In this era of phone hacking and the Leveson inquiry it is easy to forget that in some parts of the world journalists are still respected, even idolised. When Walter Cronkite, the long-retired anchor of the CBS Evening News, died in 2009 aged 92, Barack Obama did not hold back. “He was family,” the president said. “He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down.” It is difficult to imagine the future passing of, say, the BBC’s Huw Edwards being marked in such fulsome terms, or triggering the publication of a biography of more than 800 pages.
Lauded as “the most trusted man in America”, Cronkite was the star anchor during the golden age of American network news in the 1960s