I grew up with Walter Cronkite on the news. Indeed, I sort of made my roommate chuckle in disbelief when I said “I remember when he was the news.”
It’s hard to describe to young people what it was like when there were only 3 TV netwtorks, and one newscaster could have so much power over the other two that he could end a war by simply misreporting it and inappropriately editorializing about it–touching off a massacre of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese based on the false premise that the Tet Offensive was a victory for the murdering, oppressing Communist forces in that country.
I’m glad we no longer live in an era where one man can be that much of a demagogue and have that much blood on his hands just through sheer incompetence. I don’t miss the Cronkite era at all.
By the way, am I the only one who also found him really annoying when he covered the space program? I’m glad he was a space program booster, but my God he could have improved his coverage immensely by shutting the eff up more.
I suppose it’s in poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but Cronkite has been lionized and praised far and wide for his whole life, and in death the worship continues in most of the news coverage I’m seeing, so, I’m a little less worried about it. Someone needs to mention that the way he reported things the way they weren’t, and they weren’t better days when he was in charge of the news.
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I remember when people believed him. I also remember when there were some who doubted him and did not like the power he had. One of the reason I began to doubt the Democratic party. As a man he may have been okay, but he was looked to as a God who gave the proper opinions from on high. Not a good thing. This is what has helped bring us to where we are today.
Dean, you pretty much said exactly what I would have said about the man. Except this.
Walter Cronkite is directly responsible for the infusion of ideology into the news. He did it first and he did it blatantly. He was a hard core Leftist who used his platform to advance his ideology. And that’s been the way of the news ever since.
It is no coincidence that his “protege”, Dan Rather, was driven from the news after a scandal where he tried to use fake documents to take down a sitting Republican President. I’m sure Uncle Walter was cheering him on the whole time.
Rather still can’t admit those documents were phony, and most of his contemporaries in the news maintain an agnostic position on it, with the whole ridiculous “they were never proven to be forgeries” argument (which is stupid for two completely separate reasons, but the most important being, it’s not incumbent on anyone to prove they aren’t forgeries, any journalist knows that it’s incumbent upon Rather to prove they are LEGITIMATE. Never mind that the evidence that they’re faked is overwhelming, the fact is that it’s up to Rather to prove their legitimacy, period.)
I can never trust them again. The Right is correct; the press is simply dominated by people who are left-of-center. The right is not correct when it suggests there’s an active conspiracy, nor is it correct to suggest that all coverage is blatantly skewed and that Democrats never take fire from the press. But there’s just no question which way the barrel of their gun is biased; I consider it like observing that water is wet that the press leans left.
Dean:
There is no need to have an “active conspiracy” when the ideology of the group is in lockstep. Nobody has to say “Today we’ll attack Republicans and protect Democrats” because that’s the normal business as usual for the vast majority of them. Nobody has to say “run with this lame anti-Sarah Palin story instead of this harmful anti-Chris Dodd story” because that’s their normal inclination.
In fact the lack of a need for a “conspiracy” just makes it worse. It proves that the ideological bias runs so deep that it is simply considered to be the “RIGHT WAY” to do things.
In the vast majority of cases in the press, conservatives aren’t simply “biased against.” They are perceived as the actual ENEMY, and they are pursued with all the vigor that fighting the “enemy” tends to bring.
That’s why an ACORN protest of a few dozen people gets front page attention while a Tea Party protest of a few thousand people is completely ignored.
Back in the 70′s I read a book that showed the background of how the news was manipulated, and the country followed, by the conglomerate of organizations owning Time Magazine, The New York Times and CBS. I wish I could remember the author and the name of the book, it was before the time of conspiracy theorists. I thought we still had it in our home library but I can’t find it. Cosmic Conservative is correct, it isn’t an acknowledged thing because it is just a way of thinking by most of the press, a way of life for them.
I agree with you on this one, Dean. I never was much of the television viewing world. I’ve spent most of my life reading and doing. And lately, our old television set — no longer capable of working on present-day broadcasting standards, is used exclusively as a device for viewing feature film videotapes and DVDs.
But what I was able to see of Mr Cronkite back in the 1960s convinced me that he had more influence — and therefore power — than should be accorded any private unelected person in our society. Sort of like a secular pope whose throne was built and maintained a great mass of more or less gullible and sometimes outright witless people.
I too never forgave or forgot the way the US government got so many of our soldiers, marines, combat aircrewmen and river boat sailors killed for a war that they ran away from as soon as the Great Walter checked his crystal ball and told the whole country on national television they should bug out of Viet Nam. To say nothing of the Vietnamese who had foolishly trusted us and whom we then abandoned to communist control.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Sean: I’ll occasionally run into the rightist who claims it’s an active agenda. In some cases perhaps, but really for most, not so much a case of that as simply walking around with blinders on.
