WALTER CRONKITE; A LOOK UPWARD AT SPACE, DOWNWARD AT DEMISE OF TELEVISION NEWS.

Byline: David Kronke TV Writer

Walter Cronkite - the man who informed a nation that its president was dead in 1963, who hosted his fellow countrymen on the world's first manned mission to the moon, who for decades was considered the most-trusted American alive - is back at work.

He's at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena filming a documentary for KCET, ``Beyond the Moon,'' set to air on PBS next year. He recently spent the day - hours, ironically, before NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the planet's atmosphere - investigating the new generation of robotic devices that will explore our solar system and beyond.

Cronkite, who turns 83 in November, donned a high-tech robe and booties to enter JPL's Clean Room, where experiments are conducted in a sterile atmosphere. He sweat it out in the humidity on a stretch of terrain modified to simulate the Martian landscape, where he watched the Sojourner, a high-tech Tonka truck on steroids, go about its maneuvers. All this with a bum foot encased in a cast, thanks to an old injury he spent too long trying to ignore.

Rocket science is what impresses the man who set nearly every journalistic standard during his six decades in the profession with his authority and avuncularity. ``An incredible effort has to be made to make these things go,'' he notes. ``That's the fascinating story as one stands there and looks at this little tiny thing the size of a large breadbox - you think of all the capabilities that are built in. These miniature pieces of equipment in them - miniature binoculars, engines - each of the small wheels, about 6 inches in diameter, has its own power supply. It's fascinating.

``I really enjoy this sort of assignment,'' he adds. ``It's my lifeblood to me.''

After interviewing JPL director Dr. Edward Stone about his contribution to Voyager some 30 years back, Cronkite shows he understands how L.A. operates: ``See you at the cast party,'' he jokes to Stone. Primary shooting completed, Cronkite poses for photos with everyone on the crew, insisting everyone from the sound guy to the grip take their place beside him. His only caveat to the photographer - shoot quickly; ``I can't hold my stomach in too long.''

The veteran newsman can also be heard tonight narrating a special on The Learning Channel called ``The Tobacco Wars,'' a scathing indictment of the tobacco industry.

Cronkite sat to discuss his twin passions - journalism and space exploration - with the Daily News.

Q: Is there anything else you've covered that has fascinated you as much on a personal level as the space program?

A: No, no. Politics fascinate me. But for scientific achievement, and everything it meant to the people involved in it - the astronauts, the technicians, the scientists; the building of the rockets, and the successes of the program, the great adventure of man going out there into space in the first place, and, then, landing on the moon - nothing can beat that.

Q: When you first started covering this industry, it was overseen by the military. They didn't throw the doors open back then the way JPL did today.

A: Far from it. Cape Canaveral, as they were beginning to make their first rocket flights, even for those small-rocket flights, they wouldn't let us out on the base at all except for a guided tour when there was nothing to see. And they never let us know when a flight was going to go. They thought they were keeping every flight a secret. Well, you can't very well keep a rocket's flight a secret - you can see it from miles around.

So we had the terrible job of getting out on a breakwater out on the entrance to the Cape Canaveral canal, and we stood on these rough, granite rocks, waiting for a rocket that might have been canceled hours ago without our knowing. It was a mean assignment in those days, but it was still exciting. I don't think there was anyone out there, except for some of the film photographers for the networks who had to keep their eye glued to the viewfinder for hours on end - they might've wished to be somewhere else - but nearly all of us reporters were happy to be there in the excitement of the space age.

Q: Having seen John Glenn go up, do you still harbor hope for going up?

A: Oh, sure, I'll never give up hope. When John was selected (to go on a space-shuttle mission testing the effects of aging on space travel), I sent him a letter saying it was unfair - I was two years older than he was; why wasn't I going up?

Q: When President Johnson said, ``If we've lost Cronkite, we've lost America,'' in terms of the Vietnam War, how did you feel to know that you wielded so much influence?

A: Well, I was doubtful. (Laughs.) I considered it an interesting emotional reaction on the president's part on the basis that he had so many straws on the camel's back. I think he was taking it that that was the last straw, we're finished. I don't feel that a journalist's influence is so great that you can change the course of human events by a single broadcast. Whether it's a president's decision to act or not act, it doesn't work that way. It's just one more straw.

Q: Your coverage of Watergate was instrumental in keeping the American people interested in it.

A: The most important thing about that was it kept the Washington Post at work. Kate Graham (publisher of the Post) said they were just about at the point of buckling, they were under so much pressure from the administration on the matter of their television licenses, and they were really under pressure.

Q: With the proliferation of cable, no TV news operation can wield that influence these days. And since you've retired from full-time reporting, TV news has obviously degenerated into a sorry state. Is it difficult for you, having been such an influence and such a sword-keeper for the profession, to watch it wallow as it has?

A: Yes, it is, it's very disturbing and very disappointing. In the last chapter of my book, I said that a person can gauge the success of his or her life by the influence they've had - or some such words, I can't quote myself, even - and I didn't feel that I'd made that kind of contribution. And a lot of people corrected me and said I had made a difference, and I'm glad they said so.

But what I was trying to get across was that in the first 20 years of TV news, we at all three networks with the kind of leadership at the time, they understood the responsibility they had undertaken in having broadcast networks. And as a consequence, we were left alone to do the kind of job we needed to do. News was not a profit center; it was a loss-leader, a reputation-builder for the network. I had thought, naively perhaps, that that would continue forever, that we had established a set of principles for television news that would last. It collapsed almost immediately with the first sale of one of those networks to another company. Those people have no respect for the sanctity of news at all. As a consequence, they've forced the news departments to bowdlerize their product in favor of money.

Q: CBS and Viacom just merged - will that continue the downward spiral?

A: Not necessarily. It could be a benefit. It depends entirely on the people who run it, of course. It makes CBS a much stronger entity in this decade of mergers creating these huge entertainment colossi. CBS didn't have a movie studio and had long since sold its record company - it needed those things back to round out the picture of an entertainment entity. That's what they are. News is the tail of the entertainment dog for all these organizations. With that kind of strength now, it might be possible for them to say, ``We've got (enough) product here that we can, again, make news a nonprofit center. Or, if not a loss-leader, then at least we won't expect the same percentage of revenue we do of the rest of our business.'' Maybe that'll change the attitude of management.

Q: What is the primary thing you would change or eliminate from TV news today?

A: The most pernicious thing, to me, is the feature stories that take time out of a terribly limited amount of time that we have to cover the world, a very complicated world. We're not even covering that world today. We're covering domestic news, because we think people aren't interested in foreign news. But of course they're not interested in foreign news - they're not getting it! If they made it interesting, there would be an interest.

It's terribly dangerous - we are getting into Kosovo and Iraq because, perhaps, we don't understand the picture. People have no input. This is a very serious situation - in a world where a small cloud over some distant town we can't pronounce in a country we've never even heard of could turn out to be a mushroom-shaped one, that's something we have to pay attention to.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Veteran newsman Walter Cronkite suits up for an equipment inspection in the sterile environment of JPL's Clean Room.

(2) ``The great adventure of man going out there into space ... and, then, landing on the moon - nothing can beat that,'' says Cronkite, chatting with JPL director Dr. Edward Stone.