Short answers, pulled from the story.
Walter Cronkite was an American broadcast journalist who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s he was often cited as the most trusted man in America after being so named in an opinion poll, and for most of his 19 years as anchor he was the predominant news voice in the country.
Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on the 4th of November 1916 in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the son of a dentist. He died on the 17th of July 2009 at his home in New York City, aged 92, believed to have died from cerebrovascular disease.
On the 22nd of November 1963, Cronkite removed his glasses, glanced at the clock, and read an AP flash reporting that President Kennedy had died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, some 38 minutes earlier. He paused and swallowed hard to maintain his composure before continuing the broadcast.
Cronkite ended the CBS Evening News with the phrase, And that's the way it is, followed by the date of the broadcast. He omitted the line on nights when he closed with opinion or commentary, keeping to standards of objective journalism.
On the 27th of February 1968, Cronkite closed a special report by concluding the Vietnam War was mired in stalemate and that the rational way out was to negotiate. President Lyndon B. Johnson is claimed by some to have said, If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America, though the account has been questioned, and Johnson later announced he would not seek reelection.
Cronkite received two Peabody Awards, a George Polk Award, an Emmy Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by Jimmy Carter in 1981. On the 1st of March 2006 he became the first non-astronaut to receive NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award, and the minor planet 6318 Cronkite was named in his honor.
Cronkite became one of the top American reporters of World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe for the United Press. He flew bombing raids over Germany in a B-17 as part of a group called The Writing 69th, landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne Division during Operation Market Garden, and later covered the Nuremberg trials.