This is important for several reasons, because it’s what the word “bias” actually means: not a clear pattern of consistent ill intent, but rather, simply inhabiting a world in which you and virtually all your co-workers share the same mentality and attitudes. Which happens to all human beings in all professions. Although it’s a little worse with journalists, because they actually believe that their journalism school degrees give them a “trained objectivity.” Which it really doesn’t, it just makes it harder for them to see their own lack of objectivity.
It also is important because a bias, a little lean to the left, may at times be meaningless and may in fact do something worse; there’s no question that the press WILL be tough on a Democrat. They surely will. In fact, I think that at least sometimes they’ll be harder on a Democrat precisely because they lean toward that person’s party: if they feel a sense of betrayal, it’ll tend to be worse with Democrats than Republicans, and the press feeding frenzy will do what it always does.
Exaggerating press bias is far too likely to backfire on conservatives anyway; if you insist that everything and at all times in reporting is ridiculously slanted anti-Republican, you’ve already lost the argument because it’s often demonstrably untrue and makes you look like you’re raving. The press CAN be fair to Republicans and sometimes is; the press CAN be unfair to Democrats and sometimes is.
If we don’t identify what “bias” really means–a tendency, a slant, like a tendency to hook your golf shots a little to the left, a tendency to fire your gun straight but always have it stray just a little left–then you aren’t discussing something that can be acknowledged and corrected.
This would also mean, by the way, that it’s ENTIRELY fair for left-wing organizations to call out the press to being unfair to them. Because it does happen. The further left you are politically, the more right-wing the mainstream news media actually looks to you–because they’re only a little biased to the left, whereas you’re all the way out in left field and the bias doesn’t look like anything significant to you.
I honestly think news organizations, and journalists, would get a whole lot more creidbility with a third or so of America if they’d just do open and honest things, like taking a look at the ideological makeup and voting patterns of the news room, acknowledge possible conflicts in viewpoint, and actively engage in correcting without overcorrecting. Would it be a lot of work? Yeah. But for an industry hemorrhaging viewers and readers, with local news organizations all over the country collapsing, you’d think doing something to actually enhance people’s confidence in these organizations would help a lot.
Arnold, you are so right. I started to mention the millions who died after we pulled out but I decided I might have some facts scrambled in my old brain. We have mourning doves in our area and for many, many years instead of coo coo I heard Pol Pot, Pol Pot. I know it sounds crazy but it took a long time to overcome that in my mind. My son in law fought in Viet Nam. He is totally mentally disabled from PTSD. It got much worse after 9-11. The VA is taking excellent care of him. He was so thrilled when the Desert Storm people came home and there were parades for them and for him and his buddies who came home there was nothing but shame showered on them from the news media. I do not plan to listen to all the eulogies for Walter Cronkite.
As much as I loathe Walter Cronkite for his impact propaganda and his self-serving ego, he can in fact be held responsible for throwing several millions of South Vietnamese under the communist bus not to mention the dis-service he brought upon this nation.
I never liked the guy even when he did his bs first hand report of weightlessness for 23 seconds over Wright-Patterson or was it Langley Virginia.
There is no doubt about this guys legacy — of course this coming week, we’ll see some revisionist TV be-honorments.
Do you think they’ll have the nerve to drag out Dan Rather to bestow the honors ?
One of the great unanswered questions for McNamara and Westmoreland and the CIC is:
Whenever, did the USA ever engage in a war expecting to win, where the military were told —well –you only have to go for 12 months with a little r and r in Bangkok and Hong Kong and they you can go back to your moms in CONUS.
A sad sorry scenario.
But, I’m still proud of my military service from 1962 through 1971.
Update:
This is enough to make anyone with a working brain want to puke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdOb_183d1o&NR
As you might expect, I have my own thoughts on Walter Cronkite… and Jon Stewart with which you probably all will disagree :) I will say though that even though I find the conservative critique of the media bias to be one-sided (and wrong; its not liberal bias but *establishment* bias – but thats another topic), I do believe that the problem with media “journalism” today is a bipartisan hackery, not one-sided. In fact shows like Crossfire are odious precisely because they have both “sides” – Hannity and Colmes is actually preferable on the grand scale of crappery because at least it has one forceful view (with token opposition) rather than the nonsensical facade of “debate” that crossfore purports to deliver.
Aziz
One word: Tet.
