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The Brian Williams Blunder - Another Chapter In American Journalism's Fall From Grace
Townhall.com ^ | February 10, 2015 | Summer Ratcliff

Posted on 02/10/2015 10:08:37 AM PST by Kaslin

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To: Kaslin

“...without doubt, Mr. Cronkite would be mortified to see how far journalism has fallen...”

In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, Mr. Cronkite reported that the war was lost. He said so in light of the offensive being a failure and the American attempt to repel it being so successful.

There was no apology to all the young men who lost their lives in the victory that was cast as a loss.

The press then was just as biased, maybe more so, back then. The only difference between then and now was that the cosmeticians did such a good job in making it look good.

The “American People” were fed a line of pap that was glaringly specious yet the cosmeticians dressed it up as the truth.

IMHO


21 posted on 02/10/2015 10:23:50 AM PST by ripley
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To: BigEdLB

22 posted on 02/10/2015 10:28:11 AM PST by CodeToad (Islam should be outlawed and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
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To: mountainlion

It has been much longer than that. Duranty lied about the Stalin caused famine in the USSR and Murrow lied about McCarthy long before Kronkite lied about Vietnam.


23 posted on 02/10/2015 10:28:32 AM PST by jospehm20
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To: WayneS

Serial Intentional Blunderer


24 posted on 02/10/2015 10:33:46 AM PST by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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To: jospehm20

It has been much longer than that.

I am only going from personal memory. There was a lot of lying press during the colonial times also.


25 posted on 02/10/2015 10:34:19 AM PST by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: jospehm20

right


26 posted on 02/10/2015 10:36:16 AM PST by hosepipe (" This propaganda has been edited (specifically) to include some fully orbed hyperbole.. ")
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To: ripley

exactly, the Tet Offensive broke the back of the North Vietnamese military but Cronkite and the US media bolstered them


27 posted on 02/10/2015 10:36:50 AM PST by GeronL
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To: Kaslin
MSM Evening News used to have close to 40 million viewers combined. Most of their viewers now are hooked up to oxygen bottles in their wheelchairs. Looking at ads for walkers. Admiring the Hurricane walking cane ads, "Look it stands up. And it comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and a carrying bag."

They now have half of what CBS News used to have before the internet exposed the Emperors' ding-a-lings.

George Patton would have slapped Williams, Rather and Cronkite as fouling the honor of valid warriors.

"You're going back to the front my friend. And I am personally going to put you in the lead chopper."

28 posted on 02/10/2015 10:37:27 AM PST by N. Theknow (Kennedys-Can't drive, can't ski, can't fly, can't skipper a boat-But they know what's best for you.)
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To: Kaslin

“Blunder”? Is that what we call manufacturing a false account, a blunder? Is that the legal term for premeditated lying? They could at least call it marketing, then we would know to identify the falsifying for financial gain.


29 posted on 02/10/2015 10:40:02 AM PST by DaveyB
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To: Moonman62
...If he were alive today, he could try to explain his dishonest coverage of the Vietnam war...

Well Said! I'd Like To Hear His Answer To That Also!

30 posted on 02/10/2015 10:57:36 AM PST by Fiddlstix (Warning! This Is A Subliminal Tagline! Read it at your own risk!(Presented by TagLines R US))
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To: N. Theknow
MSM Evening News used to have close to 40 million viewers combined. Most of their viewers now are hooked up to oxygen bottles in their wheelchairs. Looking at ads for walkers. Admiring the Hurricane walking cane ads...

You're right, but my recollection is that the ads on the nightly news were aimed at senior citizens even back in the '70s and '80s.

Remember the old (and awful) "I think I'll keep her!" ads for Polident? I'm certain those were mainly seen on the TV nightly news programs.

31 posted on 02/10/2015 11:03:03 AM PST by Steely Tom (Vote GOP for A Slower Handbasket)
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To: mountainlion

Probably, but during the revolution it was not the same organizations that are still lying to us now. The NY Times, CBS, NBC, etc. are still around and still lying as they have for a long time now.


32 posted on 02/10/2015 11:03:47 AM PST by jospehm20
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To: GeronL
...exactly, the Tet Offensive broke the back of the North Vietnamese military but Cronkite and the US media bolstered them.

