Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did

[Better Believe It]

Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did
by Glenn Greenwald
July 18, 2009

"The Vietcong did not win by a knockout , but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. . . . We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. . . .

"For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. . . . To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past" -- Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968.

"I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role" -- David Gregory, MSNBC, May 28, 2008.

Tellingly, his most celebrated and significant moment -- Greg Mitchell says "this broadcast would help save many thousands of lives, U.S. and Vietnamese, perhaps even a million" -- was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn't trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false. In other words, Cronkite's best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do -- directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won't even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.

Despite that, media stars will spend ample time flamboyantly commemorating Cronkite's death as though he reflects well on what they do (though probably not nearly as much time as they spent dwelling on the death of Tim Russert, whose sycophantic servitude to Beltway power and "accommodating head waiter"-like, mindless stenography did indeed represent quite accurately what today's media stars actually do). In fact, within Cronkite's most important moments one finds the essence of journalism that today's modern media stars not only fail to exhibit, but explicitly disclaim as their responsibility.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/18-4

[WI_DEM]

1. well, David Gregory has proven time and again he's no Walter Cronkite

[G_j]

2. opinions like this? (2003)

for example?

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1108-01.htm


Published on Saturday, November 8, 2003 by the Capital Times / Wisconsin
Cronkite Fears Media Mergers Threaten Democracy
by John Nichols

The most trusted name in news is worried about what is happening to the news media in America.

"I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that," said Walter Cronkite, the former CBS News anchorman, whose name remains synonymous with American journalism.

"The way that works is to have multiple owners, with the hope that the owners will have different viewpoints, and with the hope that the debate will help to air all sides, or at least most sides of the issues. But right now I think we're moving away from that approach."

Speaking to The Capital Times before this weekend's National Conference on Media Reform, Cronkite said he is particularly concerned by the decision of the Federal Communications Commission to relax media ownership rules. By a 3-2 vote in June, the commission approved proposals that would permit a single media company to own television stations that reach up to 45 percent of American households, and that would permit a single media company to own the daily newspaper, several television stations and up to eight radio stations in the same community.

"I think they made a mistake, I do indeed," Cronkite said of the FCC. "It seems to me that the rule change was negotiated and promulgated with the goal of creating even larger monopolies in the news-gathering business."

With or without the FCC's ownership rule changes, the veteran television journalist says he sees monopolies developing at the local level.

"We are coming closer to that (monopoly situations) today, even without the relaxation of the rules," Cronkite said. "In many communities, we have seen a lot of mergers already and that is disturbing. We have more and more one-newspaper towns, and that troubles me. I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy."

..more..

[scarletwoman]

3. Rec'd -- Greenwald makes an extremely important point here.

Today's media whores will unfailingly fail to note the same.

sw

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Boomers are a bunch of money and power worshipping self indulgent shits

for the most part. There are of course some exceptions.

I am deeply ashamed that, as the last of our parent's generation die, as we start wrapping up the book on my generation, we have little to be proud of. Ashamed that we have nobody of the stature of the many who came from the WWII generation of our fathers to hold up as paradigms of who we are and how we should be remembered in history. We went straight from over indulged and pathetic youthful revolution to careerist ass kissing without hesitation, without regret. We pushed our radicals aside and forgot them as quickly as we could, our new heroes were our Donald Trumps, our Bill Gates, we are not all Spartacus, we are all Gordon Gekko. Cronkite put his career on the line. We are exemplified by the careerist Clintons.

[GeorgeGist]

7. "Most hippies wouldn't make a decent pimple on a revolutionary's ass"

according to my college roommate in 1969.

[pecwae]

8. We're worthless. Pass the cyanide. nt

[grantcart]

5. Message to Gregory

If discerning truth is not your role, then what role is there for you?


By the time we listen to you on TV we have already read about it on the internet.

[Wednesdays]

6. K&R

:kick:

[nashville_brook]

9. error: you've already recommended this thread.

:applause:

[TahitiNut]

10. I had my draft induction 2 weeks after Cronkite delivered that assessment.

Fun times. :puke:

[KG]

11. Cronkite misprounced 'Lynyrd Skynyrd' - i've never forgiven him for it!

:P