kong
02-29-2012, 06:59 PM
How Walter Cronkite Helped Lose the Vietnam War 44 Years Ago
COMMENTARY | It has been a truism among some people that back in the good old days of broadcast journalism before the rise of cable news, the big three networks did not interject their personal politics into their reporting. Like many truisms, this is not true. Forty-four years ago, on Feb 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite, once called the most trusted man in America, ended his half-hour broadcast on the "CBS Evening News" with the observation the Vietnam War was in stalemate and negotiations offered the only way out. This was not reporting news but offering an opinion, one that later turned out to be, while wide of reality, self fulfilling. The story sets up a legend that upon hearing Cronkite opine, then President Lyndon Johnson concluded that if he had lost Cronkite he had lost the country and thus the war. But W. Joseph Campbell, author of "Getting it Wrong," suggests this part of the story is more legend than reality. Whether Cronkite's observation eventually affected American policy in Vietnam or not, it was one of the first overt cases of liberal bias in TV media. And despite the initial shock of the Tet Offensive, which led to Cronkite concluding that victory in Vietnam was impossible, the most trusted man in America got it wrong. Years after the Tet Offensive, shortly after the Vietnam War was over, Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup published a two-volume work called "The Big Story" that suggested media reporting on the Tet Offensive was overly negative and contributed to a psychological defeat of American policy makers and the American public. Col. Harry Summers, who wrote a 2001 review of the book, calls it the best book on Tet and the media's treatment of it. Steven Hayward reports the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese suffered massive losses as a result of Tet. But Cronkite and the media firestorm that followed, as well as the burgeoning costs of the war, precluded any strategy of capitalizing on what was a clear communist defeat. Tet might well have been a military victory for America and her allies, but partly thanks to Cronkite and the liberal media, it proved to be a psychological defeat.
COMMENTARY | It has been a truism among some people that back in the good old days of broadcast journalism before the rise of cable news, the big three networks did not interject their personal politics into their reporting. Like many truisms, this is not true. Forty-four years ago, on Feb 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite, once called the most trusted man in America, ended his half-hour broadcast on the "CBS Evening News" with the observation the Vietnam War was in stalemate and negotiations offered the only way out. This was not reporting news but offering an opinion, one that later turned out to be, while wide of reality, self fulfilling. The story sets up a legend that upon hearing Cronkite opine, then President Lyndon Johnson concluded that if he had lost Cronkite he had lost the country and thus the war. But W. Joseph Campbell, author of "Getting it Wrong," suggests this part of the story is more legend than reality. Whether Cronkite's observation eventually affected American policy in Vietnam or not, it was one of the first overt cases of liberal bias in TV media. And despite the initial shock of the Tet Offensive, which led to Cronkite concluding that victory in Vietnam was impossible, the most trusted man in America got it wrong. Years after the Tet Offensive, shortly after the Vietnam War was over, Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup published a two-volume work called "The Big Story" that suggested media reporting on the Tet Offensive was overly negative and contributed to a psychological defeat of American policy makers and the American public. Col. Harry Summers, who wrote a 2001 review of the book, calls it the best book on Tet and the media's treatment of it. Steven Hayward reports the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese suffered massive losses as a result of Tet. But Cronkite and the media firestorm that followed, as well as the burgeoning costs of the war, precluded any strategy of capitalizing on what was a clear communist defeat. Tet might well have been a military victory for America and her allies, but partly thanks to Cronkite and the liberal media, it proved to be a psychological defeat.