Thanks, Uncle Walter

one of the most notable moments of Cronkite's liberalism being unmasked in a highly visible fashion was his now famous series on Vietnam.

But by this time conservative Americans were already well awake to the realization that this powerful new institution of television was being used in ways both subtle and not, to convey the message that there was no more enlightened or superior world view than modern American liberalism.

Broadcast by broadcast it was increasingly apparent that those who disagreed or who challenged the liberal media status quo would be given either no air time or have their own views graphically misrepresented.

Physicist Fritjof Capra, in his bestseller The Tao of Physics, writes that "by the very act of focusing our attention on any one concept we create its opposite." In other words, to use the language of physics, when Mr. Cronkite's very focused liberal world view blinked into the American consciousness, its conservative polar opposite blinked into existence along with it.

The problem with Cronkite and his fellow "cultural artists" is that over time there emerged what seemed to many Americans as a very, very conscious decision to shut out the conservative world view altogether or, if forced to give it air time, to misrepresent it.

Thus Barry Goldwater found himself being portrayed on the CBS News as a Nazi sympathizer.

It is a liberal world view of journalism that, by 2004, was so perfectly rational to CBS executives they let Dan Rather roll right ahead with a phony report on George W. Bush's national guard service.

Unwittingly, Cronkite's adamant liberal insistence of "that's the way it is" had not only created Capra's opposite concept to a liberal media...

Ken Auletta wrote a book about 20 years ago, “Three Blind Mice”, about the sale of the TV networks in the 80s

While only presented as a minor character, Cronkite is seen as nasty old man, who kept track of his ‘face time’, and when it didn’t suit his mood, he callously crossed out reporters and voiced over their stories, rather than allow them to tell the stories they’d actually gone out and reported

Adios, Walter. Glad you’re gone.

I was just a kid during Cronkite’s TV heyday, and that was long before I developed any notion of “liberal” and “conservative” world-views. So I remember him in those days as something of a middle-of-the-road reporter. But in his later years, he became goofy and even nasty, advocating a world government and publicly speculating about an operational link between Karl Rove and Osama Bin Laden.

The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the USA had 50,000 troops based in Korea, and Kennedy faced a three-part crisis—the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement[80] These made Kennedy believe that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam, saying, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place," to James Reston of The New York Times immediately after meeting Khrushchev in Vienna

Cronkite adored Kennedy, was ambivalent towards Johnson and down right hostile towards Nixon. This American political divide, manufactured and broadcast without counterpoint , without conscience and without truthful journalism. gave Cronkite his personal celebrity heyday as the 'Most trusted man in America'.

The trouble with celebrities is they are never called to account for their errors and they never fade away.

Draw the curtain on Walter. I discovered the facts, good and bad, of the war in SE Asia from people there and firsthand and they didn't jive with his copy delivered to the nightly news viewers.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.