Space Forum / Astronomy / September 2004

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Water Cronkite in an interview with Grand Times in 1996:

Q: Journalism is presented as being objective, but some feel it's just
veiled in a cloak of impartiality, and really has a hidden agenda. Do
you think we're better off receiving news that's openly subjective so we
can at least evaluate its credibility?

CRONKITE: No! No, I don't believe that at all. We certainly have
subjective columns and editorials. And what we have lost in most
newspapers today, and in broadcasting and television, is the editor's
column. The editor and publisher, in the old days, had a column which
expressed his or her opinion of affairs. But now we've got the OpEd
pages, which are serving the same function and in many ways better,
because they express a variety of opinions. That's all for the good.

For the news columns themselves, they certainly should be objective and
not subjective. Ten or 15 years ago there was much talk of the new
journalism. The philosophy was that since nobody could be 100 percent
objective, no one should even try to be objective. And we should all be
subjective and tell how stories appear to us, how they affect us
personally. That's a bunch of balderdash, and it faded out pretty
quickly because it was obviously ridiculous. We must be given the facts
so we can make our own judgments, and these facts should not be colored
by people's personal opinions.

http://www.grandtimes.com/cronkite.html

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Water Cronkite, from CBS News broadcast, February 27, 1968:

"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. The referees of history may make it a
draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south
of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss
in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our
stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of
the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be
defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of
ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives
no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems,
now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold
on, but it probably won't show the dynamic qualities demanded of this
young nation. Another standoff.

"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. They may be right, that
Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist
realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and
that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve
their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their
position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have
had all along, that any negotiations must be that -- negotiations, not
the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever
that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This
summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take
negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to
escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the
North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one
hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops
to the battle.  And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the
brink of cosmic disaster.

"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
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. 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."

Good Night, indeed, Walter. For about 12,000 American boys who would
still have to die in a war they'd already won.

"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. The referees of history may make it a draw."

The referees of history DO NOT make it a draw. At all. Except, perhaps,
in the fact that Walter's opinion and The New York Times' and The
Washington Post's concurrent editorials MADE IT A DRAW. Subtract their
'opinions' from the equation, and General Giap tells us /now/ that North
Vietnam would have been forced to sue for peace. His army was shattered
and the Viet Cong insurgents were nearly non-existent. They'd shot their
wad and lost.

Walter, in 1968, made no distinction between his malformed opinions and
'objective' journalism. Two years later, Vice President Sipro Agnew
announced an executive order that forced TV 'journalists' to indicate
when they were giving commentary rather than 'objective' news reports.
To keep their FCC licenses, TV News producers had to make the word
"commentary" appear somewhere on the screen.

Note to future politicians: Don't EVER tell 'journalists' what they can
or cannot do. In a matter of months they had dug up the Maryland dirt on
Agnew and forced him into early retirement. In two years they had
Nixon's political hide nailed to tree, which they've spit on ever since.

****

All this talk-talk about "The Liberal Press" is no more meaningful or
realistic as was Goebbels' talk-talk about "The Jewish Press."

Journalists don't need *COMMENTARY* rolling across the bottom of the
screen. The answer is much more simple than that, but involves a little
brain sweat--too much to ask of a silver spoon fed public:

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/toc.php

---
Art

"No; I have not been charged with that.
In fact, nobody has said that to me yet."
     ---Lee Oswald
         (1963)