271 It was also Smith who first used the term grassy knoll: Gary Mack (curator), “The Man Who Named the Grassy Knoll,” Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, mcadams.posc.mu.edu/gk_name.htm (accessed October 31, 2011).
271 As the crisis deepened, Eddie Barker, news director of KRLD-TV: Small, To Kill a Messenger, p. 135.
272 “Because of Barker and Rather,” Cronkite claimed: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 202.
272 CBS stayed live for fifty-five hours: Small, To Kill a Messenger, p. 136.
272 when a crisis occurred, “the adrenaline pumps”: “Cronkite Talks of Regents and Doing the Job,” Lancaster (PA) New Era, April 12, 2000.
272 “I don’t even recall the spots”: “As 175 Million Americans Watched.”
273 “Walter ate all of this up”: Author interview with Sandy Socolow, September 18, 2010.
273 Jackie Kennedy’s pink Chanel suit being saturated with blood: Gary Mack (Sixth Floor Museum) to Douglas Brinkley, December 25, 2011.
273 “I was in shock”: Richard Goldstein, “Robert Pierpoint, 86, Dies; CBS News Correspondent,” New York Times, October 24, 2011.
273 “let them see what they’ve done”: Smith, Grace and Power, p. 442.
273 He felt a “chill”: Bliss, Now the News, p. 337.
274 “Even if you are right (and God help you if you are wrong)”: Rather and Herskowitz, The Camera Never Blinks Twice, p. 120.
275 “Whoever said talk is cheap”: Sperber, Murrow: His Life and Times, p. 684.
275 “I was really just a disreputable character”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, p. 452, WCP-UTA.
276 “From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official”: CBS News transcript, “The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy as Broadcast on the CBS Network,” November 22, 1963, vol. 1, p. 24.
276 “We knew it was coming”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 203.
276 “It was touch and go there for a few seconds”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 305.
276 Cronkite explained that “the psychological trauma” didn’t touch him: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1999.
276 Unbeknownst to Cronkite, Vice President Johnson had been whisked: Jim Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), pp. 269–70.
277 “I think we just kind of intuitively knew what to do”: “JFK: Breaking the News,” extended interview (transcript) with Eddie Barker, Online NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, November 20, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/kennedy/ barker.html.
277 “When the news is bad, Walter hurts”: “A Man Who Cares,” Newsweek, March 9, 1981.
278 “This is Walter Cronkite, and you’re a goddamn idiot”: Frank, Out of Thin Air, p. 187.
278 “Unfortunately, that Park Avenue lady drove me mad”: Oriana Fallaci, “Walter Cronkite Says What He Can’t Say on Television,” Look, November 17, 1970.
279 “We were not challenged”: Author interview with Lew Wood, January 9, 2012.
279 “It was an easy shot”: Wood, “Dallas and JFK,” Reporter’s Notebook, November 20, 2008.
279 made history by airing a two-hour telecast: CBS Television Network Program Logs, November 1–November 30, 1963, CBS News Archives, New York. Also A. R. Hogan to Douglas Brinkley, August 2, 2011.
279 Cronkite steadied the 70 million friends of CBS News: Miller and Runyon, “And That’s the Way It Seems,” p. 23.
280 CBS News did have a camera at the Dallas police department: Bliss, Now the News, p. 339.
280 ABC didn’t broadcast Oswald’s death: Gary Mack to Virginia Northington, November 14, 2011.
280 “One of the great misfortunes at CBS was that we were off”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 203.
280 “the national hearth”: George Rosen, “Television Responds with Its Finest Hour,” Variety, November 27, 1963.
280 93 percent of U.S. homes with televisions were tuned in: Bliss, Now the News, p. 340.
280 “to involve an entire population in a ritual process”: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 293.
281 “It is said that the human mind has a greater capacity”: “Cronkite Broadcasts: Moon Landing, JFK Death,” MSNBC, http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31972354/ns/today-entertainment/t/cronkite-broadcasts-moon-landing-jfk-death/ (accessed July 3, 2011).
281 “Walter was really in his element”: Author interview with Sandy Socolow, September 18, 2010.
282 They’d go immediately to their Apple laptop: M. G. Siegler, “In the Age of Realtime, Twitter Is Walter Cronkite,” TechCrunch online, November 27, 2009.
282 in his conjecture that Oswald acted alone: Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 450.
