Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who was named the "most trusted man in America" in a 1972 poll and came to personify the golden age of network TV news, died Friday. He was 92.
Mr. Cronkite's longtime chief of staff, Marlene Adler, said Mr. Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. at his Manhattan home surrounded by family. She said the cause of death was cerebral vascular disease.
Known for his avuncular camera presence and fierce commitment to fact-based journalism, Mr. Cronkite was the face and voice that most Americans turned to from 1962 to 1981, when the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite became TV's most influential news franchise.
The Missouri native was so fundamental to the concept of TV news that the word "anchorman" was coined to describe his role at the 1952 national political conventions.
Indicative of Mr. Cronkite's hold on the national audience, in 1968 after a commentary he delivered questioning America's ability to win the war in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "If we've lost Cronkite, we've lost middle America."
"There will never be another figure in American history who will hold the position Walter held in our minds, our hearts and on the television," CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus said Friday. "We were blessed to have this man in our lives and words cannot describe how much he will be missed by those of us at CBS News and by all of America."
Mr. Cronkite was the "voice of certainty in an uncertain world" who will be truly missed, President Barack Obama said Friday.
There are many reasons why Mr. Cronkite came to hold such an esteemed place in American life. Several have more to do with moments of history and the rise of TV as society's central storyteller than they do with him.
As he acknowledged in a 1996 Baltimore Sun interview, he was to some extent just the right newscaster "sitting in the right desk at the right time."
But there are also good reasons for that perception of integrity and credibility that have everything to do with him. Mr. Cronkite was one of the most successful blends of person and persona in the history of the medium. Even as he became one of TV's first outsized celebrities, the anchor who also served as managing editor of network TV's first half-hour nightly newscast always stayed in touch with the get-it-right reporting roots he learned at the United Press wire service, for which he covered World War II.
