W. Joseph Campbell

Archive for the ‘Cronkite Moment’ Category

, , , , , ,

New book on Tet invokes mythical ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on September 15, 2010 at 7:06 am

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

A provocative new book on the 1968 Tet offensive, 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 stalemate” supposedly had decisive effect on the U.S. president.

The “Cronkite Moment” also is a chapter in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, which debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths–those dubious and improbable tales about the news media that masquerade as factual.

I note in Getting It Wrong that the “Cronkite Moment,” under scrutiny, “dissolves as illusory—a chimera, a media-driven myth.”

This Time We Win is the work of James S. Robbins, an editorial writer on defense issues for the Washington Times. Robbins doesn’t exactly embrace the “Cronkite Moment,” but offers it instead with qualification, writing:

“It is said that after watching Cronkite’s documentary President [Lyndon] Johnson said to his aides, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.’ Five weeks later Johnson decided not to run for reelection based on this belief. So the legend goes. This is the Holy Grail for a reporter, that a documentary, newscast, article, picture, or other product shapes history on a grand scale.”

Robbins further writes:

“But did Johnson lose Middle America? Did sensationalistic or misleading press coverage turn the country against the President and against the war?”

His answer: “In a word, no.”

He’s quite right about that.

But Robbins might well have asked a more direct, searching, and relevant question:

“Was there really a ‘Cronkite Moment’ at all?”

The answer is, in a word, no. The anecdote’s pivotal, defining, and most delicious element is in error.

Cronkite certainly did take to the air on February 27, 1968, in a special report about Vietnam, where U.S. forces and South Vietnamese allies had repelled a broad offensive that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong launched a month before, at the Tet lunar new year.

Cronkite closed his report that night with an editorial comment that said the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate.” He suggested that a negotiated settlement might eventually be the way out.

Central to the anecdote’s power and enduring appeal is that Johnson, at the White House, was watching the program and, upon hearing Cronkite’s assessment, snapped off the television set and muttered to an aide or aides:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

It supposedly was an epiphany for the president, a burst of clarity and insight about an unwinnable war.

But as I write in Getting It Wrong, “Scrutiny of the evidence associated with the program reveals that Johnson did not have—could not have had—the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him.”

Johnson was not at the White House that night.

He wasn’t in front of a television set, either.

Johnson then was in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, one of his political allies.

About the time Cronkite declared the war “mired in stalemate,” Johnson was offering light-hearted banter, saying: “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 on videotape or, if he did, what he thought of it.

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 seen the program on videotape at some later date.”

Moreover, in the days and weeks immediately following Cronkite’s pessimistic assessment, Johnson remained outwardly hawkish about the war.

On March 18, 1968, for example, he delivered a rousing speech in Minneapolis in which he urged “a total national effort” to win the war in Vietnam. The president also declared:

“We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing worse than surrender and cowardice.”

He criticized critics as wanting the United States to “tuck our tail and violate our commitments” to South Vietnamese allies.

Johnson’s aggressive remarks are difficult to square with his supposedly downcast, self-pitying reaction to Cronkite’s assessment about Vietnam.

That the “Cronkite Moment” turns out to be a media myth is not so surprising, I write in Getting It Wrong.

“Seldom, if ever, do the news media exert truly decisive influences in decisions to go to war or to seek negotiated peace,” I note. “Such decisions typically are driven by forces and factors well beyond the news media’s ability to shape, alter, or significantly influence.”

So it was in Vietnam.

WJC

Related:

, , , , ,

‘Cronkite Moment’ makes ‘Best of the Web’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on September 11, 2010 at 8:41 am

The lead item yesterday of the Wall Street Journal‘s online “Best of the Web” roundup invoked the legendary “Cronkite Moment,” one of American journalism’s hardiest and best-known media-driven myths.

Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968

Only “Best of the Web” presented the anecdote as if it were factual, stating:

“‘If I’ve lost Cronkite,’ Lyndon B. Johnson is said to have lamented in 1968, ‘I’ve lost Middle America.'”

The passage set up an observation about President Barack Obama’s declining popularity:

“Obama has been losing Middle America, slowly but steadily, almost since the day he took office, in large part because he has taken his cues from a community of notions whose attitude toward Middle America ranges from indulgent condescension to outright hostility.”

Obama’s fallen popularity is of but passing and academic interest to Media Myth Alert. Far more intriguing is this latest affirmation of the casual yet confident use of the “Cronkite Moment.”

