Walter Cronkite

NBC Today co-anchor Ann Curry is the cover story of the September issue of Ladies Home Journal and discussed how she fought with her U.S. naval officer father about the Vietnam War, (unsurprisingly) taking the liberal, Walter Cronkite-inspired anti-war position:

"When I was a teenager," she says, "Dad and I would have dinner table debates about the Vietnam War. I was deeply affected by Walter Cronkite's reports, and I questioned our country's role. Sometimes our discussions got so heated my siblings would leave the table. At the end of those conversations my dad would say, 'I don't always agree with you, but I'd still vote for you for president.'

As reported at NB by TimesWatch editor Clay Waters, the New York Times bestowed the honor of "modern day Edward R. Murrow" on "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart for his advocacy for a bill awarding billions for the medical care of 9/11 first responders.

As it would only ever do for a liberal, the Times lauded Stewart as the exemplar of righteous journalistic advocacy - hence the likeness to Murrow, who, according to lore, brought down Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his communist witchhunts during the 1950s.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is actually about to win an award for her "civility" and "tolerance."

"The Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award, established by Interfaith Alliance in 1998, recognizes individuals who courageously promote democratic values, defend religious freedom and reinvigorate informed civic participation," reads a statement released by the organization Monday.

"The award recognizes individuals whose actions have embodied the values of civility, tolerance, diversity and cooperation in the advancement of public dialogue and public policy on traditionally controversial and divisive issues."

And here's why Maddow qualified according to Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, the organization's President (h/t New York Post):

At the end of Sunday's Face the Nation on CBS, host Bob Schieffer gushed over a recent trip to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and one exhibit in particular: "honoring Walter Cronkite....those moments in American history captured by TV...when Walter always seemed to be there....the little things we never saw, Walter's scripts, his pipe, and his office, just the way it was."

Schieffer observed that a tribute to Cronkite being at the library of the Democratic president was a "perfect fit" and noted how: "Johnson liked and respected Walter. Walter liked and respected Johnson." Schieffer went on to fondly remember Cronkite's denunciation of the Vietnam War: "When Walter returned from Vietnam and concluded in a documentary the war was unwinnable, Johnson remarked to an aide, 'if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost America.' And so he had....When Walter came out against the war, he did something he almost never did – he took sides."

While specifically citing Cronkite's bias against the war, Schieffer failed to comment on a Friday report that revealed FBI documents detailing allegations that the then CBS Evening News anchor offered to rent a helicopter to transport Democratic Senator Ed Muskie to an anti-war rally in Florida in November of 1969.   

In a Friday article for Yahoo! News, reporter John Cook revealed FBI documents that detail allegations that former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite offered CBS News resources to transport fierce Vietnam critic and Democratic Maine Senator Edmund Muskie to a Florida anti-war rally in November of 1969. (h/t TVNewser)

According to Cook, the FBI files describe how "Cronkite encouraged students at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to invite Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie to address a protest they were planning....Cronkite told the group's leader that Muskie would be nearby for a fundraiser on the day of the protest, and said that 'CBS would rent [a] helicopter to take Muskie to and from site of rally.'"

While noting Cronkite's public condemnation of the war on air just nine months earlier, Cook rightfully observed: "such tight collaboration between a news organization and the anti-war movement — particularly the offer of CBS News resources to help ferry a sitting senator and future presidential candidate around in opposition to the war — was highly unusual and would presumably have been explosive if known widely at the time." Cook also noted: "It's unclear whether Muskie ever actually attended the event."

Perhaps President Barack Obama might have preferred New York Times columnist Tom Friedman to reserve these comments for their golf outings together, but has Friedman recognized this path toward a larger government is unsustainable?

On MSNBC's March 5 "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough recounted his childhood in the early 1970s and the poor economy. He explained there was a different focus - that his family was hoping for the economy to turn around and could have cared less about the other issues of the day - Vietnam, Watergate, etc. It was all about the economy.

"You know Tom Friedman, I remember in the early '70s, my dad worked for Lockheed, got laid off and he was without a job for 18 months," Scarborough said. "This is in the middle of Watergate was blowing up on TV and in the middle of Vietnam, as it was grinding to a very bloody, messy ending. And my family, we just cared about one thing. When we watched Walter Cronkite at night, we wanted to know if the economy was turning around. And we didn't understand what was going on in the college campuses."

