Imagine a time when you had to wait until the dinner hour to find out what was going on in the world. And imagine that this information was monopolized by three corporate newsrooms, their editorial staffs, and delivered primarily by middle-aged white male news readers called “anchors.” As hard as it is to believe, this MSM television oligarchy actually existed. One of these anchors was Walter Cronkite, subject of this week’s PBS “American Master’s” installment, Walter Cronkite: Witness to History. In fact, CBS News producer Don Hewitt coined the term “anchorman” to describe Cronkite during coverage of the 1952 Democratic convention, based on a relay-race analogy. “CBS news will always be known as the house that Cronkite built,” Hewitt says, though it is usually known as the house that Murrow built. Yet Cronkite definitely renovated it.

Walter Cronkite began his career as a UP wire reporter, a punishing job but one which gave him the opportunity to volunteer for combat reporting in World War II. After the war he got into TV; his big break was being the standout talent covering the 1952 party conventions. We are told that overnight his name became bigger than Stevenson or Eisenhower, and the program is sprinkled with hyperbolic statements like this. The tone is appropriately affectionate, but at times a little hagiographic — he is described as America’s Anchor, America’s Uncle, America’s Clergyman… after awhile it is a bit hard to take.

In the mid-1950s Cronkite hosted the You Are There series, in which historical events were recreated as breaking-news stories, an idea that could usefully be resurrected. It would be interesting to see coverage of World War II using the modern lens, for example, particularly the segments where Nazis are given equal time to get their points across, and D-Day is declared a major defeat after the first day’s casualties. Several episodes of the series were directed by Sidney Lumet, who said that Cronkite “seemed to me incorruptible, in a profession that was easily corrupted.” Irony compounds when one notes that Lumet later directed the 1976 feature Network, which not only sought to dramatize just how corruptible the news profession was, but accurately predicted the descent of TV news from information, to infotainment, to undisguised entertainment mixed with occasional dramatic fiction.

Cronkite’s stint as full-time news anchor came in 1962, when he succeeded the forgotten Douglas Edwards, who had read CBS news since 1948. The documentary hails Cronkite’s revolutionary move to expand the original 15-minute news cast to 30 minutes. “Can you with a nation as complicated as ours and trying to cover all that in 15 minutes?” he says. “It was ridiculous.” Yeah, a nation as complicated as the U.S. really does need 30 minutes to make sense of.

One is led to believe that Cronkite was an immediate hit and that his dominance was unchallenged until NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report hit the scene, when in fact Chet and David first began broadcasting in 1956, six years before Uncle Walter. One also gets the impression that Cronkite’s show was the highest-rated news broadcast in the 1960s, which was not true, as with few exceptions Huntley-Brinkley led in the ratings until 1970. But it would be hard to justify the praise being heaped on Cronkite throughout the documentary while also noting that more people were tuning in to his competitors.

One sees the classic television footage of Cronkite in action, such as his report that President Kennedy had been pronounced dead. William F. Buckley, interviewed for the documentary, said that the gesture where Cronkite took off and put on his glasses (to read the clock), was the “consummation of an entire new age… there was a lot of poetry in it.” At the other end of the emotional spectrum is his silent look of happiness and pride as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Cronkite had linked himself to the space program early on, harnessing its optimism and can-do spirit. It is noteworthy that his assessment of Alan Shepard’s first U.S. manned space flight was couched in Cold War terms, that the successful mission was a “Free World victory.” Cronkite’s open enthusiasm for and approval of such a human, nay, an American achievement as the space program is an aspect of television news that is very much lacking in these cynical times.

A centerpiece of the documentary is Cronkite’s February 27, 1968, special, Report from Vietnam, what he has since called “his proudest moment.” To anyone with knowledge of the conflict or of insurgency in general, the piece comes off rather embarrassing. It showed Cronkite not as witness but as analyst, out of his element, and well beyond his expertise. He toured the city of Hue during the latter stages of the Tet Offensive, when Vietcong forces were being mopped up. Even though U.S. and ARVN troops had destroyed the enemy and liberated the town, Cronkite state that retaking Hue was “obviously a setback.” He asserted that the nature of the war had changed — it would no longer be a guerilla struggle but one featuring “large armies locked in combat moving towards decision on the battlefield.” He concluded, “It seems increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate.”

Of course this was completely wrong — but no matter, here’s the punch line. It is said that after watching this documentary President Johnson said to his aides, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Five weeks later Johnson decided not to run for reelection based on this belief. So the legend goes. This is the reporter fantasy, that a single documentary, a single newscast, article, picture, or other product shapes history on a grand scale. Not shown but more interesting was Cronkite’s unscripted and seemingly spontaneous on-air reaction to the first bulletins about Tet: “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning his war.” That was the famous “Walter Cronkite moment” that liberal journalists are still hoping for today with respect to Iraq. But of course these days people expect those kind of reactions from journalists, so no off the cuff comment is likely to have any policy impact at all. If you’ve lost Dan Rather, count your blessings.

The documentary hits all the significant events of the age — Nam, the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, Watergate — events primarily significant to the liberal press, those that the media had a hand in shaping. But late in its 90 minutes the program begins to drag, and becomes more about the events than the man covering them. There is very little of the behind-the-scenes action, and nothing about Cronkite personally except clips of him reporting the news. It is not very edifying; the clips could as easily have been of any reporter. Cronkite was an eyewitness to history but so were a lot of people. More time could have been spent on events like Cronkite’s role as an intermediary between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, which was instrumental in kicking off the Camp David peace process.

But by this time network-TV news ratings had peaked. The high water mark was 1969, and since then they have declined 60 percent. In 1981, when Cronkite left the anchor desk, around 75 percent of television sets in use at dinner time were tuned into the network news. By 2003 this had dropped to 40 percent. The age of the Big Three networks was a historical moment, an aberration created by a stage of technology and FCC regulations. Cable, satellite, and the Internet have broken that oligarchy, and all for the good. One wonders how the wistful tones of the old codgers in this documentary, talking about a time when they were much more significant than they are today, can have any resonance with those who think of information in terms of Fox News Channel, the blogosphere, and Google News.

As for the choice of Katie Couric for the documentary’s narrator, one can’t help but tie it to her recent assumption of Cronkite’s former position. She has no particular talent for narration, there is nothing very interesting or expressive about her disembodied voice. Perhaps they were seeking to give her gravitas by association. But it had the opposite effect, serving to emphasize how inconsequential network TV news has become. The line of succession — Murrow, Cronkite, Rather, Couric — shows a dynasty in terminal decline. Scenes of Cronkite in war zones — going on a bomb run over Germany, or a over Vietnam — can’t help but remind one of Couric’s statement, “I think the situation [in Iraq] is so dangerous, and as a single parent with two children, that’s something I won’t be doing.” She stands on the shoulders of giants as the whole edifice sinks in quicksand.

They say there will never be another like Walter Cronkite, and that is in part because network television news can never again have the influence it once had. There are too many other, better sources of information, for any individual to hold the sway that Cronkite did, whether real or imagined.

And that’s the way it is. Thank heaven.

– James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.