282 “What fed the conspiracy notion about the Kennedy assassination”: Small, To Kill a Messenger, p. 36.
283 dispelled the notion of an octopus-like conspiracy to get Kennedy: Jack Gould, “TV: Useful View of Warren Report,” New York Times, June 29, 1967.
283 “We concluded,” he said, “that nothing else could be proved”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, pp. 204–5.
283 “a rare and important experience in television journalism”: Rick DuBrow, “CBS Investigates Warren Commission,” UPI, June 29, 1967.
283 I’m not as happy as I once was with the Warren Commission”: “And That’s the Way It Is,” Columbia Journalism Review 19, no. 1 (May–June 1981): 50.
284 an “international” conspiracy was at play: “JFK Killing Left LBJ Doubtful; Cronkite: Ex-Prez Not Sure of Truth,” Philadelphia Daily News, February 6, 1992.
284 “A man lands on the moon”: “On the News Beat,” Newsweek, June 1, 1964.
Eighteen: Who’s Afraid of the Nielsen Ratings?
285 Lyndon Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, had purchased KTBC: Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Knopf, 1990).
286 “Their deep friendship went back a long way”: Author interview with Harry Middleton, September 8, 2011.
286 Before long, Lyndon and Lady Bird were making millions: Jack Shafer, “The Honest Graft of Lady Bird Johnson,” Slate, July 16, 2007.
286 Johnson was a Pecos Bill–style folk figure in Texas: Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of Ambition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 80.
287 “LBJ and Frank Stanton were good friends”: Tom Johnson to Douglas Brinkley, September 18, 2011.
287 The LBJ-Stanton relationship was so rock solid: Lawrence Bergreen, Look Now, Pay Later, pp. 276–277.
287 Cronkite knew that LBJ wasn’t “Huckleberry Capone”: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy, November 5, 2011.
288 “[Johnson] watched all the newscasts”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 225.
288 “Walter, I called Bill Paley”: Frank, Out of Thin Air, p. 224.
288 CBS, the largest advertising-based business in the world: Leonard Wallace Robinson, “After the Yankees What?” New York Times Magazine, November 15, 1964.
289 CBS broadcast fourteen of the top fifteen shows: Deborah Haber, “They Still Remember Jim Aubrey (Shudder),” New York, September 9, 1968, p. 54.
289 Defending Cronkite against Aubrey was Fred Friendly: Bergreen, Look Now, Pay Later, p. 234.
289 “He is the most competitive person I ever met”: Leslie Midgley, How Many Words Do You Want? An Insider’s Stories of Print and Television Journalism (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1989), p. 244.
290 “Douglas Edwards had been replaced with Walter Cronkite”: Buzenberg and Buzenberg, Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism, p. 49.
291 “He was the World’s No. 1 purveyor”: William Lambert and Richard Oulahan, “The Tyrant’s Call That Rocked the TV World: Until He Was Suddenly Brought Low, Jim Aubrey Ruled the Air,” Life, September 10, 1965.
292 For
a decade CBS had been—and would remain for years to come—the biggest advertising medium: Robinson, “After the Yankees What?”
292 set the tone “of its public relations image”: Jack Gould, “Friendly to Head C.B.S. Unit,” New York Times, March 2, 1964.
292 “If Paley could fire Aubrey and Salant with the snap of a finger”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.
293 “getting Ed back here is my first order of business”: Ralph Engelman, Friendlyvision: Fred Friendly and the Rise and Fall of Television Journalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 182.
294 “Friendly proposed that I cover every day”: Mudd, The Place to Be, p. 141.
294 “We’re going to cover this civil rights story”: Author interview with Roger Mudd, November 14, 2011.
295 “Friendly deserved a lot of credit”: Ibid.
295 “But we never felt that pressure on the news desk”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 280.
296 “It was like the dark side of the moon”: Author interview with Bill Plante, December 2, 2010.
296 Cronkite served as host of the CBS News Special Report: “The Summer Ahead,” Washington Post, July 1, 1964 (Display Ad 241).
297 “The Senate action came just before 8 p.m”: Walter Cronkite, “Mississippi 1964: Civil Rights and Unrest,” All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2005.
297 “Three young civil rights workers disappeared”: CBS broadcast transcript, June 22, 1964, CBS Archive, New York.
