W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘1968’

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Murrow, Cronkite myths cited in Poland’s top paper

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times, Newspapers, Watergate myth on January 4, 2011 at 10:25 am

I’ve discussed from time to time at Media Myth Alert how media-driven myths about the U.S. news media have a way of traveling well and finding expression in news outlets overseas.

Watergate-related myths are notable examples of this tendency.

A couple of prominent media myths popped up yesterday in an article posted at the online site of Gazeta Wyborca, the leading daily in Poland and a newspaper with a remarkable past.

Gazeta Wyborca traces its lineage to what was the leading underground newspaper in Poland of the 1980s, Tygodnik Mazowsze. The clandestine title appeared under the noses of Poland’s communist authorities, week after week, from 1982 to 1989–some 290 issues in all.

Tygodnik Mazowsze was run almost entirely by women affiliated with Poland’s then-banned Solidarity opposition. When the country’s communist rulers permitted Solidarity candidates to stand in elections in 1989, one of the conditions was that the movement be permitted to publish an above-ground newspaper.

So the staff of Tygodnik Mazowsze moved up from the underground to launch Gazeta Wyborca, which means “electoral newspaper.” In the years since, Gazeta has become the dominant news outlet in Poland, which now is a thriving democracy.

Gazeta yesterday referred to the debate that bubbled last week in U.S. news media over a New York Times article that likened TV comedian Jon Stewart to legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow.

Gazeta noted that U.S. news media “triumphantly” mentioned “cases in which journalists have changed the course of history” and referred to Murrow’s “instrumental” role in ending Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communists-in-government witch-hunt.

It also noted CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s criticism of the Vietnam War in 1968, which supposedly forced President Lyndon Johnson to realize his war policy was a shambles.

It’s too bad Gazeta didn’t point out that both cases are media-driven myths.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, Murrow was quite late in confronting McCarthy, doing so most prominently in a half-hour television program that aired March 9, 1954.

That show came months, even years after other American journalists–notably, syndicated columnist Drew Pearson–had reported critically, closely, and often about McCarthy and his exaggerated charges.

“To be sure,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “it wasn’t as if Americans in early 1954 were hoping for someone to step up and expose McCarthy, or waiting for a white knight like Murrow to tell them about the toxic threat the senator posed.”

By then, they knew all too well.

Nor was Cronkite at the cutting edge of criticism of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.

Far from it.

The CBS anchorman declared in a televised special report on February 27, 1968, that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam.

LBJ in Texas, February 27, 1968

But that scarcely was a remarkable assertion.

As I note in Getting It Wrong, “stalemate” had been appearing as early as the summer of 1967 in New York Times editorials and analyses about the war.

What supposedly made the Cronkite characterization stand out is that President Johnson saw the program and, as it ended, said to an aide or aides, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or something to that effect.

But in fact, Johnson wasn’t in front of a television set that night. He didn’t see the Cronkite program when it aired.

At the time Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” assessment, Johnson was offering light-hearted banter in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of one of his longtime political allies, Governor John Connally.

So it’s difficult to fathom how Johnson could have been much moved by a program that he hadn’t seen.

WJC

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Likening Jon Stewart to Murrow: ‘Ignorant garbage’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times on December 28, 2010 at 12:04 am

Murrow

The New York Times piece that extravagantly compared TV comedian Jon Stewart to Edward R. Murrow stirred considerable discussion yesterday in the blogosphere and beyond.

The most incisive and inspired characterization I encountered was that of Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. He was quoted by ABC News as saying that likening Stewart to Murrow or legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite “is childish, it is garbage, it is ignorant garbage.”

Ignorant garbage: Scathing but accurate, indeed.

Gitlin, whom I do not know, also was quoted as saying, quite correctly, that Stewart “is not a news person. He’s a satirist and when he chooses to be blunt, he has the luxury of being blunt.” Stewart is host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Embedded in the Times article were two prominent media-driven myths, both of which I address and debunk in my latest book, Getting It Wrong.

