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Tributes Censor Cronkite's Anti-Iraq War Stance
Cronkite Called War "Illegal from the Start," Slammed Network Silence and Would've Spoken Out Again from Anchor Desk
Walter Cronkite believed his "proudest" moment as a journalist occurred when he told the nation that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, despite rosy rhetoric from the Johnson White House and Defense Department. Following his death last week, various network news tributes replayed footage of Cronkite's influential '68 on-air editorial. Yet scrubbed from the memorializing were similar instances of Cronkite's journalistic candor regarding Iraq, such as his 2006 call for withdrawal from a war he went on to describe as "illegal from the start," initiated on "false pretenses" and a "terrible disaster" serving "no purpose" that has "probably made us less safe."
But the most revealing omission from these tributes -- especially in context to the pageant of eulogies extolling Cronkite's journalistic integrity -- may be his response to a reporter's question during a 2006 news conference.
As reported in The Independent UK at the time:
When a reporter asked [Cronkite] whether, given the chance, he would offer similar advice on Iraq [as he had on Vietnam], he did not even wait until the end of the question. "Yes," he said flatly. "It's my belief that we should get out now."
For Cronkite, the question was simple, his answer emphatic. No need to chew it over, to seek a mealy-mouthed moderate reaction to address the Bush administration's unprecedented extremism, brutality and lawlessness. Doing so would mean that he was operating within their narrative, not his.
It was at this same conference that Cronkite said, "The editorializing that I did on the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and I think helped speed the end of that war, that was-that I'm proudest of."
Six weeks later, when asked if his words about the Iraq War would have the same effect as his statement to the nation on Vietnam, he demurred, "Well, I think it's a little late for that now." But then he added, "I would like to think it would be helpful in getting us out of there. Anybody who can put another match to that fire, to get us out would be, I think, welcome."
But he certainly wasn't holding his breath for any of his network news heirs to strike another match.
As The Nation journalist John Nichols reported last Friday:
As the war in Iraq went horribly awry, I asked Cronkite whether a network anchorman would dare speak out in the same way that he had?"I think it could happen, yes. I don't think it's likely to happen," he said with an audible sigh. "I think the three networks are still hewing pretty much to that theory. They don't even do analysis anymore, which I think is a shame. They don't even do background. They just seem to do headlines, and the less important it seems the more likely they are to get on the air."
Nichols also asked Cronkite if he thought he would have spoken out against the Iraq War if he were still an anchorman. Cronkite's reply is not only, once again, unequivocal but a desperately needed correction to the warped view of journalistic principles that permeate today's network newsrooms, a sane and responsible recalibration of the meaning of "fair and balanced."
"Yes, yes I do. I think that right now it would be critical to do so," he told me a few months after the invasion in 2003. "I think that right now we are in one of the most dangerous periods in our existence. Not since the Civil War has the state of our democracy been so doubtful. Our foreign policy has taken a very strange turn. And I do think I would try to say something about that."
Nichols reported as well that Cronkite was concerned "that broadcast news -- his medium -- had grown too deferrent [sic] to power, too stenographic, too consolidated."
In his post "Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did," Salon's Glenn Greenwald rightly criticizes the procession of network news stars who praised Cronkite's career but have failed to adhere to Cronkite's journalistic standards and to reflect on the consequential glaring shortcomings of their own performance or that of their colleagues.
Underscoring the widespread abdication of traditional, democratic journalistic principles from network news coverage, Greenwald juxtaposes Cronkite's on-air Vietnam moment with a quote by Meet the Press moderator and former Bush 43 White House correspondent David Gregory's 2008 statement deflecting criticism:
"The Vietcong did not win by a knockout [in the Tet Offensive], 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 [in the run-up to the Iraq War] . . . . 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.
If reporting facts, providing substantive context and telling us when our elected officials are lying is not Gregory and his colleagues' role, then I respectfully suggest another title: public relations officer (PRO). The acronym seems fitting as well.
Incidentally, Cronkite also cautioned America about invading Iraq from the beginning. Another Iraq War-related casualty in the recreation of Uncle Walter's journey.
Just as the war was under way, Cronkite spoke at a Drew University forum, where, as reported in the Daily Record, he said "he feared the war would not go smoothly, ripped the 'arrogance' of Bush and his administration and wondered whether the new U.S. doctrine of 'pre-emptive war' might lead to unintended, dire consequences."
And that's the way it was.
- Posted in
4 Comments so far
Show AllI remember what an enormous shock the Tet Offensive was, with fighting all over South Vietnam and Viet Cong inside the American emabassy in Saigon. Then there was the famous Eddie Adams photo of the Viet Cong being executed on the street. That offensive, in and of itself, was a true turning point. Cronkite's statement acknowledged the obvious but was still a very big deal at the time when most of us thought that the U.S. would be in Vietnam for 30 or 40 years.
"RichM July 23rd, 2009 11:03 am
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The above article makes a good point (about Cronkite on Iraq). It doesn't change the fact that the 1968 statement was not nearly as big a deal as liberal commentary is making it out to be."
