Trusted Man

"Cronkite fought for Tampa's right to truth"

And that's the way it is.

Walter Cronkite, known to millions as "the most trusted man in America" for his consistently careful reporting, lost his tenacious battle with cerebrovascular disease at his New York home tonight.

Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. His confident delivery became iconic for viewers who turned to the newsman for the latest on Vietnam, Watergate, Kennedy, King and Lennon.

A fierce advocate of ethics and accuracy, Cronkite once went to bat for a Tampa investigative team facing the fight of its life.

"He was so gracious," former Tampa television journalist Jane Akre remembers of the 92-year-old legend.

"He was a gentleman, with the emphasis on gentle."

In April 1998, Akre and husband Steve Wilson sued Tampa's Fox-owned WTVT station. The reporters had been fired over their four-part investigative series on bovine growth hormone. A number of farmers in several states, Akre and Wilson discovered, were injecting their cows with the controversial additive. The story would expose its maker, the Monsanto Company, for failing to inform the F.D.A. about the hormone's potential health risks on those who drink milk, the journalists claimed.

Monsanto threatened Fox, and the station pulled the story after Akre and Wilson refused to slant their story, according to the lawsuit. The team soon found itself embroiled in a sour seven-year court battle with the "fair and balanced" network.

"We needed someone in the business to explain to the jury why reporters don't lie on television," Wilson explained to the Tampa Liberal Examiner from his Detroit home. The 57-year-old has served as the chief investigative reporter for WXYZ-TV since 2001. Wilson remembers dialing up news directors and media think tanks, but no one wanted to fight Fox.

"Everybody told us we were crazy," he chuckled. "They said you cannot beat someone with pockets as deep as Rupert Murdoch's."

Walter Cronkite, it turned out, was happy to give a deposition about the ethics of journalism.

"He was appalled at what had happened," Wilson said.

When, in April 2000, Cronkite was asked in court to what extent a reporter should mislead the public with a story, the television veteran replied: "He should not go a microinch towards that sort of thing. That is a violation of every principle of good journalism." Fox's counsel would object to Cronkite's role as a "media law expert" in the case.

"Mr. Cronkite is not an expert in the pre-broadcast review of a story," the network's lawyers argued.

The newsman, then 83, continued: "The reporter's reputation for integrity is of great importance to the reporter. And I think he would have found in this case that his employers did not have that same sense of journalistic integrity, therefore there was an incompatibility that probably could not be bridged."

For all his wisdom, clout and experience, Walter Cronkite could only halfway convince the jury that distortion has no place in a news story. Wilson was eventually ordered to pay $156,000 in legal fees; Akre, who was awarded more than $400,000, lost it all on appeal from Fox. Akre would never again work in television news.

The truth had certainly set them free.

By 2005, investigative team Akre and Wilson were free of their house, their life savings and much of their credibility. The couple had lost just about everything in its standoff with Fox, despite having the most trusted and respected man in news by their side.

Wilson said, "He was everything you would expect him to be. Walter Cronkite is in a totally different class."

Added Akre, "I'm eternally grateful for that man."

Cronkite's final sign off tonight, though without words, says so much about the death of fair journalism. Before he left the stand in that trial where business interests prevailed over ethical responsibility, Conkite said this of today's journalists who face intimidation from their superiors:

"His duty is to protest as much as possible. I think his ultimate duty is to resign."

Thanks, Walter. And be sure to say hello to Ralph Flanary, my late granddaddy, who never missed your broadcast. -P.F.

The Infomercial

Remember Ronco?

Come on, who wasn't tempted at two in the morning to buy one of those rotisseries?

The Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman and, yes, even that spray-on hair stuff.

Original pitchman Ron Popeil was born into sales in New York City, but would introduce his products when he made the transition to television. He did so in Tampa, Fla.

Thus the infomercial was born in Tampa, although Popeil would air his first television spots elsewhere in the country. He produced his first ads on WFLA in 1963, according to Entrepreneur. Why Tampa? It was the only place Popeil could afford. A 60-second clip for what would become the versatile Ronco Spray Gun cost 500 dollars to make.

Popeil would blaze a trail for a new generation of salesmen, and would retire from the limelight just as a stocky guy with a beard was weaseling his way onto our airwaves.

Let's shout it together: "Billy Mays here!"

Early medical reports indicate OxiClean magnate Billy Mays died of heart disease at home on Sunday at age 50.

Mays lived in Tampa. He attended church in Tarpon Springs. Many of Mays' segments and spots were shot OmniComm Studios in Clearwater, and aired nationwide on the Discovery Channel's Pitchmen. Billy Mays was a Tampa Bay celebrity whose products will be forever found tucked into pantries and beneath countertops across the country.

This week Ron Popeil, 74, mourns the late contemporary infomercial king in an email released to the Tampa Liberal Examiner:

It has been a sad week already, and with Billy’s passing, the world has lost another gem. Billy mastered the art of the pitch with his warmth and amped-up energy. For those of us who grew up before him on the boardwalk and at the state fairs, Billy was the leader of the next generation of pitchmen. I’m sad to see his sale cut short. He was a teddy-bear and my thoughts are with his friends and family. It was a privilege to know you Billy!

"Billy realized that an eye-to-eye pitch has to be honest and salable to the core," Popeil tells Time in its July 13th issue.

"It was this skill -- along with verbal agility, stamina and likability -- that he used to get consumers to buy products they never knew they needed."

One could argue the infomercial was born in Tampa with Ron, and died in Tampa with Billy.

We'll remember Billy Mays as pitchman... but that's not all.

-P.F.