Walter Cronkite Quotes

Television is the medium through which 80 percent of the people see their leaders….They get all their information about their government and their leaders from television.

Politicians used to be able to change the subject. With television they cannot do that any more.

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

Working with the media remains an effective and essential way to raise issues, educate the public, and prod policy-makers and corporate leaders to change for the better.

We journalists tell the public which way the cat is jumping. The public will take care of the cat.

Politicians need a film appreciation course.

In many ways, I think that, while we've been remarkably violent in our media, there's been a real schizophrenia. In private, on the Internet, and on public-affairs shows or talk radio, we're way more explicit than we've ever been.

Television and radio do a wonderful job in focusing attention on the problems of our society.

The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad.

The public's not stupid.

Well I think the media has a very powerful influence on almost anything and everything we do because the general public gets their perception of what is going on in things they don't have immediate access to from what they get through the media.

My view is different. Public relations are a key component of any operation in this day of instant communications and rightly inquisitive citizens.

I'm very interested in politics, and I feel TV is a more political medium than film.

We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.

The [TV evening] news usually defines the candidate for the public.

Television has shortened our political discourse.

We cover Congress only when it gets to the final vote on something, too late for the public to respond.

Media creates awareness [and] ensures transparency and accountability.

How can you govern if you always have to feed the news cycle?

In the democratic countries generally, the great body of citizens are refusing to wait until negotiations are over or policies are acted upon or even determined. They demand to know what is going on and to have an opportunity to express their opinions at all stages of diplomatic proceedings…. public opinion will be increasingly not merely the ultimate judge but an immediate and active force in negotiation.

Politics is power, and communications is power,

In a mass television democracy - which all of us nowadays have - it is impossible to take basic political decisions with long-term consequences without the public knowing it, without the public understanding at least some of it, without the public forming its judgment, heterogeneous as it may be.

Don't make election popularity largely a matter of which candidate hires the most creative and effective propagandists. Insist that it be, instead, a running conversation with the public.

I think the most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what Donald Trump says and follow up and ask questions about what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas.

To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.