295 having Mudd grow a beard: Bill Small to Douglas Brinkley, March 5, 2012.
297 “to reveal the anti-democratic hypocrisy of Jim Crow”: Author interview with Cornel West, January 10, 2012.
297 a deeply isolated civilization that hadn’t changed”: Cronkite, “Mississippi 1964.”
298 “I always considered CBS News an ally”: Author interview with Julian Bond, May 14, 2011.
298 CBS “had the edge on other networks”: Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye, p. 136.
299 “He only made two visits back to Normandy”: Paul Gardner, “D-Day Remembered,” New York Times, May 31, 1964.
299 praising the “simple eloquence”: “Eisenhower Recalls the Ordeal of D-Day Assault 20 Years Ago,” New York Times, June 6, 1964.
300 “It may have been the most solemn moment”: Walter Cronkite, “Eisenhower’s Return to Normandy,” All Things Considered, NPR, June 4, 2004.
300 “Cronkite personally tended to be on the side”: Midgley, How Many Words Do You Want? p. 226.
300 far-searching documentary: Ibid., p. 187.
301 “nimbus of patriotic fervor”: Walter Cronkite, “Gulf of Tonkin’s Phantom Attack,” All Things Considered, NPR, August 2, 2004.
301 acknowledged “supporting” Johnson’s decision: Ibid.
301 “What do we really know about what happened”: David Halberstam, The Powers That Be, p. 444.
301 “I was still living with my old feeling of sympathy”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”
302 Cronkite’s “private feeling” after the Gulf of Tonkin: Walter Cronkite to Bob Manning, April 3, 1987.
302 He tried to maintain objectivity: Walter Cronkite to Bob Manning, April 3, 1987.
302 “I won’t say he was hawkish”: Author interview with Morley Safer, September 9, 2011.
Nineteen: Paley’s Attempted Smackdown
303 had callously said, “No comment”: Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001), p. 248.
304 “a dad-burned dirty lie”: “Goldwater Rips CBS,” Associated Press, July 18, 1964.
304 “They haven’t even the decency to apologize”: Ibid.
304 “It’s February that he can’t say”: Author interview with William Small, March 22, 2011.
304 “And it would work,” Sandy Socolow recalled: Brian Stelter, “Friends Recall Walter Cronkite’s Private Side,” New York Times, July 24, 2009.
304 “Goldwater was a fervent hawk”: Walter Cronkite, “Gulf of Tonkin’s Phantom Attack,” All Things Considered, NPR, August 2, 2004.
305 “The Germany story,” Perlstein explained: Perlstein, Before the Storm, p. 375.
305 “A lot of people at CBS blew a gasket about the Goldwater-is-Nazi thing”: Author interview with Dan Rather, November 19, 2011.
306 “You can say what you want about Goldwater’s conservatism”: Stephen Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater? The Inside Story of the 1964 Republican Campaign (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965), pp. 152–54.
306 Walter’s favorite dish was veal stew: “At Home with . . . Mrs. Walter Cronkite,” New York Post, April 13, 1968.
306 “Everybody including the trash man calls him Walter”: Betsy Cronkite as told to Lyn Tornabee, “My Husband: The Newscaster.”
306 “He had this great curiosity”: Bob Schieffer, television interview, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, CBS, July 17, 2009.
307 “Dear Mr. Cronkite, What do the astronauts do”: Pam and Margy to Walter Cronkite [circa 1962], Mervin J. Block Archive, New York.
307 “Your complaint was justified”: Walter Cronkite to George H. Kenny, August 15, 1966, Box: 2M644, Folder: 1966, WCP-UTA.
308 “By the time the Republican Convention rolled around”: Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye, p. 108.
309 “I saw your daughter Nancy”: Drew Pearson, “Goldwater Interview Mystery,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1964.
310 “All of us have been the beneficiaries”: “And That’s the Way It Is,” p. 50.
311 “Cronkite was appalled”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 348.
311 “Walter exploded”: Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye, p. 109.
311 That November Friendly named Sevareid a national correspondent: “Sevareid to Washington,” New York Times, November 16, 1964.
312 “The only time Walter was difficult”: Author interview with William Small, March 22, 2011.
312 “If the old son of a bitch does that to me”: Schieffer, This Just In, p. 182.
313 “swallowing up great chunks of air time”: Mudd, The Place to Be, pp. 161–162.
