Video: Oct. 27, 1972

(Friday, October 27, 1972, 7:00 p.m. EDT, during the Watergate scandal) — At the insistence of anchorman Walter Cronkite, The CBS Evening News featured a fifteen-minute segment tonight on the Watergate affair, the first part of a full-scale report.

Cronkite, Daniel Schorr, and Joel Blocker reported on the arrest of the Watergate burglars and others in connection with the case, implicate White House Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) figures, and report White House denials.

While the report broke no new ground, its length and comprehension helped elevate the so-called “third rate burglary” to the top of the national agenda.

Outside of the Washington Post, few news outlets gave the story that much play. After Cronkite pieced the elements together, they could ignore it no longer.

The Nixon White House objected, and part two of the report was trimmed, but the damage was done.