Its appearance in “Best of the Web” was the latest in a spate of recent sitings of the “Cronkite Moment.”

In the past few weeks, Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today; Cal Thomas, a conservative syndicated columnist, and  David Zurawik, veteran television writer for the Baltimore Sun, all have invoked the anecdote in commentaries as if it were true.

Such frequent use signals not only the irresistible allure of the “Cronkite Moment,” it suggests the anecdote’s appeal across the political spectrum. Neuharth, for example, typically writes from the left; Thomas and “Best of the Web” offer analyses from the right.

I examine the “Cronkite Moment” in my new book, Getting It Wrong, which addresses and debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths–apocryphal or improbable tales about the news media that masquerade as factual.

The “Cronkite Moment” refers to the special report about the Vietnam War that was presented by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite and aired February 27, 1968.

Near the end of his report, Cronkite asserted that the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate” and suggested negotiations might offer a “rational” way out of Vietnam.

Supposedly, President Lyndon Johnson watched the Cronkite program at the White House and, upon hearing the anchorman’s assessment, experienced the flash of insight that his war policy had hit the rocks.

“If I’ve lost Cronkite,” Johnson reputedly said, “I’ve lost Middle America.”

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, accounts vary markedly as to what Johnson supposedly said in reacting to Cronkite’s commentary.

Some accounts have the president saying: “I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”

Or: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the American people.”

Or: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.”

Or: “If we lose Cronkite, we lose America.”

Most common is: “If I lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America,” the version used by “Best of the Web.”

But version variability of such magnitude, I write in Getting It Wrong, signals implausibility.

It’s a marker of a media-driven myth.

Moreover, Johnson was not at the White House the night Cronkite’s special report aired. Nor was the president in front of a television set.

He was on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, attending the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, a long-time political ally.

As I note in Getting It Wrong, at about the time Cronkite offered his “mired in stalemate” editorial comment, Johnson was engaging in mildly humorous banter about Connally’s age.

“Today you are 51, John,” he said. “That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority. Throughout the years we have worked long and hard—and I might say late—trying to maintain it, too.”

Even if Johnson saw the Cronkite program later, on videotape, the president “gave no indication of having taken the anchorman’s message to heart,” I write in Getting It Wrong, noting:

“Just three days after the [Cronkite] program aired, Johnson vowed in remarks at a testimonial dinner in Texas that the United States would ‘not cut and run’ from Vietnam. ‘We’re not going to be Quislings,’ the president said, invoking the surname of a Norwegian politician who helped the Nazis take over his country. ‘And we’re not going to be appeasers….’”

So even if he later heard, or heard about, Cronkite’s assessment about Vietnam, it represented no epiphany for Johnson, no stunning revelation about policy gone awry.

Interestingly, the legend of the “Cronkite Moment” began to take hold and gain circulation several years after Johnson’s death in 1973. It was in 1968 neither an instant sensation nor a stunning assessment. “Mired in stalemate” was hardly a novel interpretation at the time.

Indeed, the New York Times had used “stalemate” in a front-page assessment of the war effort in early August 1967, nearly seven months before the “Cronkite Moment.”

WJC

Related:

, , , , , ,

Loving the ‘Cronkite Moment,’ and indulging in a media myth

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on September 10, 2010 at 10:52 am

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.

Johnson and the 'Cronkite Moment'

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.”

WJC

Related:

, , , , , ,

Reported, but unconfirmed: The columnist and the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on September 2, 2010 at 9:40 am

Sometimes, media-driven myths are just too juicy and delicious to shun, even if the narrator is unsure about their veracity.

Such was the case with Cal Thomas’ syndicated column this week, which invokes the purported “Cronkite Moment” of 1968. That was when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s on-air assessment about the Vietnam War supposedly led President Lyndon Johnson to realize the war effort was hopeless.

Johnson at the hour of the 'Cronkite Moment'

Thomas wrote in his column:

“President Obama may have experienced his Walter Cronkite moment over the economy.

“Responding to Cronkite’s reporting from Vietnam four decades ago that the only way to end the war was by negotiating with the North Vietnamese, President Lyndon Johnson was reported (though never confirmed) to have said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.’

“Now President Obama appears to have ‘lost’ New York Times liberal economic columnist Paul Krugman. …”

Whether Obama has indeed “lost” the columnist Krugman is unimportant here.

