Walter Cronkite but he also took the time to interact with the students and staff of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Cronkite made the trip to Arizona annually to present the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to a leader in the field of media. "The values that Mr. Cronkite embodies – excellence, integrity, accuracy, fairness, objectivity – we try to instill in our students each and every day. There is no better role model for our faculty or our students," said Dean Christopher Callahan. The school, with approximately 1,700 students, is widely regarded as one of
Walter Cronkite assassination on November 22, 1963. Another factor in Cronkite and CBS' ascendancy to the top of the ratings was that, as the decade progressed, RCA made a corporate decision not to fund NBC News at the levels that CBS provided for its news broadcasts. Consequently, CBS News acquired a reputation for greater accuracy and depth in coverage. This reputation meshed well with Cronkite's wire service experience, and in 1967 the "CBS Evening News" began to surpass "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" in viewership during the summer months. In 1969, during the Apollo 11 (with co-host and former astronaut Wally Schirra) and Apollo