Legendary journalist Walter Cronkite dies at 92

Walter Cronkite, the former CBS anchor once called the most trusted man in America, has died.He was 92.

A news anchor when CBS News was in its heyday, Cronkite conveyed to Americans historic events including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the landing of the first man on the moon. His death comes just days ahead of the 40th anniversary of humankind's conquest of the moon.

Watch Cronkite's CBS reports on the Kennedy Assassination

Cronkite ended his broadcasts with his famous line, "And that's the way it is." He closed his last broadcast as the CBS news anchor on March 6, 1981 with the promise to be back "from time to time."

There a Russian proverb that says you don't die so long as you are remembered. If that is so Walter will remain immortal.

Watch some of Walter's work on YOUTUBE

I say Walter, because though I never had the privilege of meeting the man, I felt I knew him. As a young man aspiring to be a journalist he inspired me to pursue my dream and always do it right.

"Our job," he once said "is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened." To Walter, seeking the truth meant always getting all sides of the story.

He was an old-fashioned journalist, not like the "news jockeys" that crowd today's fast-paced 24-hour news channels. Long before the Internet and social media, Walter used the media to tell the objective truth about our world so we could make educated decisions about our communities.

The business of news to Walter was also about freedom, which he descibed this way: "There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free."

In a tribute, U.S. President Barack Obama said, "...Walter was always more than just an anchor. He was family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down...Through it all, he never lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a diplomatic mission in India, said she and former President Bill Clinton became friends with Cronkite in the early 1990s and found him to be a man filled with "energy and life."

"It's a great time to look back and think about someone who played such a major role in explaining what was going on and did it in a calm, fact-based way without embellishments that too often get in the way of really understanding what's going on," she said.

Visit the CBC Cronkite photo gallery