What is relevant, and striking, is Thomas’ sly use of a well-known but dubious anecdote, one introduced by the ambiguous phrase, “reported (though never confirmed).” Such a preface leaves one to wonder: Why invoke the anecdote at all?

And there is ample good reason to avoid the anecdote of the “Cronkite Moment,” one of 10 prominent media myths addressed, and debunked, in my new book, Getting It Wrong.

For starters, President Johnson did not see Cronkite’s assessment about Vietnam, which aired the night of February 27, 1968.

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, Johnson at the time was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of a longtime political ally, Governor John Connally (see photo, above).

About the time Cronkite was wrapping up his report, asserting that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam, Johnson was offering light-hearted remarks about Connally’s age, saying:

“Today you are 51, John. That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority.”

Johnson said nothing about having “lost Cronkite.”

Moreover, there is no evidence Johnson watched Cronkite’s program on videotape.

As I write 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.”

It is interesting to note that Johnson struck a vigorously hawkish tone about Vietnam earlier in the day, telling an audience in Dallas:

“I do not believe that America will ever buckle” in pursuit of its objectives in Vietnam. “I believe that every American will answer now for his future and for his children’s future. I believe he will say, ‘I did not buckle when the going got tough.’”

The president also declared:

“Thousands of our courageous sons and millions of brave South Vietnamese have answered aggression’s onslaught and they have answered it with one strong and one united voice. ‘No retreat,’ they have said. Free men will never bow to force and abandon their future to tyranny. That must be our answer, too, here at home. Our answer here at home, in every home, must be: No retreat from the responsibilities of the hour of the day.”

I note in Getting It Wrong that the bravado of the president’s “no retreat” speech in Dallas is “hardly consistent with the crestfallen and resigned tenor of Johnson’s supposed reaction to the Cronkite program later that day.

“It is difficult indeed to imagine how the president’s mood could swing so abruptly, from vigorously defending the war to throwing up his hands in despair. But if the anecdote of the ‘Cronkite moment’ is to be believed, such a dramatic change in attitude is exactly what happened, within just hours of the hawkish speech in Dallas.”

The “Cronkite Moment” is a particularly delicious media myth, I’ll grant that. But as a framing device, as a way to set up a column or commentary, it’s  often not effective.

WJC

Related:

, , , , , ,

Mythical ‘Cronkite Moment’ invoked in ‘USA Today’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Year studies on August 21, 2010 at 10:08 am

In his column this week, Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today, invokes the dubious “Cronkite Moment” of 1968 and suggests an outspoken television journalist today could help end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

Neuharth’s column refers to Walter Cronkite’s special report on Vietnam, which aired February 27, 1968. Near the end of the report, the CBS anchorman declared the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate.” Cronkite suggested that negotiations might represent a “rational” way out of Vietnam.

Neuharth then invokes the mythical component of the “Cronkite Moment,” writing that President Lyndon Johnson, upon hearing “the CBS shocker,” declared:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking the “Cronkite Moment” and nine other prominent media-driven myths, Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired. Nor is there evidence he watched the program later, on videotape.

Johnson on the night of the program was in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally. About the time Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” assessment, Johnson was offering light-hearted remarks about Connally’s age.

Johnson at Connally's party

“Today you are 51, John,” the president said. “That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority. Throughout the years we have worked long and hard—and I might say late—trying to maintain it, too.”

Even if Johnson later saw the Cronkite program, he “gave no indication of having taken the anchorman’s message to heart,” I write in Getting It Wrong.

It represented no epiphany for him.

Indeed, in the days and weeks immediately following Cronkite’s program, Johnson’s rhetoric on the war remained hawkish. On March 18, 1968, for example, Johnson delivered a rousing speech in Minneapolis, in which he urged “a total national effort” to win the war in Vietnam.

He also declared in that speech:

“We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing worse than surrender and cowardice.”

Moreover, it’s clear that by early 1968, Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment about the war was unremarkable. Mark Kurlansky said as much in his well-received year-study about 1968.

Nearly seven months before Cronkite’s report on Vietnam, the New York Times published a front-page news analysis that said victory in southeast Asia “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

The Times analysis was published in August 1967 and carried the headline, “Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

And as I’ve noted at Media Myth Alert, former NBC newsman Frank McGee offered an analysis about Vietnam in March 1968 that was more forceful and direct Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” characterization.

