The media showed their true colors for the first time in the Vietnam war, pro marxist, pro communist. We could have won that war 10 times over had we wanted to but LBJs disasterous administration and Nixon’s waffling meant we through away 56,000 lives for nothing.
Walter Cronkite, the “Most Trusted Man in Media”, was complicit on this.
Remember the Tet Offensive? A surprise series of attacks launched during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year festival. Many South Vietnamese troops were on holiday when the attacks began, and the military was caught off guard. The campaign initially targeted more than 100 cities and towns, including the strategic southern capital of Saigon, now named Ho Chi Minh City.
The Tet Offensive was a catastrophic military failure for the communists. Historians estimate as many as 50,000 communist troops died in the effort to gain control of the southern part of the country. The South Vietnamese and American losses totaled a fraction of that number.
Although a military loss, the Tet Offensive was a stunning propaganda victory for the communists. In fact, it is often credited with turning the war in their favor. Walter Cronkite was on TV several nights telling Americans that all was lost in Vietnam. Yeah, that helped the Communist propaganda a lot.
Many Americans began to question military and political leaders who assured them the Vietnam War would be won soon. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, popular U.S. journalist Walter Cronkite said, “We are mired in a stalemate [and] the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.”