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Thirty years ago, Americans were transfixed by the chaotic images flickering across their TV screens. Hordes of frantic South Vietnamese men, women and children desperately clinging to the U.S. Embassy fence in Saigon, pleading for escape. Chinook helicopters teetering precariously on the embassy roof, evacuating the last Americans even as North Vietnamese Communist Army tanks rolled into the outskirts of the city. Huey gunships, the very symbol of American combat power in Vietnam, commandeered by fleeing South Vietnamese Army pilots, either ditched into the sea or pushed overboard from the decks of crowded American aircraft carriers. If the film footage...

Thirty years ago, Americans were transfixed by the chaotic images flickering across their TV screens. Hordes of frantic South Vietnamese men, women and children desperately clinging to the U.S. Embassy fence in Saigon, pleading for escape. Chinook helicopters teetering precariously on the Embassy roof, evacuating the last Americans even as North Vietnamese Communist Army tanks rolled into the outskirts of the city. Huey gunships, the very symbol of American combat power in Vietnam, commandeered by fleeing South Vietnamese Army pilots, either ditched into the sea or pushed overboard from the decks of crowded American aircraft carriers. If the film footage...

Walter Cronkite long projected the image of the respected, objective newsman who didn't allow his personal views to enter the public square. No more, says the retired CBS anchorman in a direct mail letter he has sent out across the nation. The Cronkite letter comes from "The Interfaith Alliance" -- a liberal New York-based coalition of religious groups that oddly includes "agnostics and atheists." The group's letter bears Cronkite's photo on its envelope, identifying him as the "Honorary Chairman" -- with this blunt quote: "For years I kept my opinions to myself. But now I must speak out." In...

In yesterday's (March 27) Los Angeles Times, media reporter and critic David Shaw demonstrates Oscar Wilde's maxim that modern journalism is important—if only because it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. Giving every indication that he's read a lot of stories about bloggers but not that many actual blogs, Shaw disparages the form as the error-filled rants of amateurs in his piece, "Do Bloggers Deserve Basic Journalistic Protections?" It's a "solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre," Shaw writes. Without naming a specific offender—except Matt Drudge, who he acknowledges really isn't a blogger—Shaw generalizes about bloggers for 1,300 gassy...

NEW YORK - Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Cronkite, the wife of former CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite, has died, the newsman's assistant said Wednesday. She was 89. She died of complications of cancer Tuesday night at the couple's Manhattan apartment, said the assistant, Julie Sukman. Walter Cronkite met his future wife, born Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, while they were both working at radio station KCMO in Kansas City, Mo. They married in 1940, and shortly afterward she became women's editor of the Kansas City Journal-Post. While her husband was overseas reporting for United Press during much of World War II, she worked...

There they were, on C-Span 2, for 50 minutes Sunday Evening. Former CBS News Correspondent Tom Fenton interviewed about his book, Bad News. And the interviewer? A man whose truly bad news was inextricably tied to an event of the past week: the retirement of CBS Evening News Anchor, Dan Rather. He is Roger Mudd. Twenty-four years ago, Mudd was a CBS News Correspondent considered the heir-apparent to then-reigning Walter Cronkite as the man in the anchor chair. It didn't happen. There was this brash Texan, who had made a name for himself as President Nixon'sbete noir while the network's...

Just 48 hours before Dan Rather steps down under a cloud as anchor of the CBS newscast he's helmed for 24 years, the guy he squeezed out said Rather should've been replaced years ago. After nearly a quarter of a century, Walter Cronkite landed the final punch. While Cronkite has always dismissed the speculation that rising star Rather speeded up his departure from the anchor chair, yesterday afternoon he sure did sound like someone trying to take a few whacks at a guy who had KO'd him. Appearing on CNN, Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to...

NEW YORK (AP) - Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather's predecessor at the "CBS Evening News," said Monday that Rather's replacement by Bob Schieffer was overdue. Rather, 73, ends his run as evening news anchor Wednesday, exactly 24 years after replacing Cronkite. Schieffer, the "Face the Nation" host, will be a temporary fill-in until CBS decides on a permanent replacement. Cronkite called Schieffer "one of the great television journalists of our time." "Although Dan did a fine job, I would have liked to have seen (Schieffer) there a long time ago," Cronkite said during an interview on CNN. "He would have given...

Thursday, March 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST Let's think more about how America gets the news. The network news organizations and their old flagship shows, the evening news, are in flux: falling ratings, an aging demographic, competition from cable, a general loss of prestige, Rathergate. But it's foolish to think the network evening news shows don't matter anymore. Dan Rather's show, which has long come in third in a three-way race, gets on an average night eight million viewers. Bill O'Reilly's show, No. 1 on cable, gets three million viewers on a great night. The networks continue to have greater...

In the year of Rathergate and Dan's fall from grace, Americans may be particularly receptive to the Media Research Center's 17th annual awards for the most biased, manipulative or downright goofy quotes from liberals who dominate the elite media. I'm honored to serve, once again, on MRC's distinguished panel of conservatively biased judges. Here are some of the highlights from among the winners and runners up of Best Notable Quotables of 2004: Captain Dan the Forgery Man Award: "The story is true. The story is true.I appreciate the sources who took risks to authenticate our story. So, one, there is...

"HI, I'M WALTER CRANKCASE AND I WAS THERE" -- The Old Fuddy-Duddy Has A Plan! By Denis SchulzHi, I'm Walter Crankcase and I was there. When Krakatoa erupted in 1883 spewing hot ash and molten lava and a cloud of debris so fuliginous it obscured half of Mount Helena, I was there; when the United Nations drew its first breath at Dan Burton Oaks in San Francisco in 1944, I was there; when Michael Jackson walked backwards on the moon, I was there; when Harry met Sally, I was there; when Harry divorced Sally, I was there...um... Where was I?...

No longer the just-the-facts newsman, retired CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, 88, blasted the Bush administration during a charity appearance on Fisher Island.What America needs right now, legendary TV anchor Walter Cronkite said Thursday, is a new election -- and, he warned a laughing press conference full of reporters, he wasn't kidding. ''That's not entirely a joke,'' Cronkite said solemnly, arguing that the Bush administration has spent itself into ruin while embroiling the country in a war that will eventually make public revulsion to the war in Vietnam look ``like peanuts.'' ''I think you journalists today have a great four...

Cronkite sounds off on Iraq war at Fisher Island forum By Ginelle G. Torres Miami Bureau November 19, 2004 Veteran journalist Walter Cronkite said Thursday that the war in Iraq has divided the United States. "The public's reaction to Vietnam is going to be peanuts when compared to Iraq if it's not settled soon," he said during a media forum on Fisher Island held to benefit the Fisher Island Philanthropic Fund. "The war is tearing us apart." During hour-long remarks, Cronkite also spoke out on the presidential election, the national debt and the state of television journalism. Cronkite, 88, who...

"If Walter Cronkite was around today," USA Today founder Al Neuharth proclaimed in a speech in South Dakota last week, "I think John Kerry would be President" because of "the trust the people in Middle America had in Cronkite, when he returned from Vietnam opposed to the war, public opposition soon followed." As recounted by the Daily Republic in Mitchell, South Dakota, in addition to boasting of the influence of Cronkite's bias, Neuharth "said he thought if McGovern had won the presidency in 1972, U.S. troops would have pulled out from Vietnam a lot sooner with a lot fewer casualties,...

When Walter Cronkite talked on CNN last month about Osama bin Laden's scary pre-election video, yet another cat leapt out of the conspiracy-theory bag. "I'm a little inclined to think," Mr. Cronkite told host Larry King, "that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing." It's not clear whether this was a tasteless joke or a stray filament of wishful thinking; Mr. King probed no further. Yet the comment was a reminder that conspiracy theorizing--formerly confined to the realms of alien abduction kooks and...

I tuned into CNN to gloat as Aaron Brown whined and caught the last part of the painful Larry King...he read a statement sent to him by Walter Conkout stating something to the effect, "I deeply regret the joke I made on your show about Karl Rove last week was taken as a serious comment."

I want to expand a little bit with the aid of Jim Geraghty at National Review Online. A lot of reaction over the weekend out there. When the bin Laden tape came out, you know, I was glued to it on Friday afternoon and all day on Saturday. I was watching to see what people thought of it, and I was stunned as the weekend went on. I was literally stunned at how desensitized - this is a guy that murdered 3,000 Americans, and we hear, "Oh, he wants a truce." That may be, but what does that mean, for...

snip~ OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked. KING: OK, Walter. What do you make of this? CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a...

Walter Cronkite, the former CBS anchor once dubbed "the most trusted man in America," speculated on CNN's "Larry King Live" that President Bush's re-election campaign is working with Osama bin Laden.

<p>Open Letter to the Main Stream Media: We are not amateurs and we are going to kick your butts.</p> <p>We have watched you for years try to tell us how to think, what to think, who to vote for and what to believe based solely on your own agenda. In past years, you have come to think of yourselves as the fourth branch of government, the movers and shapers of opinion and the arbiters of truth.</p>