“The war,” McGee said on an NBC News program March 10, 1968, “is being lost by the [Johnson] administration’s definition.”

“Being lost,” McGee said: No hedging there.

But almost no one remembers Frank McGee’s blunt assessment.

I note in Getting It Wrong that the purported “Cronkite Moment” has become for many American journalists “an ideal, a standard that suggests both courage and influence in wartime reporting. It is an objective that contemporary practitioners at times seem desperate to recapture or recreate.”

Neuharth’s column makes  just that point, stating:

“The TV man—or woman—who suggests a ‘rational’ way out of Afghanistan could become today’s Cronkite.”

Not likely, not in today’s diverse and splintered media landscape in which audiences for network television have been in sustained decline.

In any case, it’s interesting to note that until late in his life, Cronkite disputed the notion that his 1968 report on Vietnam had much of an effect.

In his 1997 memoir, for example, Cronkite characterized his “mired in stalemate” assessment in decidedly modest terms, stating that it represented for Johnson “just one more straw in the increasing burden of Vietnam.”

He reiterated the “just one more straw” analogy in interviews promoting the book.

But by 2007, two years before his death, Cronkite had embraced the purported power of the “Cronkite Moment,” saying in an interview with the Gazette of Martha’s Vineyard:

“There are a lot of journalists out there today who if they chose to take that strong stand and course [in opposing the Iraq War] would probably enjoy a similar result.”

WJC

Related:

, , , , , , ,

Country turned against Vietnam before ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Year studies on August 12, 2010 at 6:33 am

Politico posted an item yesterday asserting that President Barack Obama “has lost the most trusted man in the Hispanic media”–the Univision anchorman, Jorge Ramos.

Ramos and Obama, in chummier times

Ramos, Politico said, “has been called the Walter Cronkite of Spanish-language media, an unparalleled nationwide voice for Hispanics. And just like the famed CBS newsman’s commentary helped turn the country against the Vietnam War, Ramos may be on the leading edge of a movement within the Hispanic media to challenge the president on immigration—a shift that some observers believe is contributing to Obama’s eroding poll numbers among Latino voters.”

There’s no doubt Obama’s poll numbers are sliding. But the Cronkite analogy is in error. And misleading.

Cronkite’s commentary–an on-air assessment in February 1968 that the U.S. military effort was “mired in stalemate”–did little to “turn the country against the Vietnam War.”

That’s because public opinion had been souring on Vietnam for months before Cronkite’s commentary aired on February 27, 1968.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking prominent media-driven myths, the Gallup Organization reported in October 1967 that a plurality of Americans (47 percent to 44 percent) said deploying U.S. troops to Vietnam had been a mistake.

A roughly similar response was reported in early February 1968, three weeks before Cronkite’s offered his “mired in stalemate” assessment.

Anecdotally, journalists also detected a softening in support for the war.

I point out in Getting It Wrong that Don Oberdorfer, then a national correspondent for the Knight newspapers, wrote in December 1967 “that the ‘summer and fall of 1967 [had] been a time of switching, when millions of American voters—along with many religious leaders, editorial writers and elected officials—appeared to be changing their views about the war.'”

More recently, Greg Mitchell, then editor of the trade journal Editor & Publisher, noted in 2005: “Those who claim that [the Cronkite program] created a seismic shift on the war overlook the fact that there was much opposition to the conflict already.”

By late February 1968, then, “Cronkite’s ‘mired in stalemate’ assessment was neither notable nor extraordinary,” I note in Getting It Wrong. I cite Mark Kurlansky’s year-study of the 1968 which said that Cronkite’s view was “hardly a radical position” for the time.

Indeed, just four days before Cronkite’s assessment, the Wall Street Journal declared in an editorial that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam “may be doomed” and that “everyone had better be prepared for the bitter taste of defeat beyond America’s power to prevent.”

So reservations and pessimism were abundant and growing by the time of Cronkite’s commentary (which nowadays is often referred to as the “Cronkite Moment”).

As Jack Gould, the New York Times’ television critic, noted in a column soon after the purported “Cronkite Moment,” the anchorman’s assessment about America’s predicament in Vietnam “did not contain striking revelations.”

WJC

Related:

Politico

, , , , , , ,

On media myths and the ‘golden age’ fallacy

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on August 11, 2010 at 11:49 am

Carl Bernstein, he of Watergate and Washington Post fame, offered a thoughtful observation recently about investigative reporting and the notion that its best days were long ago.

