conservative camp.

I think, based on the people I know, that the idea of the "liberal 
media" is a myth.  There have always been a few hardline righties and 
a few hardline lefties, but most of the folks I've worked with over 
the years tended to be rather centrist-- liberal on a few issues, 
more traditional on others.  And just about all of them were trained 
to be skeptical.  Now, does that mean they ask the questions you (or 
I) wish they would ask?  Not always.  But that doesn't mean they are 
partisan shills.

Nobody has mentioned this yet, so I will.  Walter Cronkite, much as I 
admired him, was very very traditional about women on the air-- he 
was about as close to old-fashioned "news should be done by men" as 
you can get.  That said, I have no evidence he ever tried to prevent 
women from being on the air.  He just wasn't accustomed to them being 
there as on-air reporters, and even said so once or twice.  So, yeah, 
he became more skeptical about government and about politics, but as 
for his views of gender roles, very old-fashioned conservative (not 
that there's anything wrong with that).

I have the feeling that most of the people covering the news try 
their best to be professional and cover the story in a fair and 
accurate manner -- even Chris Wallace and Brit Hume of Fox have 
corrected their colleagues who made factual errors, and the same goes 
for most of the other journalists I know, be they liberal or 
conservative in their personal life.  But as for the commentators, 
they are an entirely different conversation-- I do not expect either 
Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann to adhere to the standards or a 
Cronkite or an Aaron Brown.