One was the notion that Murrow’s half-hour television report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in 1954 turned public opinion against the senator and his communists-in-government witch-hunt. In fact, however, McCarthy’s favorable ratings had been falling for a few months before Murrow’s program, which aired March 9, 1954.

The other embedded myth was the allusion to the “Cronkite Moment” of February 1968. That was when Cronkite declared on-air that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam. Supposedly, Cronkite’s analysis was an epiphany for President Lyndon Johnson, who suddenly realized his war policy was a shambles.

But as I note in Getting It Wrong, Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment was scarcely novel or stunning at the time. And Johnson didn’t even see the Cronkite report when it aired. He was in Austin, Texas, attending a birthday party for a longtime political ally, Governor John Connally (see photo).

LBJ didn't see Cronkite show

As such, it is very difficult to believe the president was much moved by a program that he hadn’t watched.

Left largely unaddressed in the discussion of the Times claim about Stewart, Murrow, and Cronkite is why–what accounts for the appeal of such extravagant characterizations?

In part, they are driven by an understandable urge to distill and simplify history–to be able to grasp the essence of important historical events while sidestepping their inherent complexity, messiness, and nuance.

Characterizations such as those in the Times yesterday also seek to ratify the importance of contemporary television personalities, to locate in them the virtues and values that supposedly animated the likes of Murrow and Cronkite.

Such an impulse skirts, if not indulges in, the “golden age” fallacy.

But it should be noted that Murrow, in particular, was no white knight, no paragon of journalistic virtue.

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, Murrow’s biographers have acknowledged that the broadcasting legend added to his employment application at CBS five years to his age and claimed to have majored in college in international relations and political science.

He had been a speech major at Washington State University.

Murrow also passed himself off as the holder of a master’s degree from Stanford University–a degree he never earned.

And Cronkite for years pooh-poohed the notion that his 1968 program on Vietnam had much effect on Johnson and U.S. war policy. Cronkite said in his memoir, A Reporter’s Life, that his  “mired in stalemate” assessment represented for Johnson “just one more straw in the increasing burden of Vietnam.”

Cronkite later told the CNBC cable network that he doubted the program “had a huge significance.

“I think it was a very small straw on a very heavy load [Johnson] was already carrying.”

Only late in his life, as the so-called “Cronkite Moment” gained legendary dimension, did Cronkite begin to embrace the anecdote’s purported power.

“It never occurred to me,” Cronkite said in 2004, that the 1968 program “was going to have the effect it had.”

But Cronkite’s initial interpretation was most accurate: The show had little to no effect on policy or public opinion.

WJC

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Two myths and today’s New York Times

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Murrow-McCarthy myth, New York Times on December 27, 2010 at 1:33 am

Today’s New York Times offers up a double-myth story, a rare article that incorporates two prominent media-driven myths.

The Times invokes the Murrow-McCarthy and “Cronkite Moment” myths in suggesting that TV comedian Jon Stewart is a latter-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow for advocating congressional approval of a health-aid package for first responders to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

That’s certainly a stretch.

But here’s what the Times says in presenting its double dose of media myths–both of which are addressed and debunked in my latest book, Getting It Wrong:

  • “Edward R. Murrow turned public opinion against the excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.”
  • “Walter Cronkite’s editorial about the stalemate in the war in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive in 1968 convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson that he had lost public support and influenced his decision a month later to decline to run for re-election.”

Both claims are delicious, and often invoked as evidence of the power of the news media.

But both claims are specious.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, public opinion began turning against McCarthy well before Murrow’s often-recalled half-hour television report in March 1954 that scrutinized the senator and his communists-in-government witch-hunt.

Specifically, I note Gallup Poll data showing McCarthy’s appeal having crested in December 1953, when 53 percent of Americans said they had a favorable view of him. The senator’s favorable rating fell to 40 percent by early January 1954, and to 39 percent in February 1954, when an almost identical number of Americans viewed him unfavorably.