Bernstein said an interview “there’s a little too much nostalgia about maybe a golden age of ‘investigative journalism’ that never really existed.”

That “golden age” sometimes is associated with the post-Watergate era, when investigative reporting, and teams of investigative reporters, flourished at American newspapers.

Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s media writer, indulged in this fallacy a few years ago, writing about a “golden glow” that Bernstein and his Watergate reporting colleague Bob Woodward supposedly cast across the news business in the mid-1970s.

“Newspapermen became cinematic heroes,” Kurtz wrote, adding that they were “determined diggers who advanced the cause of truth by meeting shadowy sources in parking garages, and journalism schools were flooded with aspiring sleuths and crusaders.

“But the media’s reputation since then has sunk like a stone….”

The notion there was a “golden age” of journalism or of investigative reporting is as alluring as it is misleading. And the “golden age fallacy” contributes to the tenacity of media-driven myths, those dubious and improbable tales about the news media that masquerade as factual.

I address the fallacy in Getting It Wrong, my new book that debunks the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate as well as nine other prominent tales about the news media.

I note in Getting It Wrong how  “media myths invite indulgence in the ‘golden age fallacy,’ the flawed but enticing belief that there really was a time when journalism and its practitioners were respected and inspiring—the time, say, of Murrow or Cronkite, or Woodward and Bernstein.”

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, the heroic contributions of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite often have been overstated.

The “golden age fallacy” in the case of Woodward and Bernstein certainly was deepened and solidified with the cinematic version of All the President’s Men, their 1974 book about reporting on Watergate. The roles of Woodward and Bernstein were played, respectively, by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

“Such is the power of movies,” Frank Rich of the New York Times once noted, that the first image ‘Watergate’ brings to mind [more than] three decades later is not Richard Nixon so much as the golden duo of Redford and Hoffman riding to the nation’s rescue in ‘All the President’s Men.'”

True enough.

And while it is not specifically discussed in Getting It Wrong, another fallacy helps account for the appeal and tenacity of media-driven myths. And that is what the venerable historian David Hackett Fischer has called the “telescopic fallacy”–the urge to make a long story short.

“This form of error is common today,” Fischer wrote 40 years ago in his influential work, Historians’ Fallacies, “and likely to become still more so, as historians become increasingly interested in putting big questions to little tests.”

The heroic-journalist interpretation of Watergate is, in a way, a representation of the “telescopic fallacy.” That interpretation compresses the details and complexities of what was a sprawling scandal into a readily understood, digestible package that Woodward and Bernstein’s investigative reporting toppled Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency.

However, “to explain Watergate through the lens of the heroic-journalist is to abridge and misunderstand the scandal and to indulge in a particularly beguiling media-driven myth,” I write in Getting It Wrong. “The heroic-journalist interpretation minimizes the far more decisive forces that unraveled the scandal and forced Nixon from office.”

WJC

Related:


, , , , ,

‘Getting It Wrong’ goes on Q-and-A

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, War of the Worlds, Watergate myth on August 4, 2010 at 8:47 am

My interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN’s Q&A program aired Sunday evening and early Monday–and the show looked better on the tube than I thought it would.

The interview was taped two weeks earlier and, afterward, I didn’t feel that it had gone all that well.

But I was mistaken.

Lamb, who is a real gentleman and is supported by a courteous and highly professional staff, led me through a brief discussion of each of the 10 prominent tales about American journalism which I address and debunk in my new book, Getting It Wrong.

We subsequently zeroed in on the myths of Watergate, Murrow-McCarthy, the Cronkite Moment, and the War of the Worlds radio dramatization.

Toward the end of the interview, which lasted nearly an hour, Lamb asked what might be next in my research. Maybe a sequel to Getting It Wrong, I replied, adding that universe of media-driven myths isn’t confined to the 10 addressed in the book.

Lamb

Lamb, who had read Getting It Wrong closely, surprised me a few times with his questions, including his query about this passage in the book’s closing chapter:

“American journalism loves giving prizes—to its own.”

That passage (which is true, of course) was a way of setting up the conclusion to the chapter discussing the highly exaggerated, over-the-top news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which battered New Orleans and the Gulf Coast five years ago this month.