In the December 4, 2009 edition of Entertainment Weekly, CBS’s Katie Couric bizarrely asserted that the late Walter Cronkite possessed an "unwavering commitment to reporting the news accurately, fairly, and responsibly." In the brief tribute, she also repeated, "Walter Cronkite once said, ‘Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy.’"

In reality, Cronkite thought of himself as a liberal and often defended the left-wing tilt of journalists. On the September 11, 1995 edition of Larry King Live, he spun, "I define liberal as a person who is not doctrinaire...That's opposed to 'liberal' as part of the political spectrum....open to change, constantly, not committed to any particular creed or doctrine, or whatnot, and in that respect I think that news people should be liberal."

On the Discovery Channel documentary Cronkite Remembers, which aired May 23, 1996, the journalist said of Ronald Reagan, "I don't think he brought very much to the presidency, except charisma and success." And yet in her EW appreciation piece, Couric gushed, "...[Cronkite] would likely call on those of us who are carrying on his torch to see the power and potential of all the new tools of our trade, but never lose sight of the primary objective: a search for the truth."

So Whoopi Goldberg is a fan of the "We Report, You Decide" school of TV journalism. Who knew? Unfortunately, her choice of "fair and balanced" news icons leaves much to be desired.

On ABC's "The View" Oct. 19, Goldberg said,  "I don't get my news often times from any of the networks because, ya know, I'm from the Walter Cronkite generation, where they told you what was going on and you were left to make your decision. You were left to figure it out."

But was Cronkite really the gold standard for impartial reporting?  

Back in 2006, the Media Research Center compiled quotes from Cronkite dating from the years after his 1981 retirement. These words clearly exposed not only his liberal views but also his belief that being a good journalist means being liberal.

[Update, 7:30 pm Eastern: Audio and video clips added.]

On CBS’s Late Late Show Tuesday night, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour again claimed that she was a nonpolitical entity: “I know it’s very fashionable and trendy to wear your politics on your sleeve right now, but I just don’t.” When host Craig Ferguson favorably compared her to the late Walter Cronkite, Amanpour gushed, “He was so special. I think we really will miss him” [audio clips from the interview are available here].

Towards the end of the interview, at about 22 minutes into the 1 am Eastern hour, Ferguson asked her if she about her political stance, specifically in the context of her native Iran: “What about you and politics though? Do you find yourself in accord with Ahmadinejad?” The CNN chief international correspondent tossed a question back at him: “What do you think?” When the CBS host joked that he didn’t view her as “a big Ahmadinejad-i,” Amanpour replied with her claim of objectivity: “You know...I know it’s very fashionable and trendy to wear your politics on your sleeve right now, but I just don’t.” Ferguson complimented her, but she continued that “I feel- to be very honest with you, that- that if I went and- and treated every story through my own political lens, then how is anybody to know what’s- what’s true? Or at least as close to the objective truth.”

Rich Noyes posted a funny item Saturday on the hypocrisy of Katie Couric's catty Internet commentary attacking the New York Times for seven errors in one Cronkite appreciation piece by Alessandra Stanley. All the news that's still unfit for print? Let's just add the actual, mind-boggling text of their correction, taken apart, one by one:

1. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30.

2. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches.

3. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26.

4. "The CBS Evening News" overtook "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970.

5. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar.

Left-wing protesters can trespass into news studios, step in front of the camera with their protest sign – and then have their demands enthusastically met. In Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section, former CNN correspondent Edward Alwood explained that teenager Mark Segal became famous for his trespassing "zaps" of TV studios for the gay left, including a stunt in front of Cronkite’s desk, which transformed Uncle Walter into a "behind-the-scenes ally."

Midway through the broadcast on Dec. 11, 1973, as Cronkite began a story about Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Segal darted in front of the camera with a sign reading "Gays Protest CBS Prejudice."

"I sat on Cronkite's desk directly in front of him and held up the sign while the technicians furiously ran after me and wrestled me to the floor and wrapped me in wire -- on camera," he recalled in an interview. "The network went black while they took us out of the studio."

