Posted on 07/23/2009 5:47:03 AM PDT by mozarky2
Looking back, it's hard to believe that Walter Cronkite's career anchoring "CBS Evening News" lasted only two decades.
To persons of my generation-I was a college kid when he took the job in 1962-his avuncular presence lent reassurance through turbulent times. Nobody who watched Cronkite choke up as he announced the death of President John F. Kennedy on that terrible afternoon in November 1963 will ever forget it.
Nor the awful events of 1968: the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and then Robert F. Kennedy, rioting in American cities, and pitched battles between anti-war protesters and the Chicago police at the Democratic National Convention. To my young wife and me, watching from a rented farm house in Virginia where only CBS' signal came in clearly, it felt as if...
(Excerpt) Read more at nwanews.com ...
Geez. This makes me almost wish for Michael Jackson coverage. At least he wasn’t overtly supporting our enemies.
I always thought that Cronkite was just a pompous old fart.
Gene, your uber-hero Cronkite was a first class liar and hypocrit. His lies cost the lives of THOUSANDS of young men in Vietnam (both American AND Vietnamese) and extended the war by several years.
The best thing he did for your and your cronies, was to provide the model for how to lie, manipulate and propagandize the news so that people like you could learn his method and keep doing it.
Well, we’re on to you, Gene, and elevating this propagandist mass murderer the way you and your colleagues have, does NOTHING to improve your standing with real Americans. We all know that CRONKITE LIED, PEOPLE DIED!!!!
Cronkite was Ted Baxter without the looks. Of course, Ted Baxter was patterned after Bill Kurtis who I’ve worked with on stories and who truly is clueless without the teleprompter or producer whispering in his earpiece.
Cronkite, Rather, and the rest told both lies they knew were lies and lies they assumed were true but never checked out. From their viewpoint the truth of a story was whether it conveyed the truth about the overall story and damn the details.
Thus if the overall truth is that war is hell, then it is irrelevant whether the details they report on any given day are true or not, just as long as they convey the overall truth that war is hell.
The situation I like the best is the Kent State Riots based on Cronkite, Rather, etal told everyone that Nixon-Kissinger had expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos. Of course, Kennedy had small forces in Laos and Johnson larger forces in both Laos and Cambodia (including my unit in Laos).
Cronkite, Rather, etal knew that they were reporting a lie in saying that Nixon-Kissinger expanded the war. Yet it served their agenda to create more awareness ... in places like Kent State ... of the need to oppose the war.
Ted Baxter!!??? Not in any sane universe. Cronkite was a lying mass murderer whose lies about the Tet Offensive demoralized American troops, energized the north Vietnamese and caused thousands of deaths. Tet was a significant victory for America that pushed the north to the brink of capitulation - until they heard his broadcast.
Ted Baxter was likeable and innocuous. Cronkite was a malicious POS vermin who has altered “journalism” into a mass propaganda machine.
The two are virtual polar opposites.
I didn’t know Cronkite. Ted Baxter was allegedly patterned after CBS CH2 Chicago’s Bill Kurtis... and I just wondered if Cronkite was also that way?
Gene Lyons, lol.
There’s a name I haven’t seen since he was on his knees for Clinton.
Not IMO. Cronkite, CBS and most of America took Cronkite VERY seriously and believed that his news coverage was above reproach. To our own disservice.
Where Cronkite revealed his true colors was when he announced in 1968 that the Tet Offensive in Vietnam had been a complete and total defeat for the US forces. As a matter of fact, it was anything but. A North Vietnamese general revealed in his autobiography, written about 30 years later, that the Tet Offensive was a massive defeat for the North and left them on the verge of capitulating to the South Vietnamese and the US.
Until they heard Cronkite's broadcast. That energized them to keep fighting while, at the same time, it demoralized our forces. The war was extended by several years as the direct result of Cronkite's propaganda broadcast about Tet and thousands of young men, American AND Vietnamese lost their lives because of him.
But, Cronkite continues to reverberate through what pases for American "journalism" today. He provided the model to all the other "journalists" how to lie and manipulate the news such that what we see today is not reliable and is typically not even true (fortunately, today we have the Internet and don't need "journalists". In 1968, the Internet wasn't even a science fiction dream!).
Bill Kurtis could never even dream of having that kind of impact on an (alleged) "profession".
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