Korean Job Discussion Forums

Underwaterbob · Joined: 08 Jan 2005 Location: In Cognito

Not a good year to be famous.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/17/eveningnews/main5170556.shtml

ManintheMiddle · Joined: 20 Oct 2008

BritishinSuwon · Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 10:22 pm Post subject:

Last of the true great journalists. There will never be another Walter Cronkite. He was the very definition of "journalistic integrity". All of these entertainers today who read the news (Katie Couric, Bill O'Reilly, etc) should take a page from Walter Cronkite to see how to be a real journalist.
I honestly feel truly saddened to read of his death. I don't become emotional over "celebrity" deaths, but what Cronkite stood for and delivered was irreplaceable.

The Great Wall of Whiner · Joined: 24 Jan 2003 Location: Middle Land

I hope he enjoys his new permanent assignment in heaven.

RIP

ManintheMiddle · Joined: 20 Oct 2008

Addendum to Original Post:

Walter Cronkite was not the first to anchor the evening news. That honor goes to Chet Huntley and David Brinkley for the Huntley-Brinkley Report. But Cronkite was the first solo anchor.

He down side was that he was one of the first to inject personal opinion in news commentary without identifying it as such, although he did it very sparingly. The one occasion on which he was egregious in this regard was in criticizing the fallout from the Tet Offensive, which American forces actually won handily. The war was not in fact at the point of stalemate but Cronkite was predicting that it later would become a quagmire.

By his own admission and programming notes, O'Reilly does not deliver hard news but news commentary. There's a distinct difference in the field of journalism, so it's apples and oranges to compare him with Cronkite. But O'Reilly dominates cable news and has almost as many viewers now as Katie Couric, who is on the public channel CBS, which is remarkable.

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

Cronkite was the news when I was a kid growing up. There were three networks but the only TV station that broadcast in my area carried CBS, so Kennedy's assassination, MLK's speeches and the fire hoses and dogs in Mississippi, Vietnam, LBJ's choice to not run for re-election, etc were all reported by Cronkite. It was true because he reported it. He tried very hard to report the facts. The few times he chose to broadcast his opinion were very explicitly stated.

O'Reilly's style is because of Cronkite. He imitates Cronkite's presentation in an effort to blur the lines between reporting and editorializing. That's the reason Faux News is a commonly accepted nickname for Fox.

There will not be another Cronkite because media has proliferated into hundreds of sources of news instead of the 3 that were available in Cronkite's heyday. Entertainment has corrupted the reporting of news. It is destructive for the Republic. True conservatives deplore this development, not celebrate it.

On the other hand · Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue

I'm old enough to have seen him a few times on the CBS News, and I saw one episode of that science show he did for awhile after retiring. His iconic status as a major force in shaping public-opinion is something I basically know about second-hand, however.

On the right-wing boards, they're practically saying that he single-handedly lost the Vietnam War for the US, by misrepresenting the outcome of the Tet offensive.

link

ManintheMiddle · Joined: 20 Oct 2008

Ah, Ya-ta Boy discerned:

On the other hand · Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue

Tjames426 · Joined: 06 Aug 2006

Yeah...

So, now we will have another week of 24 / 7 of tears, weeping, reporting and melodrama over another boomer generation 'god' dying. Rolling Eyes

Geesh.

Can't the 60's generation die already??? Laughing

Sergio Stefanuto · Joined: 14 May 2009 Location: UK

Rteacher · Joined: 23 May 2005 Location: Western MA, USA

He wasn't a god - just a very good public servant that people liked and trusted.

(He even donated $100 once to a Hare Krishna friend of mine during our holiday fund-raising drive in Miami. She was dressed as Santa's helper ...)

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

ManintheMiddle · Joined: 20 Oct 2008

YTB:

bacasper · Joined: 26 Mar 2007

Robert Parry, of www.consortiumnews.com. is one of the best reporters we have out there right now, often reporting on stories mainstream media just keeps ignoring.

Here he explains how Cronkite may inadvertently have been at least partly responsible for the rise of the right.

Cronkite's Unintended Legacy

By Robert Parry
July 19, 2009

With his measured calm and seriousness of purpose, Walter Cronkite set a high standard for television journalism that has rarely been met since his retirement in 1981. But the legendary CBS anchorman who died Friday also may have unintentionally contributed to the American Left�s dangerous complacency about media.

The feeling of many Americans (especially liberals) about the Cronkite era was that journalists could be trusted to give the news reasonably straight.

Though far from perfect, the Cronkite generation stood up to Sen. Joe McCarthy�s red-baiting, showed the nation the injustices of racial segregation, revealed the brutality of the Vietnam War (even while being largely sympathetic to its goals), exacted some measure of accountability for President Richard Nixon�s political crimes and took a generally serious approach to informing the citizenry.

Cronkite personified the notion that TV news was a public service, not just a revenue stream or an opportunity to place ads around feel-good features. Yet, in that way, Cronkite contributed to complacency among many mainstream and liberal Americans who believed that the U.S. news media, though flawed, would continue to serve as an early-warning system for the Republic � and that they could focus on other concerns.

The American Right, however, had a different perspective. Right-wingers saw the Cronkite-era news media as the enemy � undermining McCarthy�s anti-communist crusade, laying the groundwork for an integrated America, eroding public support for the Vietnam War, hounding Nixon from office, and concentrating public attention on various social problems.

Cronkite was singled out for contempt because of his perceived role in turning Americans against the Vietnam War, especially after the surprise communist Tet Offensive in 1968. After returning from a trip to Vietnam, Cronkite closed his Feb. 27, 1968, newscast with a personal analysis of the situation.

�To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion,� Cronkite said. �It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.�

After the broadcast, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, �If I�ve lost Cronkite, I�ve lost the country.� Johnson began serious negotiations aimed at ending the war before he left office, an endeavor that the Nixon campaign surreptitiously sabotaged.

In 1972, Cronkite also gave traction to the investigation of Nixon�s Watergate spying by devoting 14 minutes of one newscast to explain the complex political-corruption story.

Plotting on the Right

By the mid-1970s, with the Vietnam War lost and Nixon ousted, key strategists on the Right pondered how to make sure another Watergate scandal wouldn�t unseat a future Republican President and how to guarantee that another anti-war movement wouldn�t sink a future Vietnam War.

The Right settled on a two-pronged media strategy: build an ideologically committed right-wing media and organize anti-press attack groups that would put mainstream journalists on the defensive.

more at link