From all of the stories yesterday about Walter Cronkite, the one that struck a chord was Andy Rooney’s contention the legendary newsman wished he had kept his emotions in check when he announced President John Kennedy was dead. There were no  Glenn Beck histrionics, all Cronkite did was remove his glasses and pause for a few beats, but Rooney’s statement added up because Cronkite learned when he was a cub reporter the tale wasn’t about him.

Most people knew him as the anchorman for CBS News and those of a certain age call him “Uncle Walt.” The guy who came into our homes every night with all that was  needed to know about the world. It says something about Cronkite’s credibility that President Lyndon Johnson knew the Vietnam War was doomed when the newscaster voiced doubts about victory. This trust-ability can be attributed to many things, but it was burnished in his coverage of World War II.

As a reporter for the United Press Cronkite covered the entire European theater, from  Sicily to the  Allied invasion of Normandy. He was  part of the  “Writing 69th,” a set of  reporters who flew with Allied bombers on missions over Germany. In a number of broadcasts for NPR, Cronkite recounts the history of his war reporting. In one report we find out there were actually two Cronkites. The one who eventually became the standard bearer of the news, and the other “Cronkite” in a radio drama called “Soldiers of the Press.” United Press got the idea that dramatizing the work of its reporters made a good radio show.

Cronkite’s World War II articles work because he kept his eye focused on the men doing the work. Sure there is the occasional meta-analysis of battles, but the pilots and their support staff never leave the stage. The reporter is, at best, a a bit player.

It’s rather strange to give  him props for learning, as he was covering bloodshed,  the story mattered more than he or his opinion. Yet keeping an ideological axe out of news reporting  gives you credibility. There is no such thing as “objective reporting” (even Cronkite knew that), but trust is earned when you care more about what is in front of you than your opinion of what you see. Cronkite gained that in the battlefields of Europe and never forgot it.