“To be sure,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “it wasn’t as if Americans in early 1954 were hoping for someone to step up and expose McCarthy, or waiting for a white knight like Murrow to tell them about the toxic threat the senator posed.

“By then, McCarthy and his tactics were well-known and he had become a target of withering ridicule—a sign of diminished capacity to inspire dread.”

On March 9, 1954, the day Murrow’s See It Now program on McCarthy was aired, former president Harry Truman reacted to reports of an anonymous threat against McCarthy’s life by quipping:

“We’d have no entertainment at all if they killed him.”

And long before Murrow took on McCarthy, “several prominent journalists—including the Washington-based syndicated columnist Drew Pearson—had become persistent and searching critics of McCarthy, his record, and his tactics,” I note.

A 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 “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam.

I point out in Getting It Wrong that by early 1968, Cronkite’s assessment was neither novel nor exceptional.

Indeed, the Times had reported August 1967, months before Cronkite’s on-air assessment, that the war effort was not going well.

Victory in Vietnam, the Times said then, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

The article appeared on the front page August 7, 1967, beneath the headline:

“Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate”

That wasn’t only occasion in 1967 when the Times invoked “stalemate” to characterize the war. In a news analysis published July 4, 1967, the newspaper stated:

“Many officers believe that despite the commitment of 466,000 United States troops now in South Vietnam … the military situation there has developed into a virtual stalemate.”

Moreover, the Times anticipated Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” commentary in an editorial published February 8, 1968.

“Politically as well as militarily,” the editorial declared, “stalemate increasingly appears as the unavoidable outcome of the Vietnam struggle.”

So “stalemate” was much in the air weeks and months before Cronkite invoked the word on television.

Moreover, as I note in Getting It Wrong, President Johnson didn’t even see the Cronkite program when it aired February 27, 1968.

Johnson wasn’t at the White House that night. And he wasn’t in front of a TV set.

The president was in Austin, Texas, offering light-hearted remarks at the 51st birthday party of a longtime political ally, Governor John Connally.

About the time Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” assessment, 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.”

It’s difficult to make a persuasive case that the president could have been much moved by a television report he didn’t see.

Not only that, but Johnson may have decided in 1967 or even earlier against seeking reelection in 1968. He wrote in his memoir, The Vantage Point: “Long before I settled on the proper forum to make my announcement, I had told a number of people of my intention not to run again.”

Johnson’s memoir, by the way, has nothing to say about the Cronkite program of February 1968.

WJC

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Many thanks for Ed Driscoll and Jim Romenesko for linking to this post

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Knocking down the ‘Cronkite Moment’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, New York Times on December 22, 2010 at 9:28 am

That’s more like it.

A blog sponsored by the 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 Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

The media myth has it that President Lyndon Johnson watched the Cronkite report and, upon hearing the anchorman’s “mired in stalemate” assessment, snapped off the television set and told an aide or aides:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Or something to that effect.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the tale almost certainly is a media myth.

Johnson didn’t see the Cronkite report when it aired on February 27, 1968. The president at the time was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, one of his longtime allies.

About the time Cronkite was intoning “mired in stalemate,” Johnson wasn’t lamenting the loss of the anchorman’s support. Johnson was making light-hearted comments 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.”

Moreover, there is no compelling evidence that Johnson saw the Cronkite program later, on videotape.

And as I point out 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.”

So here’s what the Hollywood Reporter blog said yesterday, in a column that discussed leading candidates for best motion picture of 2010:

“They say that when President LBJ saw newscaster Walter Cronkite editorialize against Vietnam, he said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.’ (Actually, this is an urban legend, but it’s a fine metaphor so it endures.)”

While it’s not entirely clear why the writer felt compelled to invoke the “Cronkite Moment,” that he promptly knocked it down is commendable.

Calling it out as dubious is necessary if the myth ever is to be unmade.

The “Cronkite Moment,” despite its wobbly and improbable elements, is a delicious story of a journalist telling truth to power–and producing a powerful effect. As such, it probably will live on.

It certainly will live on if efforts aren’t made repeatedly to call attention to its improbability: A news anchorman’s brief editorial statement was sufficient to alter a president’s thinking?