Death won’t erase the blood on that man’s hands.
Scott, i find the idea that Cronkite is somehow responsible for Tet to be just about the most overblown, strained political scalphunting imaginable. Its akin to how you feel about the Swift Boat Vets getting a raw deal. I just would have to accept too many of your axioms, all of which i disagree with on principle at a fundamental philosophical level, for me to ever even begin to see it your way on that. its like me expecting you to accept the islamic argument that all converts are actually “reverts” – it only makes sense if you accept islam as axiommatically true, which obvousy=ly you dont, so its moot.
at any rate. Cronkite and Tet? um, no.
(incidentally, i had some sympathy for those guys. I tought theu were wrong but i completely understood why they played Ahab to Kerry’s whale)
You can just put me down in the raving category then Dean because I consider NBC, ABC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, NPR, NY Times, LA Times, and virtually all other mainstream media sources to be run and staffed by ideologues who have an agenda and who pursue that agenda daily. In fact if you can’t see it, I think you are the one unable to see reality. I think you repeatedly display a strong desire to APPEAR to be oh-so-reasonable and as such try to navigate a “middle road” even if that road veers sharply one direction or the other. It is very important for you to believe that you are the reasonable one, so you assert things that make you feel that way.
I’m not like that. I don’t really give a crap if you think I’m “raving.” I simply look at the world and try to view it as objectively as possible.
So when I see that “right-wing extremist” is roughly 100 times more likely to appear in a “news” story than “left-wing extremist” and when I see a pro-life viewpoint routinely reported as “extreme” when it reflects 49% of the nation, and I see that 90+% of the news staff in this country is registered Democrat and describes themselves as “liberal” then I react to those FACTS and say “Hmmm…. seems to me there’s a bit of a problem here.”
Aziz: I’m afraid I just plain see Cronkite as grossly and irresponsibly reporting in a way that was massively costly in terms of human lives, in terms of human rights, and almost every other way. The misreporting was egregious, and the editorializing was beyond anything a responsible journalist in his position should ever have done.
I consider it shameful. Have ever since I learned about it. It told me that journalists really do have an obligation and that many of them don’t live up to it, and won’t. [shrug]
The misreporting was egregious, and the editorializing was beyond anything a responsible journalist in his position should ever have done.
i dont see any evidence of any of that. maybe youve read examples im unaware of, but this is the first ive ever heard of it. your comment strikes me as hyperbolic in teh extreme. do you have something i can read with actual evidence?
Aziz: If you don’t see the misreporting and editorializing in Cronkite’s Tet offensive reports, well, there’s not much sense in trying to show you. You can lead a horse to water, you know…
I have read numerous summaries of what happened during Tet, and takled to guys who were there. It was a clear, unequivocal, crushing victory for American forces that all but obliterated the VC and unequivocally showed that the South Vietnamese population DID NOT support the communists.
It was an overwhelming military defeat–it was their attempt at a “hail mary” pass and it failed miserably in all ways–but they were saved by the American media, who in effect became their chief propaganda arm. Unintentionally, I suspect in most cases, but it’s what happened, and in the decades since then those who crushed South Vietnam and put it under their iron boot rule admitted that it was their greatest propaganda victory.
There are lots of summaries out there; this one is pretty good. Except for the few remaining Communist apologists, I don’t know of any credible source anymore who will deny the following:
1) It was an overwhelming military disaster for the communists, and a huge military victory for the Americans that all but completely crushed the Viet Cong. The war against them was won.
2) THe American media’s portrayal of events–with some possible blame by U.S. administration officials–allowed Americans to perceive this massive victory as a failure and as proof positive that the war was lost.
I don’t know any credible source–one that’s really studied what happened there–that’s come to any other conclusion. The only holdouts I’ve seen try to blame the Johnson administration for the bad perception that people got, not the media.
CC is as straight as an arrow on Cronkite, Aziz.
The Walter the Supposedly Great, in a single broadcast, broke the will of the United States of America to keep an international commitment to the people of South Viet Nam, and to the American servicement who went to their country armed, for purposs of protecting them from communist aggression.
It was a time of war, and Walter proved himself a successful American version of the British traitor William Joyce, who broadcast for the Nazis in World War II, under the appropriate moniker “Lord Haw Haw”, and who was justifiably hanged for it when the Brits captured him in the wake of the Nazi collapse. If Walter had pulled a defeatist broadcast stunt in the 1940s similar to what he did in early 1968, they would at least have sent him to rot in a federal prison.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The general tendency to those who want to defend Cronkite et. al. is to put all the blame on the Johnson Administration. They’d been saying things were going well, and the VC showed a sudden unexpected surge.
