Don Owen (news anchor) once called him "the Walter Cronkite of the Shreveport media market," a reference to the CBS anchorman from 1962 until 1981. Owen also hired Margaret Pelley of NBC's "Dateline", Roseanne Colletti, who went on to report for WNBC-TV, as well as local figures Wray Post, Tom and Barry Irwin, Carl Pendley, and Tony Taglavore. Owen was a past president of the Louisiana and Mississippi AP Broadcasters and the Louisiana/Mississippi United Press International. In 1963, 1964, and 1965, the Associated Press named him "Broadcaster of the Year". Some of his articles on a variety of topics were published in "Shreveport Magazine."
Walter Cronkite that Johnson did not see the original broadcast but also defended the allegation that Johnson had made the remark. According to Schieffer, Johnson's aide George Christian "told me that the President apparently saw some clips of it the next day" and that "That's when he made the remark about Cronkite. But he knew then that it would take more than Americans were willing to give it." When asked about the remark during a 1979 interview, Christian claimed he had no recollection about what the President had said. In his 1996 memoir "A Reporter's Life", Cronkite claimed he was at first