Among the many awards given for reporting about the hurricane was the Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the News. That award, I note in Getting It Wrong, “was initiated in 2001 to recognize journalists who set the record straight on inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading news stories. The Mongerson Prize was administered by Northwestern University and had a five-year run. It never attracted much attention, certainly nothing approaching the prominence of the Murrow Awards or the Pulitzer Prizes.”

The Mongerson Prize was given for the last time in 2006 and the winners that year were Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They were honored for the report they prepared in late September 2005 that examined exaggerated accounts of mayhem in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“Four weeks after the storm,” Thevenot and Russell wrote, “few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of murdered bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines assert that, while anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.”

In announcing the winners, Northwestern said Thevenot and Russell had “exposed the dangers of pack journalism in a difficult reporting environment.”

A telling point.

I write in Getting It Wrong that Katrina’s aftermath “was no high, heroic moment in American journalism. The coverage was in important respects flawed and exaggerated. On crucial details, journalists erred badly, and got it wrong.

“In the days following Katrina’s landfall, news reports described apocalyptic horror that the hurricane supposedly had unleashed. They reported snipers firing at medical personnel. They reported that shots were fired at helicopters, halting evacuations from the Convention Center. They told of bodies being stacked there like cordwood. They reported roving gangs were preying on tourists and terrorizing the occupants of the Superdome, raping and killing. They said children were victims of sexual assault, that one seven-year-old was raped and her throat was slit. They reported that sharks were plying the flooded streets of New Orleans.

“None of those reports was verified or substantiated: No shots fired at rescue helicopters, no child rape victims, no bodies stacked like cordwood, no sharks.”

Thevenot’s candor about the Katrina coverage was refreshing, in measure because he acknowledged that he, too, had gotten it wrong in some of his reporting.

In an article for American Journalism Review titled “Mythmaking in New Orleans,” Thevenot wrote that “in the worst of the storm reporting, tales of violence, rapes, murders and other mayhem were simply stated as fact with no attribution at all.

“I am among those who committed this sin,” he conceded, referring to his description of the Convention Center in New Orleans, where many people dispossessed by the hurricane took refuge, as “a nightly scene of murders, rapes and regular stampedes.”

WJC

Related:

None of those reports was verified or substantiated: No shots fired at rescue helicopters,[i] no child rape victims, no bodies stacked like cordwood, no sharks

[i] See A Failure of Initiative, 169.

, , , , ,

Long reach of the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking on August 1, 2010 at 8:33 am

The long reach and international appeal of the mythical Cronkite Moment–when in 1968 the words of Walter Cronkite supposedly altered U.S. war policy in Vietnam–is reconfirmed by the anecdote’s appearance today in a Sri Lankan newspaper.

Johnson in Austin

I’ve periodically noted at MediaMythAlert how media-driven myths, those dubious and improbable tales about the American news media, often find application in contexts abroad. The Sri Lanka newspaper, the Nation, invoked the “Cronkite Moment” in a commentary about last week’s WikiLeaks disclosure of military documents about the war in Afghanistan.

The commentary stated:

“When anchor and newsman Walter Cronkite, called the most trusted man in America, reported from Vietnam in 1967 [sic] that the war cannot be won, JFK’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson famously remarked to an aide, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.’

“The WikiLeaks revelations may not have a similar effect on the war in Afghanistan,” the commentary adds, “but it would surely make the task of victory, or even honourable withdrawal, even more difficult for the United States and its coalition partners.”

The Nation commentary certainly is on target about the impact of the WikiLeaks disclosure: Its effect has been notably modest.

But, then, so was the impact of the “Cronkite Moment,” when the CBS anchorman asserted in a special report broadcast February 27, 1968, that the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate.”

As I note in Getting It Wrong, my new book debunking media-driven myths, Cronkite’s assessment about the U.S. predicament in Vietnam was scarcely original or exceptional in early 1968.

The New York Times’ television critic, Jack Gould, noted in a review of the Cronkite’s program that the anchorman’s assessment “did not contain striking revelations” but served instead “to underscore afresh the limitless difficulties lying ahead and the mounting problems attending United States involvement.”

The power of the “Cronkite Moment” flows from its purported effect on Lyndon Johnson who, as the Nation commentary says, supposedly watched the program and as it ended uttered something to the effect of: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.”

A more common version has Johnson saying, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” But the accounts of what the president said vary markedly.

In any case, Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired. The president at the time was in Austin, Texas, making light-hearted comments at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally (see photo, above).