But this to me just gives those in the press a free pass to say whatever crap they want and never be held responsible for it. It says there’s no such thing as misreporting and, even if there is, it’s someone’s fault other than the reporters for the misreporting. Journalists are never to blame for anything, they’re never to blame for giving a bad impression, and they hold no responsibility at all if people die, or spend decades in chains, because of inappropriate reporting.
In short, it’s a way of taking freedom of the press–which is sacrosanct–and saying that this means reporters are above everyday human beings, really above everybody else. It’s horse shit.
Walter Cronkite, through misreporting, caused hundreds of thousands to die. It’s just what he did. Is it what he intended? No. But the fact that he could never own up to it, and that people still try to defend him on it by blaming President Johnson, is a lesson I’ve never forgotten: misreporting is real, it happens, and those who do it often won’t take any responsibility for it even when they’re proven to have misreported, instead wrapping themselves in the Constitution and pretending that they have no responsibility for printing lies. Never mind that that’s not what freedom of the press is all about, or what the Constitution says.
We can’t hold Cronkite legally culpable, but morally? Very much so. Irresponsible reporters cost lives. They just do. And if they try to evade that responsibility, that’s all the less reason to trust them.
I won’t try to apply all this to modern times, although if you search my archives you’ll see that I have. There seems no point. If people won’t accept that the press can misreport, does misreport, and that misreporting can have tremendously awful consequences, there’s really no point in taking the conversation further.
I will stand by it, however: Walter Cronkite had a very strong hand in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and in causing millions of them to live in chains. It’s what he did. Can I forgive? It’d be easier to forgive if he’d have ever owned up to it, or if any of his apologists would.
Oh, and might I add: It shouldn’t be relevant at all what you thought of Vietnam. What should matter is that “the most trusted man in America” blew it, and furthermore, broke one of the sacred rules he supposedly lived by. If not more than one of those sacred rules.
Trust gone, Mr. Cronkite. Trust gone in you forever, for tens of millions. that’s part of your legacy too.
I dont know enough about Vietnam or the Tet – to be honest, i wasnt sure if the Tet was our offensive or theirs, until this thread. I’ll go do my homework but I’ll accept based on yoru comment that it was the victory that you said, and I will also accept your assertion that US media portrayed it as a loss. But you are looking back at this with the benefit of 40 years’ hindsight. The reporting that Croinkite did was simple: this happened, that happened, etc. I can easily see how a major military event back in the days of Vietname where there were no embeds like we have in Iraq/Afghan might be completely opaque. Blaming Cronkite for fog of war stuff seems retroactively-assigning blame to fit your pre-written narrative that Media Bad! Vietnam Winnable! (a narrative that I am not necessarily taking issue with, but wirth notig hardly represents Objective Truth either).
I am going to read the Wikipedia entry on the Tet offensive tonight. Forgive me for being skeptical of your assertion that this was a gigantic fiasco for the vietcong and a complete and total justification of the US military strategy in advance. I just dont think its goingt be as blac and white as you paint it out to be. I also intend to wtach Cronkites Tet commentary for myself to see just how much “fact” and how much “opinion” there was. If it was something he did from his desk during News, then its bad. If it was explicitly an editorial, and presented as such, then youre making a mountain our of a strip mine.
Aziz:
The best “spin” you can put on Cronkite’s (and other “news” anchors) reporting on the Tet offensive is that THEY were not expecting a last-ditch desperate “Battle of the Bulge” effort by the Viet Cong, and when it happened, they greatly misread the situation and misunderstood what had happened.
In fact the comparison to the Battle of the Bulge is pretty good. That was Germany’s last-ditch effort to avoid total defeat, and for a while at least, it was a major problem for the Allies. But in the end the Allies rallied, pushed the Germans back and secured total victory in Europe.
The Tet Offensive was the Viet Cong’s Battle of the Bulge. But Walter and his buddies reported it as the United States’ Waterloo.
Put me firmly in the camp that Walter Cronkite virtually assured the Viet Cong of victory through his misreporting. You can ascribe whatever motives you like to his actions, the fact that his actions were completely consistent with his anti-military, anti-American sympathies as revealed by his previous and later actions is enough for me to be quite certain that his reporting was not impartial and that he deliberately undermined the US war effort, which led directly NOT just to the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of Vietnames” but also to the killing fields of Cambodia and the millions murdered there.
Frankly Walter Cronkite has a lot of blood on his hands. More, imho, than General Westmoreland by a few orders of magnitude.
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