Come on.

It doesn’t work that way.

Besides, as I point out in Getting It Wrong, Cronkite’s assessment of the U.S. war effort was hardly original.

Nearly seven months before the “Cronkite Moment,” the New York Times had reported the war in Vietnam “is not going well.”

Victory, the Times said in August 1967, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

This analysis was published on the Times’ front page beneath the headline:

“Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

WJC

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Not off the hook with ‘reportedly’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, New York Times on December 17, 2010 at 10:08 am

“Reportedly” is a squishy weasel word that journalists use to deflect immediate responsibility or as a buffer against blame.

LBJ at time of 'Cronkite Moment'

In invoking “reportedly,” journalists in effect are saying: “I can’t vouch for this statement first-hand, but others have used it. It’s in wide circulation.” So they slap “reportedly” before the claim and go with it.

The mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968–when the on-air assessment of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite supposedly altered U.S. policy in Vietnam–invites such usage.

Today’s Dallas Morning News invokes the r-word in a column on the entertainment page that parenthetically recalls the “Cronkite Moment.”

The column referred to CBS newsman Bob Schieffer and his comments about Afghanistan, offered at a recent luncheon in Dallas. It states:

“Schieffer took a page out of Cronkite’s book and expressed his skepticism about our approach to the war in Afghanistan. (After Cronkite’s 1968 editorial on Vietnam, LBJ reportedly said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.’)”

“Reportedly” doesn’t let the journalist off the hook of responsibility. It’s a thin cover, a vague caveat. Its use doesn’t make the claim about the “Cronkite Moment” any less assertive.

Or any less the media myth.

I address and debunk the “Cronkite Moment” in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, pointing out that until late in his life even Cronkite pooh-poohed the notion his program on Vietnam had much effect on U.S. policy.

The program that gave rise to the “Cronkite Moment” was an hour-long special report that aired February 27, 1968. Near the close of program, Cronkite declared the U.S. military in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate” and suggested that negotiations might eventually lead to a way out.

At the White House, President Lyndon Johnson supposedly watched the Cronkite program and, upon hearing the anchorman’s assessment, switched off the television set and muttered to an aide or aids:

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

Or something to that effect. Versions vary markedly.

But as I point out in Getting It Wrong, Johnson wasn’t at the White House that night. He did not see the Cronkite program when it aired, and there is no solid evidence he later watched the show on videotape.

And as Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” assessment, Johnson was in Texas, making light-hearted comments at the 51st birthday party of 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.”

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.”

The show was no epiphany for Johnson; it offered no flash of insight that his war policy was a shambles. Indeed, it is difficult to fathom how the president could have been much moved by a television program he had not seen.

What’s more, Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” assessment was hardly a stunning interpretation in early 1968. It was neither notable nor extraordinary for the time.

Indeed, nearly seven months before Cronkite’s program, the New York Times had cited “disinterested observers” in reporting that the war in Vietnam “is not going well.”

Victory, the Times reported, “is not close at hand. It may be beyond reach.”

This analysis was published on the Times’ front page in August 1967, beneath the headline:

“Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.”

Given the that earlier reporting, Cronkite might well have said on his program about Vietnam that the U.S. war effort was “reportedly mired in stalemate.”

WJC

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‘Spiegel’ thumbsucker invokes Watergate myth

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on December 14, 2010 at 10:20 am

In the fallout from the Wikileaks disclosure of 25o,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, commentators seeking a point of reference sometimes have turned to what I call the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate.

The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel is the latest to do so, offering up the Watergate myth in a thumbsucker about Wikileaks, posted in English yesterday at its online site. The commentary–titled “Is Treason a Civic Duty?”–included this passage:

“The Washington Post, whose reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein once exposed the Watergate affair, describes WikiLeaks as a ‘criminal organization.'”

That passage has two significant problems.

First, searches of the LexisNexis database produce no reference to the Post or its online affiliate washingtonpost.com having taken an editorial view that Wikileaks is a “criminal organization.”

