This article highlights the degeneration of the corporate media, a useful account even if its moral and functional disintegration dates back at least 50 years before Walter Cronkite came on the scene, only to become a brand, "CBS anchor for The CBS Evening News, "the most trusted man in America", yada yada yada. In 1980, the year before Cronkite gave up his evening news slot at CBS, total viewership of the evening news programs on CBS, NBC and ABC was 52.1 million, and 42.3 percent of US households tuned in to the programs. Prior to and during the war, Murrow gathered around him at CBS a number of talented journalists, including William L.