FRANK DEVINE, 77, a former correspondent, columnist and editor of The Australian who reported from New York, London and Tokyo, died of cancer in Sydney on July 3. After working for The Australian, Devine was editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Post, senior editor of the American Reader’s Digest and editor-in-chief of the Australian Reader’s Digest. When he was president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (1966-67), he told a convention of Japanese news editors: “We foreign correspondents find that Japanese officials, at most levels, are unwilling to give us information on a continuing day-to-day basis. Worse still, we find that our own professional colleagues, the journalists of Japan, frequently combine to exclude foreign reporters from access to news and news sources.” Peter Coleman, a former opposition leader in New South Wales, described Frank as the “laughing cavalier of Australian journalism.” Devine was born in New Zealand and started his career at age 17 on The Marlborough Express of New Zealand. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Jacqueline, and their three daughters.
– Al Kaff

Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)
WALTER CRONKITE (1916-2009)
Walter Cronkite, known as “the most trusted man in America,” died on July 17, aged 92. He was TV’s original news anchor and an icon of the business. Below are some words, facts and opinions to remember him by.

The Man
He was a United Press’s chief correspondent at the postwar Nuremberg trials and spent his final two years with the news service managing its Moscow bureau.
In 1962 he replaced Douglas Edwards as anchor of the CBS network’s Evening News. “I never asked them why,” Cronkite recalled.
“I was so pleased to get the job, I didn’t want to endanger it by suggesting that I didn’t know why I had it.”
As many as 18 million households tuned in to Cronkite’s top-rated program each evening.

His salary reportedly reached seven figures. He was both anchorman and star – interviewed by Playboy, ham enough to appear as himself on an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show – but Cronkite repeatedly condemned television practices that put entertainment values ahead of news judgment.

What he said
“We all have prejudices,” he said of his fellow journalists, “but we also understand how to set them aside when we do the job.”

“Broadcast journalism is never going to substitute for print. We cannot cover in depth in a half-hour many of the stories required to get a good understanding of the world.”
“I believe that most of us reporters are liberal, but not because we consciously have chosen that particular color in the political spectrum. More likely it is because most of us served our journalistic apprenticeships as reporters covering the seamier side of our cities – the crimes, the tenement fires, the homeless and the hungry, the underclothed and undereducated. We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism – that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.”

“I define liberal as a person who is not doctrinaire. That is a dictionary definition of liberal. That’s opposed to ‘liberal’ as part of the political spectrum… open to change, constantly, not committed to any particular creed or doctrine, or whatnot, and in that respect I think that news people should be liberal.”

What they said
“By his hand, by his heart, by his mind, Walter Cronkite has infected journalists and journalism for generations to come. As a reporter, as an anchor, excellence is his only standard. He can’t help it. He’s genetic that way.” Bernard Shaw, former CNN News anchor

“You were always fair; you were always helpful; you were always a man of integrity. I learned more being at your side when I was at CBS than I have ever learned anywhere else I’ve been as a journalist.” Bill Moyers, PBS Journalist
“When the history of journalism is written about our era, it will be divided into separate eras – B.C. and A.C. – before Walter Cronkite and after Walter Cronkite. And the great division here is that Walter had in spades what today is lacking in huge proportion – and that is trust. It’s probably hard for Walter himself to fathom how the profession of journalism has declined in public trust, and I’m bound to say, public esteem since he left it. But the decline has been sharp and precipitous.” George Will, ABC News commentator

“He’s a towering figure not just in American Journalism but in American life. He is a personification of integrity, public service and energy, and he is a model for all of us, not just of my generation but of the generation coming up as well.” Tom Brokaw, former NBC News anchor
“If there is one person who is the face of excellence in American journalism, it is Walter Cronkite. His body of work is the gold standard. He was called ‘the most trusted man in America.’ That is the highest compliment a journalist can receive, for without trust, a journalist has nothing. It reminds us how that trust is established – through accuracy, integrity and honesty.” Dr. Joseph Russomanno, professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

“What has changed between Cronkite’s heyday and the disappearance of his type is our perception of authority. America and Cronkite both shared the illusion that public life did not consist of a series of masks that had to be ripped away. If Cronkite said that’s the way it was, then his audience happily believed that’s the way it was. We accepted his performance of sincere authority because we wanted to.

“Now the Olbermanns, O’Reillys, Stewarts et al sign off after assuring us that nothing is as it seems. Their job is to puncture anyone who in the previous 24 hours told us, with any kind of authority, that this is the way it was. And we happily accept their performance of ironic, sarcastic anti-sincerity because we want to.

“Yet all we’ve done is exchange Cronkite’s illusion of knowledge acquired (all that’s worth knowing is what he told us) for the current illusion of knowingness achieved (all that’s worth knowing is that every claim to knowledge is a sham).

“The question is, which is more dangerous? A situation in which we feel that news authority is to be taken at its word – thus making us vulnerable to deception? Or a situation in which we feel that the function of the news is to keep stripping away the illusion of its own authority – thus making us vulnerable to the deception that, well, we are now invulnerable to deception? Is it better to have the wool pulled over our eyes, or to be blinded with the illusion of transparency? Better to be deceived as gullible fools, or as knowing fools? Either way, we still keep getting deceived.” Lee Siegel