Indeed, just last Sunday the Post declared in an editorial that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange acted “irresponsibly” in releasing the cache of diplomatic cables. “But that does not mean he has committed a crime,” the Post added.

The newspaper did run a column in August by Marc A. Thiessen who called Wikileaks “a criminal enterprise. Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible–including to the United States’ enemies.”

But Thiessen is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who writes a weekly op-ed column for the Post. As such, he hardly sets or expresses the newspaper’s editorial policy.

Second, and far more pertinent to Media Myth Alert, is the reference in the Spiegel essay to Woodward and Bernstein’s having “once exposed the Watergate affair.”

They didn’t.

The seminal crime of the Watergate scandal was a break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The crime was thwarted by local police and word of the arrest of five Watergate burglars began circulating within hours.

The Post reported on June 18, 1972:

“Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.”

Woodward and Bernstein were listed as contributors to that report, which carried the byline of Alfred E. Lewis, a veteran police reporter.

The reporting of Woodward and Bernstein didn’t expose the cover-up of crimes linked to the break-in or the payment of hush money to the burglars, either. As I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, Woodward was quoted as saying in 1973 that those crucial aspects of the scandal were “held too close. Too few people knew. We couldn’t get that high.”

Nor did Woodward and Bernstein expose or disclose the existence of the White House audiotaping system that proved so pivotal to Watergate’s outcome.

Audiotapes secretly made by President Richard Nixon captured his approving a plan to impede the FBI investigation into the Watergate burglary and related crimes. The taping system was disclosed by investigators of the Senate select committee on Watergate, which convened hearings during spring and summer 1973.

The U.S. Supreme Court in July 1974 ordered Nixon to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor; he complied. The tapes’ contents forced him to resign the presidency.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, against “the tableau of prosecutors, courts, federal investigations, and bipartisan congressional panels, the contributions of Woodward and Bernstein [in exposing the Watergate scandal] were modest, and certainly not decisive.”

I also point out that principals at the Post “have acknowledged as much” over the years. They have sought from time to time to dispute the notion the newspaper brought down Nixon.

So Watergate is indeed a misleading point of reference in assessing the Wikileaks fallout.

Especially wrong-headed is the eagerness to ascribe great significance in the Wikileaks disclosures, including those of last summer. There was interest then in characterizing the leaks of Afghanistan war logs as another “Cronkite Moment.” Which they weren’t.

After all, the original “Cronkite Moment” of 1968 was a media-driven myth.

The Wikileaks disclosures–especially the recent release of diplomatic cables–have proven to be remarkably unshocking.

The cables have tended to confirm what many people who follow (and teach) foreign affairs and foreign policy have long known or suspected: The Saudis are fearful of the Iranian nuclear program and want it dismantled; the Chinese aren’t too keen about Kim Jong Il and his ilk in North Korea; Russia under Vladimir Putin has become a mafia regime; Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is a buffoon.

None of that comes as a shock or surprise.

If Assange and Wikileaks meant to sabotage U.S. foreign policy in the disclosure of the diplomatic cables, they’ve failed.

WJC

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Palin’s new book invokes ‘bra-burning’ stereotype

In Bra-burning, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Watergate myth on November 24, 2010 at 8:57 am

“Bra-burning,” I point out in my mythbusting book Getting It Wrong, was scarcely a common feature of feminist protests of the 1960s and 1970s, stereotypes and popular narratives notwithstanding.

The enduring and popular notion of numerous, demonstrative bra-burnings–that female protestors in those days set their bras afire and twirled them over their heads–“is fanciful and highly exaggerated,” I write.

At most, women’s liberation demonstrators at Atlantic City in September 1968, briefly set bras and other items afire, an episode that may best be described as “bra-smoldering.”

At most, ‘bra-smoldering’

But there was no flamboyant bra-burning that day at Atlantic City, no fiery spectacle, no bonfire of bras. (See photo.) “Fire at most was a modest and fleeting aspect of the protest that day,” I write in Getting It Wrong.

