[hinckley buzzard]

Twentieth century America had a long tradition of relying on highly trusted news casters to keep them informed, beginning with radio demigods like Edward R Morrow, William Shirer, John Cameron Swayze. That carried over into the TV era with the invention of the onscreen anchor. No one suspected them of being dishonest demagogs.

[Avalon Memories]

Dishonest demogogues, yes, and in the case of Cronkite a closet Communist throughout his career. Cronkite only admitted it after he retired and during an interview on the old CNN Larry King show.

[MrEdd]

Until the sixties, when the men coming back from Vietnam pretty much uniformly asserted that the war was nothing like what the television media was describing.

People had to decide whether they believed the news readers or the Veterans. To many chose the idiot box. Many who chose television reevaluated their decision in the late eighties, but relationships with and the lives of the Veterans they rejected were damaged beyond complete repair by that point.

I believe that the scope of the Vietnam betrayal was the largest factor in the rise of the alternative media, and Rush Limbaugh launched on radio at about the time Americans reassessed Vietnam.

[cgbg]

No one suspected them of being dishonest demagogues.

A few people thought so--but they were called "extremists" and shunned by polite society. :-(