Moreover, I write in Getting It Wrong:

“Even if he later heard—or heard about— Cronkite’s assessment, it was no epiphany for Johnson. Not long after the program, Johnson gave a rousing, lectern-pounding speech in which he urged a ‘total national effort’ to win the war in Vietnam.”

Johnson’s change of heart on Vietnam, I note in Getting It Wrong, “came about through a complex process in which Cronkite’s views counted for little. Among the forces and factors that influenced Johnson’s thinking … was the counsel of an influential and informal coterie of outside advisers known as the ‘Wise Men.’

“They included such foreign policy notables as Dean Acheson, a former secretary of state; McGeorge Bundy, a former National security adviser to Kennedy and Johnson; George Ball, a former under-secretary of state; Douglas Dillon, a former treasury secretary; General Omar Bradley, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Abe Fortas, a U.S. Supreme Court justice and friend of Johnson.

“The ‘Wise Men’ had met in November 1967, and expressed their near-unanimous support for Johnson’s Vietnam policy. They met again, at the request of the White House, in late March 1968.”

Largely, though not unanimously, the “Wise Men,” expressed opposition to escalating the war in Vietnam. And Johnson appeared shaken by the advice.

The counsel of the Wise Men represented a tipping point in Johnson’s deciding to seek“peace in Vietnam through negotiations. And in a speech March 31, 1968, the president announced a limited halt to U.S. aerial bombing of North Vietnam as an inducement to the communist government in Hanoi to enter peace talks.

He also announced then he would not seek reelection to the presidency.

WJC

Related:

, , , , , ,

WikiLeaks disclosure no ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on July 27, 2010 at 9:39 am

The WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of secret military documents about the war in Afghanistan has been likened–erroneously–to the mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite declared the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

Cronkite

A commentary posted today at the Huffington Post is among the latest to make the dubious connection. The commentary said Cronkite’s “assessment of the war is often credited as the turning point for American public opinion, moving opposition to the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam into the mainstream. Reportedly, upon hearing this commentary, President Lyndon Johnson said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.’

“I can’t help wonder if the release of the Afghan War Logs by WikiLeaks is our Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. In fact, when I consider the totality of the recent news on our efforts in Afghanistan, I can’t reach any other conclusion than that if Cronkite was still alive, he would say we have.”

Given that the WikiLeaks documents contain little that was previously unknown about the conflict, disclosure is unlikely to amount to the “Cronkite moment for Afghanistan.”

More important, the “Cronkite Moment” wasn’t very decisive at all.

It really wasn’t much of a “moment.”

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths, Cronkite himself disputed the notion that his assessment about Vietnam had had much effect on Johnson or on U.S. war policy. For example, in promoting his memoir in 1997, Cronkite likened his “mired in stalemate” commentary to a straw on the back of a crippled camel.

He repeated the analogy in 1999, stating in an interview with CNN: “I think our broadcast simply was another straw on the back of a crippled camel.”

Only late in his life did Cronkite embrace the presumptive power of the so-called “Cronkite Moment,” telling Esquire in 2006: “To be honest, I was rather amazed that my reporting from Vietnam had such an effect on history.”

As I further discuss in Getting It Wrong, President Johnson did not see Cronkite’s show when it aired February 27, 1968, and therefore “did not have–could not have had–the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him.”

At the time Cronkite intoned his “mired in stalemate” assessment, Johnson was in Austin, Texas, offering light-hearted remarks at the birthday party for Texas Governor John Connally, a longtime political ally.

“Today you are 51, John,” the president said. “That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority. Throughout the years we have worked long and hard—and I might say late—trying to maintain it, too.”

Even if Johnson later saw the Cronkite program on videotape, he “gave no indication of having taken the anchorman’s message to heart,” I write in Getting It Wrong.

Not long after Cronkite’s program, Johnson delivered a rousing speech in Minneapolis, in which he urged “a total national effort” to win the war in Vietnam. That speech was given March 18, 1968, and in it, the president declared:

“We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing worse than surrender and cowardice.”

Johnson’s aggressive remarks are quite difficult to square with his supposedly downcast, self-pitying reaction to the supposed “Cronkite Moment.”

Moreover, as I discussed yesterday at MediaMythAlert, public opinion polls show that Americans’ views about the war had begun to shift in 1967, months before the “Cronkite Moment.”

WJC

Related: