The mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968–when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite offered a supposedly withering assessment of the war in Vietnam–is cherished in American journalism.
The occasion supposedly was so exceptional and so memorably potent that it merits special reverence: The “Cronkite Moment.”
It’s not surprising that reverential bows are frequently made to the “Cronkite Moment.”
Such was the case just yesterday. Separate commentaries–one at a TV blog sponsored by the Baltimore Sun and the other in a column at MarketWatch–invoked the moment when Cronkite’s telling insight supposedly altered U.S. war policy.
But as I discuss in my new book, Getting It Wrong, the “Cronkite Moment” is an anecdote of two components–one part true, the other part false.
It’s true that Cronkite took to the air on February 27, 1968, in a special report about the war in Vietnam, where U.S. forces and South Vietnamese allies had just repelled a broad and surprising offensive by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
Cronkite closed his report that night by declaring the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate” and suggested a negotiated settlement might eventually be the way out.
At the White House, President Lyndon Johnson is said to have watched the Cronkite show and, upon hearing the anchorman’s closing “mired in stalemate” comment, snapped off the television set and muttered to an aide or aides:
“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
That’s the not-true component.
As I point out in Getting It Wrong, Johnson wasn’t at the White House that night. He wasn’t in front of a television set, either.
Johnson was in Austin, Texas, offering light-hearted comments at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, one of his political allies.
About the time Cronkite was intoning “mired in stalemate,” Johnson was saying in jest: “Today you are 51, John. That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority.”
Johnson’s memoir, The Vantage Point, is silent about the Cronkite program, offering no clue about whether the president ever saw it or, if he did, what he thought of it. Indeed, there is no evidence that Johnson later saw the Cronkite program on videotape.
And as I note in Getting It Wrong, “The power of the ‘Cronkite moment’ resides in the sudden, unexpected, and decisive effect it supposedly had on the president.
“Such an effect would have been absent, or greatly diminished, had Johnson had seen the program on videotape at some later date.”
For many reasons, then, the “Cronkite Moment” is a dubious anecdote, a media-driven myth.
But that hasn’t much diminished its appeal.
As is the case with many media-driven myths, the “Cronkite Moment” is too delicious, too seemingly perfect to resist. It finds application in a striking variety of ways.
Take, for example, yesterday’s post at the Baltimore Sun-sponsored blog, “Z on TV.”
The writer, David Zurawik, invoked the “Cronkite Moment” in discussing the Fox News announcement that it would not to cover the Quran-burning spectacle proposed by the once-obscure Rev. Terry Jones in Gainesville, Florida. And Zurawik wondered whether the Fox decision was a reason Jones said yesterday he was canceling the planned Quran-burning.
“I am only half kidding,” Zurawik wrote, “when I reference Lyndon Johnson’s lament in 1968 after he watched CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite criticize the American war effort in Vietnam: ‘That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.’
“I wonder if Pastor Jones was thinking, ‘Without Fox News there to cover it, what’s the point?’ Or, ‘If I lost Fox News …'”
The column posted yesterday MarketWatch.com also signaled the hardy versatility of the “Cronkite Moment.”
The author, Andrew Leckey, discussed Chinese sensitivity to criticism in the U.S. news media. And he referred to a question once posed to him “by the Chinese host on a special talk show” that focused on Cronkite.
The question, Leckey wrote, was why was there no journalist of Cronkite’s stature in the United States who was able to draw to an end the war in Iraq as Cronkite did in Vietnam?
Leckey didn’t say how he replied.
The best and accurate answer would have been that Cronkite did not bring about an end to the war in Vietnam. The last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam in 1973–nearly five years after the purported “Cronkite Moment.”
As I note in Getting It Wrong, the “Cronkite Moment,” under scrutiny “dissolves as illusory—a chimera, a media-driven myth.
“That it does is not so surprising. Seldom, if ever, do the news media exert truly decisive influences in decisions to go to war or to seek negotiated peace.”
Related:
- Mangling the ‘Cronkite Moment’
- The expanding claims for the ‘Cronkite Moment’
- Country turned against Vietnam before ‘Cronkite Moment’
- Considering the irresistible ‘Cronkite Moment’
- Invoking the ‘Cronkite Moment’ in Canada
- Reported but unconfirmed: The columnist and the ‘Cronkite Moment’
- ‘Lyndon Johnson went berserk? Not because of Cronkite
- On version variability and the ‘Cronkite Moment’
- Cronkite Moment: What Johnson supposedly said
- Mythical ‘Cronkite Moment’ invoked in ‘USA Today’
- Welcome perspective on the ‘Cronkite moment’
[…] titled This Time We Win, devotes a chapter to “The Walter Cronkite Moment,” that mythical occasion when the CBS anchorman’s on-air assessment that the war in Vietnam was “mired in […]
[…] MarketWatch item closed by invoking the “follow the money” phrase, […]
[…] It wasn’t the funniest presidential joke ever told. But the comment makes clear that Johnson that night wasn’t lamenting his having “lost Cronkite.” […]
[…] Hollywood Reporter yesterday invoked–and parenthetically disputed–the so-called “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, when CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite declared on-air that the U.S. war effort in […]
[…] media-driven myth even more tenacious than the Murrow-McCarthy tale is the legendary “Cronkite Moment” of February 1968, when CBS anchorman Cronkite declared on-air that the U.S. military was […]
[…] supposedly made the Cronkite characterization stand out is that President Johnson saw the program and, as it ended, said to an aide or aides, […]
[…] media myth about Vietnam often revolves around the so-called “Cronkite Moment” in February 1968, when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite declared on air that the U.S. […]
[…] “Cronkite Moment” surely will live on, too, as it represents so well the news media conceit of the effects of […]
[…] of them is the comment misattributed to President Lyndon Johnson who, in reaction to Walter Cronkite’s on-air assessment that the war in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate,” supposedly […]
[…] I note in Getting It Wrong, the “Cronkite Moment,” when scrutinized, dissolves as illusory — a chimera, a media-driven […]
[…] Doing so also demonstrates anew that not even prominent and presumably fact-checked news organizations such as the Times are resistant to the intrusion of hoary media myths. […]
[…] Doing so also demonstrates anew that not even prominent and presumably fact-checkednews organizations such as the Times are resistant to the intrusion of hoary media myths. […]
[…] Doing so also demonstrates anew that not even prominent and presumably fact-checkednews organizations such as the Times are resistant to the intrusion of hoary media myths. […]
[…] “Cronkite Moment“ is the short-hand phrase for Cronkite’s editorial comment, offered February 27, […]