Despite the thin evidentiary record, “bra-burning” lives on as a convenient if misleading shorthand phrase in “describing the upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s,” as I note in Getting It Wrong. I  point out that “bra-burning” long has been “invoked as a defining phrase, or cliché, of those troubled times—as in ‘the era of bra-burning,’ ‘the hysteria of bra-burning,’ the time of ‘raucous bra burning,'” and the like.

To those misleading turns of phrase, Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, adds “1960s-era bra-burning militancy.”

The phrase appears in America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, Palin’s second book, which came out yesterday.

Palin offers up “bra-burning militancy” in writing:

“Remember Hillary Clinton’s famous rant, when her husband was running for president, that she wasn’t, in her words, ‘some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette’? Hillary … came across then as someone frozen in an attitude of 1960s-era bra-burning militancy. She told us in no uncertain terms that she ‘could have stayed and baked cookies and had teas’ but preferred to pursue a serious career.”

The passage has attracted some comment–for its jab at Clinton, not for its historically incorrect reference to “bra-burning militancy.”

It’s regrettable, and more than a little unfair, that a misnomer like flamboyant “bra-burning” is so casually invoked in characterizing the 1960s and 1970s.

It’s unfortunate, too: Those turbulent times are prone to mythical treatment as it is–the mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968 and the heroic-journalist meme of the Watergate scandal both figure in Getting It Wrong.

But there’s no denying the perverse appeal of the term. It trips off the tongue in a blithe, faintly sneering sort of way: “Bra-burning.”

Stereotyping can be a hazard of media-driven myths, and there’s also no denying that stereotype is embedded in the phrase.

“Bra burning,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “has long been an off-hand way of ridiculing feminists and mocking their sometimes-militant efforts to confront gender-based discrimination in the home and the work place. Characterizations such as ‘bra-burning feminists,’ ‘the bra-burning women’s movement,’ ‘loud-mouthed, bra-burning, men-hating feminists,’ and ‘a 1960s bra-burning feminist’ have had currency for years.”

In its passage mentioning “bra-burning,” Palin’s book casually, almost off-handedly, serves to reinforce the stereotype.

WJC

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“Bra burning” also has long been an off-hand way of ridiculing feminists and mocking their sometimes-militant efforts to confront gender-based discrimination in the home and the work place. Characterizations such as “bra-burning feminists,”[i] “the bra-burning women’s movement,” “loud-mouthed, bra-burning, men-hating feminists,” and “a 1960s bra-burning feminist” have had currency for years.

[i] Tony Chamberlain, “Berman’s A Women’s Movement Unto Herself with Three Official Wins,” Boston Globe (16 April 2006): C1.

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‘Mired in stalemate’? How unoriginal of Cronkite

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, New York Times on November 22, 2010 at 12:57 pm

So unoriginal.

Hardly exceptional.

Those are ways to characterize Walter Cronkite’s famous assessment–offered in a special televised report in February 1968–that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

Cronkite’s characterization supposedly represented a moment of such stunning clarity and insight that it forced President Lyndon Johnson to realize his war policy was a shambles.

“If I’ve lost Cronkite,” Johnson supposedly said to an aide or aides after seeing the special report, “I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or words to that effect.

And a month later, Johnson announced he was not running for election–a decision often linked, if erroneously, to Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” analysis about Vietnam.

I dispute the power and impact of the so-called “Cronkite Moment” in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, which addresses and debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths. I point out that Johnson didn’t even see the Cronkite program when it aired on CBS on February 27, 1968.

I further note in Getting It Wrong that “stalemate” had been invoked  months before the “Cronkite Moment” to describe the war in Vietnam. Notably, the New York Times published a front-page analysis on August 7, 1967, that declared “the war is not going well. Victory is not close at hand.”

The Times report was published on its front page beneath the headline:

Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate.

And that wasn’t only occasion in 1967 and early 1968 when the Times turned to “stalemate” to characterize the war.

A review of database articles reveals that “stalemate” was raised not infrequently, and that the Johnson administration disputed the characterization.

