HOW ABOUT, for a tribute to Walter Cronkite’s much lauded integrity, the media honor the news giant by EMULATING HIM? How cynical of corporate news peons, and of their audience nodding along, to revere Cronkite’s hindsight truth-telling, and lament alas, there will be no more like him. Big smiles and crocodile tears.
There is no integrity in news broadcast. I defy anyone to point to a single news story that is not framed and delivered by the interest group it serves. A single story.
Thankfully God sent broadcasters a mixed message this summer by striking down two disparate role models for television talking heads. He smote the last grand-paternal-voiced smooth-talker, together with the tin-pot-king of loud jabberers, teevee pitchman Billy Mays. The first voice was confidence giving, you couldn’t help but trust it, even as it cheer-led the Vietnam escalation, while the second’s amplified immodulation provoked an irritation satisfied only by buying the damn thing just to get the brush salesman out the door.
I remember the Hell Walter Cronkite took when he stated on evening TV Feb. 27, 1968, that the Vietnam War was a pack of lies. Not hindsight. It is a sad world you live in to think everyone in the media is in bed with the bad guys. In your, world your glass appears to be half-empty.
Before 1968, Cronkite promoted the war, until millions were already killed. He turned on the war when the images became incontrovertible. But after 1968, did Cronkite break the news about US-perpetrated genocides elsewhere? No.
It’s not SAD, it’s FRIGHTENING. I asked for an example of a drop of truth, you presume to say the glass is half full. The media’s sincerity is not half-anything, it’s void. Or will you quibble between half-truths and partial lies?
Cronkite was the epitome of the corporate media talking head bore. We need less of this type, not more. He was nothing but stale.
Yes, Walter Cronkite drank McNamara’s Kool-aid during the early 60’s war reporting, but then he went there to witness himself what the returning Vets were saying and made his Feb. 1968 report and following frequent editorials against the war, forever after becoming labeled the father of the “biased mainstream liberal media” . Quit waltzing on his grave with Debbie Schlussel.
Americans who divide themselves up into two silly camps of those who hate ‘the biased mainstream liberal media’ and those who hate the biased mainstream conservative media as per FOX are missing the real picture. Walter Cronkite didn’t drink any Kool-aid but rather poured it out to the rest of us to drink. He was no innocent victim, pcm.
It always amuses me when the ultra right and the ultra left met on that political circle and agree on an issue. Dance on, Tony. I’m sure Eric will let you cut in on Debbie.
I thought we were talking about Walter, pcm? Must I take a course in Cryptology to understand what the Hell you are trying to say with your ‘ cut in on Debbie’ remark?
And just because the rabid Right attacks some twit like Walter doesn’t make the man a candidate for sainthood, Dude. It is an honor being called ‘ultraLeft’ from you. I suspect you think anybody to the Left of Corporate Democratic Party voting liberalism is ‘ultraLeft’ in your lesser of 2 evil opinion, now don’t you?