If the media want to know where the fake news meme came from they should look at Walter Cronkite, who was a third rate war correspondent from WWII but a first rate teleprompter reader. He lied to the American people that the Tet battles were an American loss when in fact they were a victory. The North Vietnamese were preparing to withdraw until media inspired protests in America caused them to reconsider.
Fully agreed there. Heck, the only correction I need to make is that Walter Cronkite didn’t even start the fake news meme. That started before even Walter Cronkite was a so-called “newsman.” If anything, that started under Walter Lippmann, who essentially encouraged in his book “Public Opinion” to manufacture public consent, in other words, use journalism to sway people’s opinions to stuff only the newsgivers support (and for the record, I’m strictly keeping it limited to America. We could go further and argue the whole fake news meme started with Voltaire and his ilk with their anti-Christian conspiracy in France, maybe even go all the way back to Adam Weishaupt and his Illuminati.). I don’t disagree with how Cronkite was a despicable excuse of a human being during Vietnam War. Seriously, thanks to him and Lippmann, not to mention other newsmen during that time and today, I’m actually feeling VERY cynical about freedom of the press. If “freedom of the press” means freedom to lie your butt off like what Lippmann encouraged, especially to influence an election or war to aid the enemy, then it’s a Constitutional “right” we’re better off not having.