Posted on 07/20/2009 12:36:14 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Walter Cronkite will be remembered for two things: a career that spanned six decades, during which he personified the 20th-century journalistic ideal of the newsman as an objective and authoritative purveyor of facts; and an incident in which he departed from that ideal, with far-reaching consequences for the country and the news business...by the time he retired in 1981, Cronkite was known as “the most trusted man in America,” a superlative that had been confirmed the previous year in a Ladies Home Journal Poll.
But in his own mind--and in the minds of many of his critics and admirers alike--the most important moment in his career came when he departed from the newsman’s role to play editorialist. The occasion was a just-completed reporting trip to Vietnam, where he had reported on the Tet Offensive....
Cronkite’s editorializing made him into part of the story. And Vietnam was not just any story; it was the central political and cultural conflict in America for several years beginning in the late 1960s. By taking sides, Cronkite compromised his role as a newsman....
Judged on his whole career, Cronkite’s reputation for integrity and trustworthiness was well-deserved. He was a great newsman. But his greatness, paradoxically, made the effect of his lapse much more damaging. It sowed confusion among younger reporters about the difference between reporting and commentary.....
Being a “straight shooter” means something quite different to a news reporter than an editorialist. The distinction is analogous to that between a judge deciding a case and a lawyer arguing one...No one doubts that Cronkite was sincere in his opinion about Vietnam, and the argument over its merits is beyond the scope of today’s column. As a reporter, however, he had a duty to stick to the facts and leave opinions to others.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
He was not much better than Duranty and the blood of millions in Cambodia and Laos and Viet Nam is on his hands.
He was a lying liberal sack of sh!t. The idea that he only had a single incident of departure from the ideal of an objective news man is delusional at best.
Cronkite - lifelong traitor receives an award:
Walter Cronkite : “I’m Glad To Sit On The Right Hand Of Satan”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqTwce_ZLDw
you got it!!
Ditto! Good call....
RIP you POS I want to spit on him like those fing animals did to our GIs coming home better yet piss all over his grave
He couldn’t come on television without my mother yelling liar. He was no more objective than Castro is caring.
It is not simply the lapse into overt editorializing that produces bias and demonstrates lack of integrity.
In reporting news, the opportunity to inject bias is present throughout the process:
- in deciding which "stories" to report, and the time and prominence to be given to each story, and conversely, which events not to report or not to give prominence to as news stories
- in deciding which facts to report and highlight within each story selected for reporting
- in hiring and promoting news producers and reporters and in assigning topics or events for them to cover
and so on. To say that Cronkite's CBS evening news had only this one lapse into bias and that otherwise his show was a rock of integrity is foolish nonsense.
***Yes January 1968 his leftist coward traitor side shown thru. ***
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Camp/7624/Generals/giap.htm
***By 1968, NVA morale was at it’s lowest point ever. The plans for “Tet” ‘68 was their last desperate attempt to achieve a success, in an effort to boost the NVA morale. When it was over, General Giap and the NVA viewed the Tet ‘68 offensive as a failure, they were on their knees and had prepared to negotiate a surrender.
At that time, there were fewer than 10,000 U.S. casualties, the Vietnam War was about to end, as the NVA was prepared to accept their defeat. Then, they heard Walter Cronkite (former CBS News anchor and correspondent) on TV proclaiming the success of the Tet ‘68 offensive by the communist NVA. ***
He was dead wrong about Tet, and it f**ked us over big time. I despised Cronkite and don’t miss him one bit.
In fact, Tet destroyed the Viet Cong as an effective military force. Had the NVA withdrawn the war would have been over.
Because of Uncle Walter they changed their minds and decided to stay, fight and wait us out.
“How a great newsman helped undermine his profession’s ethos.”
How great could he have been, then?
Was he great simply because when he talked people tended to believe them? If that’s the standard, no wonder Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods are the Greatest Americans Who Ever Lived according to modern American culture.
Hey, Cronkite: America *won* the Tet Offensive! That’s right, I said it.
We lost the war, but won every single individual engagement (over a certain number of participants; there were probably instances when two Vietcong got the jump on one or two G.I. Joes.)
I hope that B@$t@rd is with Satan as I post this !!
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Camp/7624/Generals/giap.htm
***By 1968, NVA morale was at it’s lowest point ever. The plans for “Tet” ‘68 was their last desperate attempt to achieve a success, in an effort to boost the NVA morale. When it was over, General Giap and the NVA viewed the Tet ‘68 offensive as a failure, they were on their knees and had prepared to negotiate a surrender.
At that time, there were fewer than 10,000 U.S. casualties, the Vietnam War was about to end, as the NVA was prepared to accept their defeat. Then, they heard Walter Cronkite (former CBS News anchor and correspondent) on TV proclaiming the success of the Tet ‘68 offensive by the communist NVA. ***”
Yes he should have been jailed as a traitor and at least banned from any news media.I shocked the Lefties at lunch when I went on a roll about this filthy Bastard and the 50,000 names he helped put on the Wall.
when he took the credit (rightly or wrongly) for “ending” the Vietnam War, it made all of the little liberal lemmings out there in journalism schools forsake factual reporting and obsessively aspire to “change the world”. This is the root of the problem we face today.
I heard today that Douglas Brinkley is writing a bio of Uncle Walt. According to Mr. Brinkley, in 1965 Uncle Walt said Vietnam was a quagmire. This was 3 years before Tet.
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