313 “None of us did well”: Author interview with Dan Rather, November 19, 2011.
314 “The hell with Walter Cronkite”: Charles Mohr, “Chairman Chosen,” New York Times, July 17, 1964.
314 Brinkley and Huntley were routinely threatened: Brinkley, A Memoir, p. 161.
314 “The delegates,” Brinkley wrote, “left their chairs”: Ibid., p. 162.
315 “She was my first girlfriend”: Author interview with Chris Wallace, July 10, 2009.
315 “Walter would just ignore directions”: Ibid.
317 “Who do you think could replace Walter”: Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye, pp. 110–111.
317 “One trouble with this business is it’s like Hollywood”: Cronkite [unpublished notes], Newsweek, July 31, 1964, WCP-UTA.
318 “every patient is owed the simple human dignity of being told the truth”: Tom Wolfe, “After the Fall,” New York Herald Tribune, October 4, 1964.
318 “The anchorman was hoisted”: Leonard, In the Storm of the Eye, pp. 110–111.
318 “any contract is breakable”: Cronkite [unpublished notes], Newsweek, July 31, 1964, WCP-UTA.
318 “Walter Cronkite—demoted!”: Tom Wolfe, “After the Fall,” New York Herald Tribune, October 4, 1964.
318 Sevareid and Reasoner would also play larger roles in Atlantic City: Val Adams, “C.B.S. News Drops Cronkite As Convention’s Anchor Man,” New York Times, July 31, 1964.
318 “We took a clobbering in San Francisco”: “Two-Man Team to Do Cronkite Job,” AP, July 31, 1964.
318 Cronkite might not be allowed to anchor Election Night: Val Adams, “Cronkite’s Role for November 3 Unsure,” New York Times, August 1, 1963.
319 “We’ve got a team here”: “Upstairs Was Unhappy,” Newsweek, August 10, 1964.
319 “I’m not bitter yet”
: Cronkite [unpublished notes], Newsweek, July 31, 1964, WCP-UTA.
319 “I kept thinking this is really going to screw up my relationship”: Author interview with Chris Wallace, July 10, 2009.
320 Don Hewitt, in a show of solidarity with Cronkite, asked to be relieved: Val Adams, “TV News Shows Added in Crisis,” New York Times, August 6, 1964.
320 Lady Bird Johnson had agreed to do a Person to Person: Paul Gardner, “TV: From LBJ Ranch,” New York Times, August 13, 1964.
320 “Once after Mudd had given the viewers some information”: Dick West, “Wryness of TV Convention Coverage Noted,” UPI, August 26, 1964.
321 Mudd’s “rather desperate attempts at being funny”: Richard Martin, “TV ‘Backlash’ Can Whip Convention,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 26, 1964.
321 CBS garnered its highest share: Jack Gould, “TV: Huntley and Brinkley Retain Grip,” New York Times, August 26, 1964.
321 Mudd considered a career change: Mudd, The Place to Be, p. 167.
321 “By brutally dumping and publicly humiliating”: Brooks Atkinson, “Muddled Showmanship Is Degenerating Both Parties’ Political Conventions,” New York Times, September 8, 1964.
321 “Walter is so objective, careful, and fair”: William S. Paley, As It Happened (Doubleday: New York, 1979), p. 301.
322 “Walter said, ‘I’m a newsman and I’m going to cover the story’ ”: Author interview with Chris Wallace, July 10, 2009.
Twenty: Civil Rights and Project Gemini
323 CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite ran its first color broadcast: “CBS at 75” Timeline, CBS News, CBS Archive, New York.
323 “No one has a larger stake in going into color”: Ben Gross, “Meet Walter Cronkite, TV Man of Integrity,” New York Daily News, May 2, 1965.
323 Raisky was the visual guru at CBS: Alfred Robert Hogan to Douglas Brinkley, May 24, 2011.
324 “A lot of New York designers steered clear of the newsrooms”: Author interview with Hugh Raisky, November 8, 2011.
324 “There are no back pages”: “Television: The Most Intimate Medium,” Time, October 14, 1966.
324 “You better have it right”: Author interview with Jon Wilkman, January 6, 2012.
324 The CBS workplace was notably small: Alessandra Stanley, “An Appraisal; Cronkite’s Signature: Authority and Approachability,” New York Times, July 18, 2009.
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