Cronkite fought for Tampa's right to truth

And that's the way it is.

Walter Cronkite, known to millions as "the most trusted man in America" for his consistently careful reporting, lost his tenacious battle with cerebrovascular disease at his New York home tonight.

Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. His confident delivery became iconic for viewers who turned to the newsman for the latest on Vietnam, Watergate, Kennedy, King and Lennon.

A fierce advocate of ethics and accuracy, Cronkite once went to bat for a Tampa investigative team facing the fight of its life.

"He was so gracious," former Tampa television journalist Jane Akre remembers of the 92-year-old legend.

"He was a gentleman, with the emphasis on gentle."

In April 1998, Akre and husband Steve Wilson sued Tampa's Fox-owned WTVT station. The reporters had been fired over their four-part investigative series on bovine growth hormone. A number of farmers in several states, Akre and Wilson discovered, were injecting their cows with the controversial additive. The story would expose its maker, the Monsanto Company, for failing to inform the F.D.A. about the hormone's potential health risks on those who drink milk, the journalists claimed.

Monsanto threatened Fox, and the station pulled the story after Akre and Wilson refused to slant their findings, according to the lawsuit. The team soon found itself embroiled in a sour seven-year court battle with the "fair and balanced" network.

"We needed someone in the business to explain to the jury why reporters don't lie on television," Wilson, 57, told the Tampa Liberal Examiner from his Detroit home.  He has served as the chief investigative reporter for WXYZ-TV since 2001.

Wilson remembers dialing up news directors and media think tanks, but no one wanted to fight Fox.

"Everybody told us we were crazy," he chuckled. "They said you cannot beat someone with pockets as deep as Rupert Murdoch's."

Walter Cronkite, it turned out, was happy to give a deposition about the ethics of journalism.

"He was appalled at what had happened," Wilson said.

When, in April 2000, Cronkite was asked in court to what extent a reporter should mislead the public with a story, the television veteran replied:

"He should not go a microinch towards that sort of thing. That is a violation of every principle of good journalism."

Fox's counsel would object to Cronkite's role as a "media law expert" in the case. 

"Mr. Cronkite is not an expert in the pre-broadcast review of a story," the network's lawyers argued.

The newsman, then 83, continued:

"The reporter's reputation for integrity is of great importance to the reporter. And I think he would have found in this case that his employers did not have that same sense of journalistic integrity, therefore there was an incompatibility that probably could not be bridged."

For all his wisdom, clout and experience, Walter Cronkite could only halfway convince the jury that distortion has no place in the news. Wilson was eventually ordered to pay $156,000 in legal fees; Akre, who was awarded more than $400,000, lost it all on appeal from Fox. Akre would never again work in television news.

The truth had certainly set them free.

By 2005, investigative team Akre and Wilson were free of their house, their life savings and much of their credibility. The couple had lost just about everything in its standoff with Fox, despite having the most trusted and respected man in news by their side.

Wilson said, "He was everything you would expect him to be. Walter Cronkite is in a totally different class."

Added Akre, "I'm eternally grateful for that man."

Cronkite's final sign off tonight, though without words, says so much about the death of fair journalism.

Before he left the stand in that trial where business interests prevailed over ethical responsibility, Cronkite said this of today's journalists who face intimidation from their superiors:

"His duty is to protest as much as possible. I think his ultimate duty is to resign."

Thanks, Walter. And be sure to say hello to Ralph Flanary, my late granddaddy, who never missed your broadcast.