Walter Cronkite, legendary US newsreader, dies aged 92

Walter Cronkite, the baritone-voiced US television news anchorman known as "the most trusted man in America", has died aged 92 at home in New York.

As the authoritative face of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, Cronkite covered events during a tumultuous era that included the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the Iranian hostage crisis.

He died on Friday night, just three days before the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, another moment of history linked inexorably for Americans with his reporting. "Look a those pictures, wow," he declared as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
His passing provoked a remarkable outpouring from fellow professionals and figures in public life. Katie Couric, the current CBS News star, said simply: "He was the personification of excellence."
In a statement from the White House, President Barack Obama called him the "voice of certainty in an uncertain world". He continued: "He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed."
Cronkite was a stickler for journalistic neutrality. But in 1963, as he announced Mr Kennedy's death, he slowly removed his heavy black glasses and fought back tears – a gesture that captured the nation's mood.
And he famously discarded that independent stance following a reporting trip to Vietnam in 1968 when he declared that the US was "mired in stalemate".
Those three words were seen by many as a turning point for American public opinion of the war. President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told aides after the broadcast: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."
To viewers, he was "Uncle Walter", with his jowls and grainy voice, his warm, direct expression and his clipped moustache. When he summed up the news each evening with his trademark assertion "and THAT's the way it is", millions agreed.
He was the top newsman during the peak era for the networks, with as many as 18 million households tuning in to his programme each evening.
Indeed, he was the broadcaster to whom the title "anchorman" was first applied, and he became so identified in that role that eventually his own name was adapted as the term for the job in other languages (Swedish anchors are known as Kronkiters; in Holland, they are Cronkiters).
He joined CBS in 1950, after a decade with United Press, during which he covered World War II and the Nuremberg trials, and a brief stint with a regional radio group. In 1940, he married Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell, with whom he had three children. Mrs Cronkite died in 2005.