Any Question of Media Bias Here?

[HDPM]

Here's a short article that made me sick. I thought Cronkite's regrets would concern his deliberate lies that probably constituted treason in his reporting of the Tet Offensive. No, his regrets concern not being able to "set the agenda." After that quotation, I hope nobody pretends this guy has any shred of journalistic credibility.

Here's the link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=494&u=/ap/20020913/ap_en_tv/people_walter_cronkite_1&printer=1

[MMMMMM]

I don't know about his reporting of the Tet Offensive, but the comment you take exception to isn't necessarily bad--it depends upon your interpretation of "agenda." Agenda can mean simply the list of things to be covered, as on a program, can't it? It doesn't have to mean that someone is going to try to influence things with a specific goal in mind, although people have seemed frequently to use it in that context in a negative manner lately. I think setting the agenda can simply mean deciding which things get discussed or covered--in this case, what stories are covered in the limited time alotted.

So while I don't know much about Mr. Cronkite, what matters here is if he merely helped set the agenda of the show based on things like newsworthiness and popular appeal, or if he deliberately set the agenda of the show to reflect his own biased views--his own personal political agenda.

[HDPM]

"I think setting the agenda can simply mean deciding which things get discussed or covered--in this case, what stories are covered in the limited time alotted"

This is the biggest weapon in the biased journalist's arsenal.

[MMMMMM]

OK, but it's also a necessary part of planning the show--they can't cover everything in a half-hour--so all I'm saying is Cronkite's comments did not necessarily imply anything bad.

If you'd care to elaborate on his coverage of Tet, or anything else, I'd find it interesting. He well may have done a very biased job of reporting during his career--I simply don't know--al I'm saying is that his remark regarding the agenda can be taken more than one way.

[HDPM]

In Tet he deliberately chose to cover a huge American victory in a negative way. He didn't like some of the casualties and was against the war. So he reported it as some big loss, a tragedy. It was anything but. This played into Ho's propaganda war. CBS is a lefty outfit, but Cronkite went way beyond simple left wing bias. Cronkite also lied in terms of his reporting and analysis of the fighting at Khe Sanh. It is even possible that Cronkite's prediction that Khe Sanh would fall caused the NVA attack on Khe Sanh on Feb. 29- March 1 1968. It may be that because the NVA saw the American news coverage as so badly distorted in their favor that they chose to attack with a force that was not adequate to take Khe Sanh to further win the propaganda war with the American people. This is not historically clear though - there are other potential, although weak, explanations for Giap's strategy. The source I double checked after my first post is "Vietnam at War" by Phillip Davidson. He's not a perfect source but the parts about Cronkite are adequately documented, etc...

[andyfox]

Like most American reporters, Cronkite was in favor of the war at first. Here's an example of his early "reporting" from August 23, 1965:

"American Air Force jets gave Communist Vietnamese their heaviest clobbering of the war today, hurling almost half a million pounds of explosives at targets in the North In one thrust our bombers hit the Long Bon [?] railroad bridge only thrity miles from Red Chin'as border. Other bombs smashed a hydroelectric power station and dam at Banh Thuc, southwest of Hanoi. In that raid, the first at purely economic targerts, they dropped one-and-a-half-ton bombs, believed to be the biggest used yet in this war. In the South, Veitcong mortars fired into the big U.S. air base at Bien Hoa, 15 miles from Saigon, and light American casualties were reported. And the International Red Cross in Geneva today got an urgent plea from the Vietcong for medical and surgical supplies, an indication that our bombing raids and infantry sweeps are taking a heavy toll of all kinds of Red equipment."

Note the typical Cold War ideology. The other side is identified, as it always was in the lies told to us by Washington, as the Communists or "Reds."

Cronkite reported, about one anti-war demonstration, that "antiwar demonstrators in New York provoked a series of clashes today with counter-demonstrators and police." He then explained that one of the anti-war marchers was carrying an NLF flag, and that "the sight of the lfag was too much for some of the onlookers. . .the angry crowd along the roadway jumped in to do away with the Vietcong symbol."

So Conkite's reporting, while he was in favor of the war, was biased in favor of the war. This is not surprising, since most reporters, especially those here in the United States, simply repeated what the administration said as the "news."

The Tet offsensive was dubbed a disaster by the American media. Although the media, including CBS, basically ehcoed the official bravado about a U.S. military victory, they emphasized the surprise and the power of the enemy's attacks. Shocked viewers watched the chief of South Vietnam's National Police calmly gun down a bound enemy prisoner at point-blank range and started to have second thoughts about what was going on in Vietnam.

Cronkite, the fatherly, trusted dean of television news, in fact, the "most trusted man in America" (Gallup poll), was unnerved by Tet and the challenge it posed, in his mind, to the administration's cheery accounts of the war. He zoomed off to South Vietnam to see what was up. While he was there, he broadcast a report wearing a steel helmet and flak jacket, which angered the administration.

On February 28, 1968, Cronkie solemnly told nine million Americans that the United States should negotiate an end to the stalemated war, "not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." Note he was still taking the administration's line, the lie about "democracy" in South Vietnam.

But Cronkite's defection from the ranks of the true believers was indeed a landmark in turning public opinion against the war.

Cronkite did not report Tet as a military defeat. That is a myth. "First and simplest," he reported, the Vietcong suffered a military defeat." But he continued, "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wron g in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion."

So Cronkite did not say we lost Tet, nor that we were losing the war. In fact, he said just the opposite.
To consider what Cronkite said virtually treasonous is to miss the point. The real traitors were our leaders, who violated the constitution and committed war crimes in defending "democracy" in Vietnam. They lied to us from the beginning right through to the end, deliberately murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians, dropping more bombs than had been dropped in the history of the world on the country we were supposed to be defending.

having said all this, I own a picture of Walter Cronkite given to me by my mother-in-law. She and he were on the same cruise together about five years ago. Perhaps it is the camera doing the lying here, but Cronkite is holding a drink and the look on his face seems to say it was not his first (or second) or the evening. Not a guy I'd want "setting an agenda," whether that means deciding what CBS's agenda is, or the nation's.

[andyfox]

Two very good and readable books about reporting in Vietnam are William Prochnau's Once Upon a Distant War, and Daniel C. Hallin's The "Uncensored War" . I'm not sure if Hallin's book is still in print.