Senior ABC correspondent David Wright reveals he is a “Socialist,” admits bosses spike news important to voters, says ABC doesn’t ‘give Trump credit for what things he does do’ . Project Veritas video shows Wright bashing the network for its apparent biased reporting on Donald Trump. “Our bosses don’t see any upside in doing the job that we’re supposed to do, which is to speak truth to power…”
I am personally surprised that anyone would think the newspapers, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, are unbiased and speak the truth, about anything.
Oh how I long to see news akin to Walter Cronkite’s brand of news; just the facts, no personal opinion, no rude comments.
Walter Cronkite: The Most Trusted Man in America
J387: Media by the Decades Project — The 1960s
Cronkite was always a staunch defender of the CBS Evening News as a balanced, unbiased, presentation of events.
On Feburary 27, 1968, he summed up his trip to Vietnam at the end of his CBS Special Report, Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why? with a rare editorial report.
This break of character was such a personal departure, that the nation was stunned at what they heard.
People were hearing a very different Cronkite than they had become accustomed to.
Up until that point, Cronkite had avoided expressing any personal opinions on-air.
In his editorial, now immortalized as “We Are Mired in Stalemate” Cronkite basically said that he now believed the war to be unwinnable.
He suggested to the viewers that the only way that the war would end would be to negotiate.
Cronkite, who had already captivated the hearts of American’s with his previous broadcasts, such as the JFK assassination, had now cast serious doubt about the United States’ mission in Vietnam.
Following Cronkite’s editorial report, President Lyndon Johnson is claimed by some to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Weeks later, President Johnson announced that he wasn’t going to be running for a second term as President.
Many people claim that Cronkite’s critical editorial may have been on of the last straws to convince the President not to run for reelection.
You might want to rethink that statement – he was one of the first to inject personal opinion.
Parting words from Walter Cronkite: His famous Vietnam commentary, originally aired on a special CBS News broadcast Feb. 27, 1968.
GUY RAZ, host:
Parting words tonight from the late Walter Cronkite. On February 27th, 1968 during a CBS News Special Report, Cronkite did something that changed America’s perception of the Vietnam War.
Mr. WALTER CRONKITE (Anchorman): I wrote a three-minute closing for the program, which seemingly, without reluctance, our stern and uncompromisingly fair news president Dick Salant approved.
(Soundbite of TV program, “CBS Evening News”)
Mr. CRONKITE: (Reading) Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout but neither did we.
Then, with as much restraint as I could, I turned to our own leaders whose idea of negotiation seemed frozen in memories of General McArthur’s encounter with the Japanese aboard the Battleship Missouri.
We’ve been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders…
(Soundbite of TV program, “CBS Evening News”)
(Reading) 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.
To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations.
But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.
I was in the Army as an enlistee on my way to VEET NAM when that happened, tokenny.
Finally somebody in Americas with the GUTS to stand up, not as some dude reading the news night after night, like a robot. stay on the script, don’t go out of your lane, but as an American citizen with the courage to stand up and say it as he saw it, rather than what the PROPAGANDA MACHINE wanted said.
Good for Walter Cronkite.
Did it affect how I in the military saw the war, what Walter said in that address about “(T)o 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?”
Not hardly!
You had to be pretty seriously deluded to think that things over in VEET NAM were anything but really ******-up, and I was an infantryman in an Army of sergeants just back from VEET NAM, so I was not deluded at all, and if I hadn’t of thought the ship was going down because of INCOMPETENCE at the very top of the chain of command, I would have had no cause to enlist.
So Walter Cronkite didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know; he told the horse’s ass in the White House what the horse’s ass wanted to keep hidden from us, the fact that LBJ got the fat in the fire and didn’t have a way to get it back out, so it was time for all good men to come to the aid of OUR country, which was not Democrat LBJ’s to destroy.
And thanks for posting his famous Vietnam commentary, originally aired on a special CBS News broadcast Feb. 27, 1968 for the younger generations in America born after those tumultuous times.