MediaBloodhound

Op-Ed Column: 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.

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Editor's Note: Some additional must-read news and views on Cronkite:

Chad at BuzzFlash informs me that Cronkite's "speaking out for democracy when he could have played it safe" after retirement is what earned him a BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award.

Reese Erlich reveals Cronkite's "prescient" views on the then pending Iraq War in "Opinions Walter Cronkite Never Aired" at Truthdig (h/t Jon at Common Dreams), in which Erlich cites excerpts from an unpublished interview he did with Cronkite in 2002.

Norman Solomon punctures the myth that Cronkite was always "a courageous truth-teller" in his article "Beyond the Hype: Cronkite and the Vietnam War."

NYT Front|Back: Porn Plots vs. Detainee Rights

NYT Front|Back, a MediaBloodhound feature that showcases The New York Times' intermittent yet longstanding penchant for placing a supremely unnewsworthy story on its cover while burying a vital one in its back pages, rarely makes an appearance on this site anymore. It's brought back from mothballed hiatuses only for the most egregious and absurd examples.

Like this one:

FRONT:

In Sex Film Industry, Some Long for a Real Plot

No, this isn't satire. It's a cover story on our nation's paper of record. The critical issue at hand (pardon the expression)? The article opens:

The actress known as Savanna Samson once relished preparing for a role. “I couldn’t wait to get my next script,” she said.

There’s no reason to look at them anymore, she said, because her movies now call almost exclusively for action. Specifically, sex.

The pornographic movie industry has long had only a casual interest in plot and dialogue. But moviemakers are focusing even less on narrative arcs these days. Instead, they are filming more short scenes that can be easily uploaded to Web sites and sold in several-minute chunks.

Two wars. Jobless rate at nearly ten percent. Healthcare in crisis. And if that weren't enough to bear, now there are dwindling plot lines in our pornography! I believe it was Patrick Henry who originally said, "Give me liberty and intricately plotted pornographic entertainment, or give me death." Of course, that was before the edit (fortunately for Henry, he wasn't living in the dawn of blogging). 

Some more excerpts from this earth-shattering piece of journalism:

“The feature is not as big a part of the industry today,” [Wicked Pictures president Steve] Orenstein said. But he says he still plans two to three bigger-budget releases each year, including the recently shot “2040,” which is about the pornography business of the future. Mr. Orenstein described the movie as “an almost Romeo-and-Juliet story between an aging porn star and a cyborg.”

In lieu of plot, there are themes. Among the new releases from New Sensations, a studio that makes 24 movies a month, is “Girls ’n Glasses,” made up of scenes of women having sex while wearing glasses.

[...]

Ms. Samson, for example, said she took her acting seriously and used to prepare studiously for her roles, like the character she played in the 2006 movie “Flasher.”

She said she played a psychotic who, because of the way her mother treated her, “had an obsession with flashing and doing things in public.”

“I used to have dialogue,” said Ms. Samson, whose given name is Natalie Oliveros, and who is one of the industry’s biggest stars.

“Getting it on in one hardcore scene after another just isn’t as much fun,” she added.

BACK (page A18):

In Senate, Debate on Detainee Legal Rights

Apparently the Times thinks Americans are, as the kids say, so over the issue of detainee rights that the dearth of pornography plots trumped this story by 18 pages.

Intro:

Obama administration lawyers said Tuesday at a Senate hearing that detainees prosecuted by military commissions should have some of the same constitutional rights as American citizens tried in civilian criminal courts.

Republicans on the Armed Services Committee argued that foreigners now detained on terrorism charges at the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, did not deserve those constitutional protections.

“So you are saying that these people who are in Guantánamo, who were part of 9/11 or committed acts of war against the United States are entitled to constitutional rights of the Constitution of the United States?” Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the panel, asked administration officials at one point.

Aside from this article's banishment to the back pages, the story fails to include a substantive factual rejoinder to Senator McCain's misleading statement. Scores of detainees have already been released by the U.S. after being held for years with no charge and incurring what the Times calls "brutal" interrogation techniques but the rest of the world calls "torture."

The Bush administration's process that swept up these detainees, ignored due process and embraced, as Dick Cheney famously said, "the dark side" -- which actually meant perpetrating systematic cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners -- should have no foundation of credibility in a country calling itself a democracy.

The closet the article comes to noting the inherent mendacity in McCain's statement is relegated to a sentence in the second-to-last paragraph (incidentally, is this a new Times editorial decision -- "harsh interrogations or torture"?):

Lawmakers and administration officials have already agreed that statements taken through harsh interrogations or torture would not be allowed in a commission prosecution, but several witnesses suggested that the standards still needed to be clearer.

What should be stated clearly in this story, however, is that the exact number of detainees who confessed during torture remains unknown. So claiming these detainees are guilty of crimes without yet knowing if the confessions were obtained through torture is preposterous. A concept about which Kafka was well versed.

Glaringly absent from this article as well is the fact that the Bush administration's sanctioning of torture has endangered the lives of Americans and directly led to this legal predicament, in which some detainees might actually want to kill Americans, but since their confessions were coerced through torture they may go free.

It remains unclear what Constitutional rights will be afforded detainees tried in military commissions. Though the closing paragraph might give you an indication:

Vice Adm. Bruce E. MacDonald, the Navy's top lawyer, said at the hearing that evidentiary rules should not bar statements taken by soldiers from witnesses questioned under gunpoint on a battlefield. But, he said, those accounts should be weighed differently from statements taken from a detainee six months after his capture.

Key phrases: "battlefield" and "questioned under gun point." Remember all those "dangerous terrorists" rounded up on the "battlefield" during the Bush administration who turned out to be completely innocent, in some cases boys and old men, including this geriatric jihadist, a 71-year-old nearly blind man -- he may have been as old as 78 -- who had to shuffle around Gitmo for nearly five years in a walker before being released in August 2006?

Such context is nowhere to be found in this article either.