Informant38

Cronkite, who began anchoring the CBS Evening News in 1962, said the country is at a very critical point in its history. The only other decade that compares, he said, is the 1960s, which saw the beginning of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement come to the forefront and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers.
�That was a tough 10 years,� he said. �But this period, with the threat of war with Iraq on tap, economic difficulties and terrorism are something we must be terribly concerned about.�
Cronkite said he fears Americans are learning less and less about what their government is doing, and worse, they do not seem to care.
He cited recent presidential elections that have seen less than half of registered voters go to the polls. The result has been leaders who are chosen by about a quarter of the electorate.
�That means we don�t have a democracy,� he said. �We�ve got an oligarchy here, not a democracy. Our democracy is in some danger if we don�t concentrate on educating the populace.�
Educating Americans should rest with the media, he said. But more often than not, nightly newscasts and the networks� magazine-style shows focus more on entertainment than hard news. Cronkite said this approach is the result of directives from the companies that own the networks to make things more �interesting.�
He said the ability to get the news, especially during times of war, also is becoming more difficult.
Since the Vietnam War, Cronkite said, the media has not been allowed to take its cameras, pencils and notepads into the field with the soldiers to give an accurate account of what is happening.