Alas, Cronkite

Once upon a time, Walter Cronkite did stuff like this.  When Watergate was a confused scandal difficult for the public to grasp, Cronkite took two evenings to put it all together on television.  The second evening was curtailed by a terrified network chairman, but by then Cronkite’s point had been made, and the Watergate scandal went on to unroll on TV and in the courts and Nixon’s presidency was doomed.

But now journalists are a despised, compromised profession, working for billionaires and media companies who don’t want to rock the boat, or newspapers that don’t want to lose now-scarce advertising, and celebrities now have to do the work.

So let’s follow the strands of yarn, shall we?