Belying the image of Walter Cronkite as an journalist without any political motives, while anchor of the CBS Evening News in 1967 he secretly “pleaded” with Senator Robert Kennedy to run as an anti-Vietnam war candidate for President and he later acknowledged that, if offered, he would have accepted the slot as George McGovern's VP in 1972. Frank Mankiewicz, who worked for both Kennedy and McGovern before serving as President of NPR from 1977 to 1983, revealed the liberal Democratic political activism of Cronkite, who passed away on July 17, in a Saturday Washington Post op-ed, “Vice President Walter Cronkite.”

Mankiewicz, who would have the duty of making the public announcement of Kennedy's assassination, offered this insider account:

In the late 1960s, just after he returned from a long visit to Vietnam, Cronkite had sought a meeting with Sen. Robert Kennedy. I sat in as Kennedy's press secretary. The meeting was understood to be off the record, and no one else was present.

Cronkite began with an acknowledgement of Kennedy's desire not to run for president but pleaded with RFK to change his mind and to announce his intention to seek the White House right away, even though the election was more than a year off. You must announce your intention to run against Johnson, Cronkite urged, to show people there will be a way out of this terrible war.

On Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly asserted that former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite "had no use for" his successor, and was "bitter about being replaced by [Dan] Rather." Citing an interview from a few years after Rather raplaced Cronkite on the Evening News, O’Reilly recounted that Cronkite expressed his view that Rather "shouldn’t succeed." O’Reilly: "He didn't say it on the record. He said it after the interview was over. He said to me, quote, in Boston, ‘You are really on to something. Dan is not going to succeed – and shouldn't.’"

O’Reilly made his assertion both during the show’s "Talking Points Memo," and again during a discussion with FNC analyst Bernie Goldberg as the two argued that the CBS Evening News and other media took a sharp turn to the left when Dan Rather took over the CBS Evening News – which coincided with Ronald Reagan becoming President and giving liberals the experience of being out of power.

During the show’s "Talking Points Memo," the FNC host recounted:

Chris Matthews, on Monday's "Hardball," invited on Dan Rather to remember Walter Cronkite and the former CBS News anchor – famously fired for letting his bias spiral out of control during the George W. Bush National Guard story – called Cronkite "a straight news reporter," and claimed Cronkite advised him and others at CBS News to "Tell it straight without fear or favoritism. Pull no punches. Say it like it is, insofar as is humanly possible. Keep your own prejudices and biases and feelings and emotions out of it."

After playing an old 1996 clip from an interview with Cronkite from his CNBC show, in which Cronkite admits to being a liberal, Matthews asked Rather to comment, to which Rather hailed that Cronkite: "Stood for, the beacon he sent out was, 'Straight news reporting. Whatever your political persuasions are, however anyone wants to label you, get to the story, tell the story as straight as you can and the American public will understand.'"  [audio available here]

The following exchange was aired on the July 20 edition of "Hardball":

It’s one thing to honor the deceased, but it’s another to suggest a mere human anchorman seemed like a god, whose set would be the site of a "pilgrimage" to the "center of the universe." On Friday night’s Larry King Live, NBC anchor Brian Williams oozed that he loved the anchor since childhood: "I have lived such a charmed life that I got the chance to explain that to Walter and tell him that and make it clear. And just was able to breathe the air he exhaled and know him a little bit, as friends."[audio excerpts available here]

Williams told of his childhood home in Elmira, New York, where his mother refused to serve dinner until Cronkite had finished his evening oration.

And I announced my intention to my family, apparently, at the age of 8, that he was the man I wanted to be. And this was the profession I wanted. And I have lived such a charmed life that I got the chance to explain that to Walter and tell him that and make it clear. And just was able to breathe the air he exhaled and know him a little bit, as friends.

I went on a pilgrimage as a young man. I wanted to see that newsroom and that studio in New York where the "CBS Evening News" originated. And you get close to some of your icons, they can tarnish. Walter never did.

Katie Couric provided some comic relief on this morning's Early Show, preaching the importance of objectivity in reporting.  As evidence of her impartiality, the CBS Evening News anchor cited the fact that, as did Cronkite, she has gotten "grief from both sides of the aisle."

