Historian Douglas Brinkley: Everybody Will Talk to Walter Cronkite

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Marcia Franklin talks with historian Douglas Brinkley, Ph.D., about his 2012 biography of iconic CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, who famously announced Kennedy's death to a national TV audience on November 22, 1963.

In "Cronkite," Brinkley (no relation to newscaster David Brinkley) drew on his access to Cronkite's private papers at the University of Texas and interviews with more than 150 of Cronkite's friends and family members to write the first major biography of the "the most trusted man in America."

Franklin and Brinkley discuss the highlights of Cronkite's career and what distinguished him from other broadcasters, as well as some of the eccentricities of Cronkite's personality that Brinkley discovered while researching the book.

Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University, was in Coeur d'Alene to speak at the Idaho Humanities Council's annual Northern Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture.

Originally aired: 11/22/2013