Walter Cronkite would “like to be in the newsroom helping set the agenda” of CBS News, he told an interviewer when he was in San Diego last week to address an AARP convention.
And just what kind of agenda would Cronkite advance? Well, back in 1997 he proclaimed: “I don't believe the public has rejected liberalism; it simply has not heard a candidate persuasively advocate its humane and deeply democratic principles.” Nine years earlier, before denouncing Reagan's policies, Cronkite declared: “I know liberalism isn't dead in this country. It simply has, temporarily we hope, lost its voice.”
The DrudgeReport highlighted a brief AP story from September 13 about Cronkite's remarks. An excerpt of the unbylined AP dispatch about Cronkite, who retired in 1981 from anchoring the CBS Evening News:
…A longing to return to work is with him “always, every day,” the 85-year-old Cronkite said. But it hits him especially hard
during major news events such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.“When the big story is breaking, you want to be there,” he said. “I knew that was going to happen, I just didn't know it was going to happen over so many years.”
Cronkite, who now works on documentaries with his son's company, Cronkite Productions, addressed the annual convention of retiree-advocacy group AARP on Thursday….
“I would have stayed quite a bit longer…knowing what I know now, that I would still have plenty of years to grow up with the kids,” he said in an interview.
“Not being on the air, that's not important. But I'd like to be in the newsroom helping set the agenda.”
For the AP item in full Media Research Center.)