And all this was months before the supposed insight offered by Cronkite.

For example, in a news analysis published July 4, 1967, the Times said of the war effort:

“Many officers believe that despite the commitment of 466,000 United States troops now in South Vietnam … the military situation there has developed into a virtual stalemate.”

The Times report of August 7, 1967, which was filed from Saigon, elaborated on that view and included this observation:

“‘Stalemate’ is a fighting word in Washington. President Johnson rejects it as a description of the situation in Vietnam. But it is the word used by almost all Americans here, except the top officials, to characterize what is happening. They use the word for many reasons ….”

Johnson was confronted with that “fighting word” during a news conference August 18, 1967. He was asked whether “we have reached a stalemate in the Vietnam war.”

The president gave a rambling answer, but ended up rejecting the characterization of stalemate as “nothing more than propaganda.”

Johnson also said, apparently in reference to the communist North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies: “I think that our–there are those who are taking a pretty tough drubbing out there that would like for our folks to believe there’s a stalemate.”

Moreover, four months before Cronkite’s report, the Times said in an editorial that the Johnson administration should embrace stalemate in Vietnam as a way of enabling peace talks and a negotiated settlement of the war.

The logic was intriguing if not entirely persuasive. Here’s what the Times said in that editorial, published October 29, 1967:

“Instead of denying a stalemate in Vietnam, Washington should be boasting that it has imposed a stalemate, for that is the prerequisite–on both sides–to a negotiated settlement. That settlement, if it is to be achieved, will have to be pursued with the same ingenuity and determination that have been applied to fighting the war.”

Three months later, the Times anticipated Cronkite’s “mired in stalemate” commentary, stating in an editorial published February 8, 1968:

“Politically as well as militarily, stalemate increasingly appears as the unavoidable outcome of the Vietnam struggle.”

Cronkite said in wrapping up his special report on February 27, 1968:

“To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.”

So why does all this matter? Why is it important to trace the use of “stalemate” to describe a long-ago war?

Doing so demonstrates how unexceptional Cronkite’s commentary was. And how middling it was, too. It’s scarcely the stuff of dramatic insight, scarcely the sort of comments that would have decisive effect.

Tracing the use of “stalemate” also serves to underscore the inconsequential nature of the purported “Cronkite Moment, which nonetheless remains among the hardiest myths of American journalism.

WJC

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Newsman tells ‘a simple truth,’ changes history: Sure, he did

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on November 21, 2010 at 2:42 pm

Media-driven myths, I write in my latest book, Getting It Wrong,  “tend to minimize or negate complexity in historical events and offer simplistic and misleading interpretations instead.”

Cronkite

So it is with the mythical “Cronkite Moment,” one of the most tenacious myths of American journalism.

An important reason for the myth’s hardiness is that it presents a simplified version of a supposed turning point in the long political career of President Lyndon Johnson.

The “Cronkite Moment” has it that CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite told truth to power in reporting that the U.S. military was “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam.

Supposedly, Johnson watched Cronkite’s special report on Vietnam, which aired February 27, 1968. Upon hearing the anchorman’s “mired in stalemate” assessment, the president switched off the television set and told an aide or aides:

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

Or something to that effect.

A blogger at CapeCodToday.com recounted the familiar and delicious tale of the “Cronkite Moment” yesterday, writing:

“President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said … after hearing Cronkite’s report, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.’ Not long after that, LBJ stepped down from office, refusing to run for a second term.

“A news person had told a simple truth, and it had helped change history.”

Of course Cronkite’s report on Vietnam had no such effect on history.

There is quite simply no link between the “Cronkite Moment” and Johnson’s decision–announced at the end of March 1968–not to stand for reelection that year.

None.

LBJ at moment of 'Cronkite Moment': Telling a joke

For starters, Johnson did not see the Cronkite report when it aired.

As I note in Getting It Wrong, the president at the time was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, a longtime political ally.

At about the moment Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” interpretation, Johnson was offering light-hearted banter 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.”