Much of what RichM's post says and which I snipped out is like, enough, to what Norman Solomon said in his article posted here, at CD, earlier this week. The quote provided by Brad Jacobson for "Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968" is like Norman Solomon said; evidently not as Brad Jacobson seems to think we should interpret or read it.
As for Walter Cronkite's words about the present war on Iraq and based on Brad Jacobson's article, it seems that it took until 2006 before Walter Cronkite realised the war was based on lies, while anyone who carefully paid attention to the events of the run-up politics already knew that the war could not be justifed and we knew this before the day it was officially launched. F.e., we would've known what Scott Ritter repeatedly said during 2002 in his words, strong words opposing the threat of launching this war. We would've realised that the Bush admininistration only presented us with their words and [no] proof. We would've immediately realised that when the U.S. launched the war, actually days before the launch, the U.S. had criminally, roguely obstructed and curbed the UN weapons inspections that were working favourably for everyone opposed to the threat of this war and who's truly for real peace and justice. We would've also known or realised more than this, including that former UN weapons inspector, perhaps a chief one, Hans Blix had also told us that Iraq surely had no WMD or certainly no significant amount of any.
We had absolutely no need for "news" media for these above matters, with the sole exception of airing the words of the Bush administration and reports about the UN weapons inspections; reports that told us, even if the journalists didn't explicitly say this themselves, that the inspections were working as I already stated, and that the U.S. Administration had, a number of times, acted roguely with regards to these inspections. We didn't need journalists to tell us whether the war was justified, or not; we could realise that it was not for or by ourselves. The journalists paid no attention to what Scott Ritter wrote and otherwise said, like in speeches, if he gave any, in 2002 and early 2003; and the same possibly applies for Hans Blix, although maybe some journalists reported some of his words. If some did, then they evidently did not explicitly complete their reports by saying that the war could not be justified on the grounds presented to us by the Bush administration.
Walter Cronkite, according to the article by Brad Jacobson, said some okay words during the run-up politics, I guess words that Brad Jacobson's article says John Nichols reported on; but these words did not say the war could not be legally justified.
Why are people fanatically concerned about Walter Cronkite? It's as if they're saying that WE, The People, can't think, unless journalists tell us what to think.
WE should not need journalists to give us their moral views on events. What we need them is to only provide the facts, the data points, after which we do our own analyses, and if we have serious consciences, then we will arrive at the right conclusions at least most of the time. If we depend on views analyses from journalists, rather than on our own consciences and abilities to analyse, then we are in trouble and little more than infants, intellectually speaking.
If journalists are aware of crimes, then they can say it and call them crimes. That's not views analysis, for it's then facts that are really being reported. But when it's views, their views, then I don't care about them. Their words representing their so-called views when they're war mongers, "money master" mongers, etc., such words bother me, but I'll just write the assh*oles off for what they are, assh*oles. And then I'll ignore them; although might take a little time to criticise them, too. They're otherwise insignificant; it's just that lemming humans who are irresponsible citizens without real consciences treat their warmongering, ... media "idols" into valuable spokes-people.
Dahr Jamail, however, now he's a good journalist, if we can really call him that. He's certainly a reporter and merits being considered the top or one of the very few top ones on the war in Iraq. He just focuses on reporting facts. When he does present a view analysis of his own, then it's usually little and it's understandable; but he mainly reports facts and information he obtains from people he knows in Iraq, f.e.
Black Agenda Report (BAR) writers provide analyses, but they're also not a news media. They're about analyses based on facts. News media, however, need to simply investigate and report facts. We should be able to then do the analyses, which is what BAR, www.globalresearch.ca, ZNet, counterpunch.org, and other websites provide. We should definitely make use of the good analyses done by reliable people who write to help us to realise what we haven't yet realised for ourselves from facts, but I don't see this as the job of journalists working for news media. News is not views; it should be facts, data.
This post might be better written, but I'll leave it as is.
Actually, now that I submitted my first post and the page reloaded, I noticed the title of the article and it's a little misleading.
QUOTE:
Tributes Censor Cronkite's Anti-Iraq War Stance
Cronkite Called War "Illegal from the Start," Slammed Network Silence and Would've Spoken Out Again from Anchor Desk
END QUOTE
Cronkite said that of the war only in 2006, according to the article, and anyone of sound mind already realised the same thing about the war, but realised it earlier than 2006.
If he had called the war illegal starting in early 2003, like prior to the launch or immediately after or during the launch, then this'd be newsworthy, but to have said it only three or more years after the launch? Get real; it's not worth spending time to praise the late words, even if most journalists and news "anchors" still haven't yet said that the war's illegal, at all, either from the start or since.
We don't really need them to say the war's illegal, from the start, or otherwise. The news media people are the Court of Law, they're not supposed to rule the Courts of Law. They're supposed to report facts and they're lousy at this, so why the hell depend on them for moral analyses or judgments?! It's a fact that the war's always been illegal, criminal, and the news people can't even bring themselves to report this fact as fact, without needing to say that it's their opinion or view. They could just say, "The war in [fact] is illegal and always was. If you don't understand why, then let us report the factual reasons: ...", reasons like those stated in my first post in this CD page, in addition to providing a refresher on what the related US and international laws, conventions, ... are. All of that could be presented in simply fact(s) form.