The Tet Offensive broke the back of the Vietcong. In-country operations were decimated. Following Tet, the war was almost exclusively run by the North Vietmese Army (NVA).

Meanwhile, the 5th Column broke our morale, and instead of the great victory leading to mopping up the theatre, we opted for increasingly having the South Vietnamese fight the battles, which set up the eventual cut-n-run.

33 posted on 02/10/2015 11:05:42 AM PST by Rinnwald
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To: TexasCajun
U.S. journalism hit rock bottom years ago. It's so far down in the sewer that the Williams scandal neither surprised nor fazed those who still think.

Mendacity is the fundamental evil responsible for Western decadence. It's ubiquitous.

Evil is indeed banal.

34 posted on 02/10/2015 11:32:08 AM PST by Savage Beast (The left doesn't recognize the difference between good and evil or rather has it backward.MtnClimber)
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To: GeronL

“...but Cronkite and the uS media bolstered them.”

Traitorous to say the least.

IMHO


35 posted on 02/10/2015 1:02:09 PM PST by ripley
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To: Moonman62

Cronkite was no different than the current crop.....


36 posted on 02/10/2015 1:04:52 PM PST by Osage Orange (I have strong feelings about gun control. If there's a gun around, I want to be controlling it.)
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To: mountainlion

I first learned long ago of the general incompetence and unreliability of news reporters. One of the first things that struck me was that in reports containing numbers there are almost always mathematical impossibilities, for instance, “The number of gizmowhatchits dropped from 99873 to 93789 in one year, a decline of more than twenty percent.” The math is almost always wrong. It has become even worse in recent years with expressions like “2500 percent less”, such expressions are used routinely now by people who are supposedly educated but can’t figure out that they are babbling nonsense. I figure that if they don’t understand simple arithmetic I can’t be expected to put much faith in anything else.


37 posted on 02/10/2015 3:12:22 PM PST by RipSawyer (OPM is the religion of the sheeple.)
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To: Lisbon1940

If he had the equivalent of a fifth grade education circa 1955 he would have put an apostrophe in the correct place and all would have been well. Of course in this era a person apparently needs to have a doctorate in language to know how to place an apostrophe.


38 posted on 02/10/2015 3:42:07 PM PST by RipSawyer (OPM is the religion of the sheeple.)
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To: Kaslin

The “Main Stream Media” is not interested in simply reporting the “who, what, when and why” of a story.

They are instead interested in molding public opinion to support their socialist goals. They are no different then Pravda in the old Soviet Union.

Anything (or anyone) that disagrees with them are destroyed and if can not be destroyed demonized.

What is true does not even enter the equation with them.


39 posted on 02/11/2015 9:19:08 AM PST by CIB-173RDABN (I do not doubt that our climate changes. I only doubt that anything man does has any effect.)
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To: ripley

I disagree completely

Cronkite was a lib no question but he supported the war early on Big time.....he grew disenchanted

I think he viewed it as unwinnable and they knew likely the GOP....a very moderate GOP was likely to assume the war headed by a politician they all detested

They were vested in LBJ and JFK war not a Republican war....a party likely led by Nixon who they hated even more than Barry

There was no comparable MSNBC then a no women pretty much....till Babs came along

Some reds here and there and a lot of old school Democrats hawkish on Cold War.....that’s a dead breed

There was no nationwide abortion on demand or homosexual marriage or racial quotas and barely gun control

A different world and a number of somewhat moderate men in the jockey seats even in print

Today everyone but Fox is hard left

Tech industry is overrun by younger progressives

Sports networks all left leaning

Print all left or one or two moderates......back then southern papers were socially conservative

It goes on and on

We have more choices now and stuff leaks out but the left owns 90% of the real estate

And academia and advertising and film

I lived it as a boy

This is a different country.....Eric Severied or Howard K Smith or even Huntley and Brinkley would be considered righties compared to Cooper Maddow Soledad or that buxom Robin Meade


40 posted on 02/11/2015 9:41:19 AM PST by wardaddy (glenn beck is a nauseous politically correct conservative on LSD)
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