So at the time of the purported “Cronkite Moment,” Johnson wasn’t agonizing about having lost Cronkite’s support; he wasn’t overcome with angst about the war effort in Vietnam.

Johnson was telling a joke.

And it’s hard to argue that the president could have been much moved by a television report that he didn’t see.

Not only that, but Johnson may have decided in 1967 or even earlier not to stand for reelection in 1968. He wrote in his memoir, The Vantage Point: “Long before I settled on the proper forum to make my announcement, I had told a number of people of my intention not to run again.”

Given those factors, Cronkite’s show at the end of February 1968 recedes into trivial insignificance as a reason for Johnson’s decision–announced a month later–not to stand for reelection.

It certainly is an appealing notion that a newsman such as Cronkite could tell “a simple truth” and, by doing so, help change history.

But such a notion is more often the recipe for a media-driven myth than it is the foundation of historical accuracy.

WJC

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‘When I lost Cronkite’–or ‘something to that effect’

In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Reviews on November 20, 2010 at 9:46 am

I discuss in my mythbusting book Getting It Wrong how accounts vary widely as to what President Lyndon Johnson purportedly said in reacting to Walter Cronkite’s on-air commentary in 1968 that the U.S. military effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate.”

Acute version variability has taken hold over the years and, as suggested by a theatrical review in yesterday’s Washington Times, fresh versions as to what Johnson said keep popping up.

Many published accounts have said Johnson’s reaction was: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”

Other accounts quote the president as saying: “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.”

The most common published version probably is: “If I lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” It’s the version Cronkite included in his 1997 memoir, A Reporter’s Life.

In any case, version variability of such magnitude, I write in Getting It Wrong, signals more than laziness and reluctance to trace the derivation of a popular anecdote. The shifting versions of what Johnson supposedly said are an indicator the Cronkite-Johnson anecdote is bogus, a marker of a media-driven myth.

After all, the remarks and utterances of the president of the United States are among the most carefully chronicled. The many inconsistent accounts of Johnson’s remarks are akin to the effects of a tall tale that changes with frequent retelling.

The latest version of Johnson purported response appeared in the Washington Times review of a comedy titled Walter Cronkite Is Dead, which recently opened at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, in suburban Washington, D.C.

The play isn’t much about Cronkite, the former CBS News anchorman who died 16 months ago. But the reviewer carries on about Cronkite at some length, and indulges in media myth in writing:

“Walter was regarded as the Gospel when it came to reporting the Vietnam War and his reports were instrumental in turning around the nation’s support for that war.

“Lyndon Johnson was reputed to have said of his own prospects, ‘When I lost Cronkite, I lost the election,’ or something to that effect. Not long after his observation, the beleaguered president dropped out of the 1968 electoral contest.”

Let’s consider the passages in bold: Both are dubious claims.

First, the notion that Cronkite’s views on the war in Vietnam “were instrumental” in altering public opinion.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, American public opinion had begun shifting against the war months before Cronkite offered his “mired in stalemate” assessment in special report that aired February 27, 1968.

By October 1967, 47 percent of Americans, a plurality, maintained that U.S. military presence in Vietnam was a mistake, according to Gallup surveys.

In a Gallup poll completed in early February 1968, three weeks before the Cronkite special report, the proportion saying the war was a mistake stood at 46 percent. Forty-two percent said it had not been a mistake.

As for the purported Johnson comment, “When I lost Cronkite, I lost the election”–it’s assuredly bogus. Johnson had stood in no election at the time of Cronkite’s commentary. The Democratic primary election in New Hampshire was a couple of weeks away, and Johnson would win as a write-in candidate.

More important, Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired.

The president at the time was in Austin, Texas, attending the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally, a longtime political ally.

Quite simply, Johnson could not have had “the abrupt yet resigned reaction that so often has been attributed to him,” as I write in Getting It Wrong. It’s illogical to argue he was much moved by a television report he hadn’t seen.

There is, moreover, no evidence Johnson later watched 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.”

WJC

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