Now I suppose some of the more radical elements of the Red Army Faction might have found something to quibble with in Couric's coverage over the years.  But how can the woman who has come to epitomize MSM liberal bias suggest with a straight face that criticism has come in comparable degree from the left and right?

Couric appeared as part of CBS's continuing coverage of Cronkite's passing and career.  Her description of a dinner she had with him at the time she took over as Evening News anchor included this gem.

In 2006 the MRC put together a compilation outlining how, since his retirement in 1981 after nineteen years as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite had made clear his liberal views on a range of issues.

For the full collection of Cronkite's liberal pronouncements, and denunciations of conservatives, since the late 1980s check the MRC's “Walter Cronkite: Liberal Media Icon.” Categories: “Promoting Liberalism,” “Denouncing Conservatives,” “Get Out of Iraq 'Now,'” “Believing in Conspiracies,” “Wishing for 'One World Government,'” “Terrorism Caused by Economic Disparity,” “Pushing for More Gun Control” and “Proud of News Media's Liberal Persuasion.”

Here are some highlights:

In one of the early books on liberal TV news bias, The News Twisters (1971), author Edith Efron recounted that in the November 4, 1970 edition of Variety, although Walter Cronkite "conceded he was a 'true liberal,' he defined the position as having no content at all: a liberal, said Mr. Cronkite, was one who is 'not bound by doctrines or committed to a point of view in advance.'"

Efron also recalled the November 25, 1969 broadcast of 60 Minutes, in which Cronkite defended CBS against charges of liberal bias from Vice President Spiro Agnew:

Well, we all have our prejudices, we all have our biases, we have a structural problem in writing a news story or presenting it on television as to time and length, position in the paper, position on the news broadcast. These things are all going to be affected by our own beliefs, of course they are. But we are professional journalists. This is the difference. We are trying to reach an objective state, we are trying to be objective.  We have been taught from the day we went to school, when we began to know we wanted to be journalists, integrity, truth, honesty, and a definite attempt to be objective. We try to present the news as objectively as possible, whether we like it or don't like it. Now that is objective.

In case you missed it, this was the Special Report CBS News aired Friday concerning the passing of Walter Cronkite (h/t TVNewser):

Perhaps inadvertently, the text of the Associated Press's earliest video coverage (scroll down the right frame at the link) of Walter Cronkite's death would appear to say a lot about how journalists see themselves -- and it's not as objective communicators of what is occurring in the world:

Cronkite: "Hello, I'm Walter Cronkite."

AP's Diane Kepler, narrator: He was the most trusted man in America.

Cronkite (November 22, 1963): From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1PM Central Standard Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.

DK: Walter Cronkite, for many the quintessential TV journalist, has died. For most Americans he was the man to turn to on everything from the assassination of President Kennedy to what to think about the war in Vietnam.

In 1992, CBS "Up to the Minute" put together some clips of Walter Cronkite's first "CBS Evening News" broadcast on September 2, 1963 (h/t NBer Gary Hall, and don't miss hilarious Johnny Carson sketch about Cronkite in comments section):

Most Americans who were born before 1970 remember Walter Cronkite as a towering figure of TV news. I remember being riveted to the set during his final newscast in 1981. But one grand claim about Cronkite should not stand: that he was "TV’s patron saint of objectivity," as Time TV writer Jim Poniewozik wrote in a tribute. Even Poniewozik can’t stick with that claim. He went on to honor Cronkite for trusting his audience enough to abandon a "false even-handedness that flies in the face of reality." If writers want to appreciate Cronkite’s biases, that’s much more honest than claiming he wasn’t part of the historic CBS effort to paint the world in liberal hues. Here’s the end of Poniewozik’s appreciation:

Former CBS "Evening News" anchor Walter Cronkite died today. He was 92 years old.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Cronkite family.

A roundup of obits and retrospectives from major news outlets:

• CBSNews.com
• LA Times
• Associated Press
• New York Times

A compilation of statements from some journalists on Cronkite's passing can be found here.

