By Charles McClure
news@ltview.com
Not so long ago I was sitting in a journalism workshop when I heard a young upstart spouting off a notion concerning the Internet that I considered to be way out of the bounds of traditional news ethics.

I could hardly believe my ears — this young management type was advocating notions I found downright deplorable. No sooner than I rose my hand in objection, a friend and colleague — a bit older than myself — peered over his glasses and said, “Forget it Charles. You’re ‘old school.’”
I immediately realized he was right and lowered my arm. I am out of step with the “new school” of journalism with my demand for governmental transparency, incessant fact checking, my insistence on quickly correcting printed errors, and moreover, my folksy, down home attitude. Alas, it is true — I am a dinosaur.
Believe me, I have known many a sleepless night agonizing over difficult stories I have covered. I’ve faced the Ku Klux Klan, religious cult leaders, murderers, thieves and the sleaziest of politicians along the way. But I have seldom lost sleep over my personal conduct in relation to my job. I go to bed at night and doze into my slumber without questions of what comprises good ethical behavior tugging on my soul.
I suspect Walter Cronkite also slept well, at least where his ethical center was concerned. I would mourn his passing, but instead I choose to celebrate his life and what it stood for. I do this because so many like myself to stand for the same basic principles.
Like so many others, I admired Cronkite and his influence on me as a journalist is undeniable, although largely subconscious. I was far more influenced sports journalism legend Blackie Sherrod and columnist Lewis Grizzard. But my biggest influence was my own father, a former newspaper editor who had the good sense to get out of the business when still in his 20s — although he regretted the decision until the day he died. However, with four kids, he just couldn’t make a go of it on what newspapers pay, at least at the community level.
Still, of all the journalists I have read, dad wrote with a compact style that I lack. I learned more from him in 30 minutes on the subject of news writing than I would learn over the next 30 years.
As with dad, my respect for Cronkite centered on the most basic things he personified — a dedication to doing all he could to deliver the news without bias. When he did have an opinion, he made it clear it was just that — his opinion. And at the core of this nation is our right to have an opinion.
I confess that I was a Howard K. Smith fan when it came to broadcast journalism in the 1960s-70s. And I thought that ABC’s Jules Bergman was hands down the best commentator on the space race of the 1960s — at least on the television.
But after Smith retired, I found myself watching Cronkite. He was down to earth and like my dad, was not given to hyperbolae. In a word, he was “dependable.”
I would tell you the same thing he would as to why he was so dependable. His decency and journalistic good ethical conduct was rooted in his years as a newspaper reporter. It was there where he learned the lessons that would make him “the most trusted man in America.”
In fact, he first caught the attention of United Press International’s brass with his coverage of the New London, Texas school explosion in 1937. For those of you who do not know, that tragedy was the third most deadly disaster in Texas history after a leaking natural gas line ignited, blowing up the town’s school, killing 295 students and teachers. My friend, Jimmie Rogers, Hays County Judge Liz Sumter’s secretary, is a survivor of that terrible incident.
And it was Cronkite’s solid reporting that brought that tragedy to the front page of virtually every newspaper in America.
Though born in Saint Joseph, Mo., Cronkite moved to Houston when he was 10 and grew up in that city as it exploded with growth, spurred by its ports and the Texas oil boom. He would later attend the University of Texas, working for the Daily Texan, as both my father and I did. And like myself, he didn’t graduate — he was working professionally about as fast as he hit the ground. Later he would come to regret not completing his degree, as I also have. I never met him, although I knew his daughter Kathy when she worked at KLBJ in Austin many years ago.
As he said at the end of every broadcast, “and that’s the way it is,” because, that’s the way it was.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that isn’t the case in the new school of journalism, where every Tom, Dick, or Harriet who writes a blog thinks they have earned the right to wear a press badge.
Bluntly, I’ve been doing it for three decades now, and it has only been in the last couple of years that I even considered myself a half-decent writer. And I’m still a lousy copy editor — but I accept my failings with good humor. At my root, I am actually a musician/composer and old time humorist in the tradition of my friends and mentors, Cactus Pryor and John Henry Faulk. Like I tell my wife, I subsidize my essay writing and musical career with a job in journalism.
Still, I have become a journalist, even if I never intended to be one when I first ended up with the job. The work has a way of getting under your skin. As they say, cut my veins and I bleed ink.
With that in mind, I would be less than honest if I didn’t express my concerns for the future of journalism. Cronkite shared my fears, as well as a shared belief of what would fix the problem. Bloggers and Internet journalists should be held just as accountable to libel and slander laws as any print journalist is. After all, I write for three different web sites myself, but I never check my standards at the door.
And neither did Cronkite. While I often disagreed with him on a variety of subjects — including Vietnam, I deeply believe we were fortunate indeed to have had his compass guiding the early days of broadcast news.
Good night Uncle Walter, and thanks…