Walter Cronkite's career peaked before anchors were fabulously paid. In 2002, with Katie Couric earning between $13 and $15 million a year as co-anchor of the "Today" show, Frank Rich asked Cronkite if he had missed the big money in anchoring:
"He scrunched his eyes and lowered his voice into a theatrical mock sob. 'Yes, I did,' he said and then added, 'I frequently call myself the Mickey Mantle of network news.'"
[When Cronkite -- whom polls found to be "the most trusted man in America" -- returned from Vietnam after the Tet offensive in 1968 and pronounced the war unwinnable, Lyndon Johnson famously told his aides, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."]
Sources
New York Times magazine, 2002/05/19