In the current Newsweek (the February 25 issue), columnist George Will wrote about George McGovern and the current delegate selection rules on the Democratic side. But what stuck out was Will's subhead on McGovern: "He thinks he could have won in 1972 with a running mate called 'the most trusted man in America' -- Walter Cronkite." Will reported:

McGovern thinks he could have won with a running mate then called "the most trusted man in America"—Walter Cronkite. Before choosing Eagleton, McGovern considered asking Cronkite, who recently indicated he would have accepted.

This isn't The Onion; it's for real (HT Hot Air; bold after title is mine):

Sun, Jan. 13, 2008

Burke named executive director of ACLU in Texas

Terri Burke, former editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, has been named executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Burke, 56, will begin work at the ACLU of Texas on Tuesday. Her duties will include lobbying, fundraising, administering the organization and communicating with the public.

Burke said her new job seems like a continuation of her work in the newspaper business.

"I wanted to be a journalist because I thought journalism was a way to further the democratic process," Burke said. "At its heart, journalism is about the First Amendment. All my life, I've been interested in those kinds of issues."

I will suggest that no one in Old Media will think of Burke's move as the least bit odd.

Funny, that's not how they saw it in 1998 when the late David Brinkley retired and became a spokesman for a large corporation.

Brent Bozell's last column referred to a year-end think piece by Newsweek's Evan Thomas on our hurtfully "hyperpartisan" political atmosphere called "The Closing of The American Mind."

I was especially fascinated when Thomas wrote wistfully of the golden days when America had an "old order – a large, more politically moderate voting public...In 1970, at about 6:30 pm at least two or three nights a week, about half the country could be found watching the evening news on one of the three major networks. The broadcasts tended to be fairly sober-minded, on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand presentations by trusted anchors like Walter Cronkite."

It’s understandable that media elitists would mourn for the Nixon era, when conservatism was still a small remnant and most Republican office holders were almost as liberal as the Democrats. But the idea that there were no hyperbolic divisiveness or harsh rhetoric, with the Vietnam War raging and the radical left on the march, is just bizarre. It’s even more bizarre to claim that biased liberal anchormen like Walter Cronkite, lobbying LBJ to get out of Vietnam, were fair and balanced in their presentation.

Former "CBS Evening News" anchor Walter Cronkite, much like his former colleague Bob Schieffer, appears to be dead set against the war in Iraq regardless of how conditions have improved in the past several months.

In an op-ed published at the liberal website Common Dreams, Cronkite made his strongest surrender appeal to date, whilst of course castigating the Bush administration.

Readers are advised to proceed with caution, and keep a trash receptacle handy in case of unexpected reverse peristalsis (emphasis added, h/t Dan Gainor):

The Networks ‘Lame’ Argument

On June 12, all three morning shows parroted DNC talking points and declared President Bush a "lame duck." "Good Morning America" solemnly noted that the phrase would likely follow Bush throughout his trip to Capitol Hill. (Apparently this is the theory that if the networks say something enough, everyone will believe it.)

Please Don’t Be Mad

Speaking of "Good Morning America," co-anchor Chris Cuomo conducted a groveling interview with Michael Moore in which he backtracked from calling the liberal filmmaker’s new movie a stunt. "Look, I like the stunt," he corrected.

Sorry, Jack

Apparently CNN’s Jack Cafferty is having a Vietnam flashback. He recently lemented that anti-war protestors aren’t "tearing up college campuses."

Friday's CBS Evening News plugged its special on Walter Cronkite with a story, as introduced by Katie Couric, about a "journalist who stood up to the Commander-in-Chief" during a time of "another unpopular war," as Couric was transitioning from a story about the debate over Iraq War funding. Couric was referring to Cronkite's decision in February 1968 to declare on the air that America would have to negotiate without victory to end the Vietnam War.

After correspondent Jim Axelrod filed a report on the latest effort by Congressional Democrats to put conditions on Iraq War funding, which ended with Axelrod opining that President Bush has an incentive to reach a deal soon because of the President's low approval rating over the "unpopular war," Couric drew a comparison to the Vietnam War by introducing the Cronkite piece referring to "another unpopular war." Couric: "And now we want to take you back 40 years to another unpopular war and to a journalist who stood up to the Commander-in-Chief. It was Vietnam, the President was Lyndon Johnson, and that journalist? CBS News correspondent Walter Cronkite." (Transcript follows)