Is Walter Cronkite the Last Trustworthy Man in America? : Well, If He Isn't, Then Even He's Having Trouble

[Uncle Joe]

Finding Someone to Believe In

By Verne Gay
Jan. 21, 1996 12 AM PT

(snip)

So where has trust gone? To Cronkite’s thinking, several factors have contributed, all of them linked by a single theme: a less-educated citizenry. Stepping into this breach of ignorance are those people Cronkite derisively calls “demagogues,” or figures of authority in leading institutions, like law enforcement or government, who use this ignorance to further their ends. Vitriol, he says, is their weapon of choice, so that important debates--the national budget, welfare, health care, law enforcement, tax law, nuclear energy, environmental issues--are reduced to battlegrounds of essentially meaningless rhetoric. Because most Americans are not educated in the minutiae of these subjects, cynicism is born, he says. And from cynicism springs distrust.

On this subject, Cronkite’s opaque blue eyes narrow and his voice rises in anger: These demagogues are “demagogues on the street”--rogue cops--”or demagogues in the halls of Congress. They play up for prejudice or for their own personal advantage, either on the street corner simply to get an audience or doing it in office to stay in office.”

But loss of trust begins with the question of education, “which lies at the very bottom of every problem that we have. If the people were truly well-informed, were truly philosophical, were truly aware of our associations with one another, [then] presumably our dialogue and our reporting would be considerably better than it is.” But “the tragedy is, we aren’t educated to any degree. Education levels are so low that the public does not have a capability of making an informed judgment as to how trustworthy these people should be, so we’re handicapped from the beginning.

“A lot of the uneducated public carries around Harvard degrees. It is not all in the inner cities. Those with the Harvard degrees are uneducated in a general philosophy that I find so important, which is the understanding of civil dialogue, the understanding of the other fellow’s viewpoint, and an attempt to moderate or mediate between the two.”

(snip)

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-01-21-tm-26887-story.html