[Peace-discuss] Fw: Cronkite's Unintended Legacy

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Subject: Cronkite's Unintended Legacy


> Cronkite's Unintended Legacy
> 
> by Robert Parry
> 
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/20-9
> Original: Published on Monday, 07/20/09 by Consortium News
> http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/071909.html
> 
> 
> With his measured calm and seriousness of purpose,
> Walter Cronkite set a high standard for television
> journalism that has rarely been met since his
> retirement in 1981. But the legendary CBS anchorman who
> died Friday also may have unintentionally contributed
> to the American Left's dangerous complacency about
> media.
> 
> The feeling of many Americans (especially liberals)
> about the Cronkite era was that journalists could be
> trusted to give the news reasonably straight.
> 
> Though far from perfect, the Cronkite generation stood
> up to Sen. Joe McCarthy's red-baiting, showed the
> nation the injustices of racial segregation, revealed
> the brutality of the Vietnam War (even while being
> largely sympathetic to its goals), exacted some measure
> of accountability for President Richard Nixon's
> political crimes and took a generally serious approach
> to informing the citizenry.
> 
> Cronkite personified the notion that TV news was a
> public service, not just a revenue stream or an
> opportunity to place ads around feel-good features.
> Yet, in that way, Cronkite contributed to complacency
> among many mainstream and liberal Americans who
> believed that the U.S. news media, though flawed, would
> continue to serve as an early-warning system for the
> Republic - and that they could focus on other concerns.
> 
> The American Right, however, had a different
> perspective. Right-wingers saw the Cronkite-era news
> media as the enemy - undermining McCarthy's
> anti-communist crusade, laying the groundwork for an
> integrated America, eroding public support for the
> Vietnam War, hounding Nixon from office, and
> concentrating public attention on various social
> problems.
> 
> Cronkite was singled out for contempt because of his
> perceived role in turning Americans against the Vietnam
> War, especially after the surprise communist Tet
> Offensive in 1968. After returning from a trip to
> Vietnam, Cronkite closed his Feb. 27, 1968, newscast
> with a personal analysis of the situation.
> 
> "To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only
> realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion," Cronkite
> said. "It is increasingly clear to this reporter that
> the only rational way out then will be to negotiate,
> not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up
> to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best
> they could."
> 
> After the broadcast, President Lyndon Johnson is
> reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've
> lost the country." Johnson began serious negotiations
> aimed at ending the war before he left office, an
> endeavor that the Nixon campaign surreptitiously
> sabotaged.
> 
> In 1972, Cronkite also gave traction to the
> investigation of Nixon's Watergate spying by devoting
> 14 minutes of one newscast to explain the complex
> political-corruption story.
> 
> Plotting on the Right
> 
> By the mid-1970s, with the Vietnam War lost and Nixon
> ousted, key strategists on the Right pondered how to
> make sure another Watergate scandal wouldn't unseat a
> future Republican President and how to guarantee that
> another anti-war movement wouldn't sink a future
> Vietnam War.
> 
> The Right settled on a two-pronged media strategy:
> build an ideologically committed right-wing media and
> organize anti-press attack groups that would put
> mainstream journalists on the defensive.
> 
> Led by Nixon's former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon,
> conservatives at key foundations coordinated their
> grants to support right-wing magazines and to fund
> attack groups. Later, other right-wing financiers, such
> as Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian media
> mogul Rupert Murdoch, joined the mix.
> 
> Through the 1980s and 1990s, a vertically integrated
> right-wing media machine took shape, reaching from
> print forms like books, newspapers and magazines to
> electronic forms like cable TV, talk radio and the
> Internet. Wealthy right-wingers poured tens of billions
> of dollars into this process.
> 
> The investment made sure that Americans across the
> country got a steady diet of right-wing propaganda from
> radios, TV and print products, while mainstream
> journalists who dug up information that challenged the
> Right's propaganda came under coordinated attack. Many
> independent-minded journalists were pushed to the
> margins or forced out of the profession altogether.
> 
> The mainstream news personalities who survived knew
> that their livelihoods could be stripped away at a
> moment's notice if they were deemed by the Right to
> possess a "liberal bias." Many journalists twisted
> themselves into contortions so as not to anger the
> Right.
> 
> Meanwhile, the American Left made the opposite choice.
> Apparently believing that professionals like Cronkite
> would stay in charge of mainstream news, well-heeled
> liberals put their money into almost everything but
> media.
> 
> The Left largely ignored media in favor of "grassroots
> organizing" and embraced the slogan: "think globally,
> act locally." Progressives increasingly put their
> resources into well-intentioned projects, such as
> buying endangered wetlands or feeding the poor.
> 
> So, while the Right engaged in "information warfare" -
> seeking to control the flow of information to the
> American public - the Left trusted that Walter Cronkite
> and future Walter Cronkites would keep the nation
> honestly informed.
> 
> However, in 1981, just as right-wing Republican Ronald
> Reagan took control in Washington, Cronkite retired as
> the CBS Evening News anchor at the age of 64. He soon
> found himself excluded from any significant role at the
> network he helped build.
> 
> Then, backed by the Reagan administration's
> tough-minded "public diplomacy" teams, the Right ramped
> up the pressure on Washington news bureaus to rein in
> or get rid of troublesome journalists - achieving that
> goal with a stunning measure of success. [For details
> on this strategy, see Robert Parry's Secrecy &
> Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to
> Iraq.]
> 
> Failure on the Left
> 
> As those right-wing pressures began to take a toll on
> reporters at the national level, the progressives
> focused on more immediate priorities, such as filling
> gaps in the social safety net opened by Reagan's
> policies.
> 
> With the numbers of homeless swelling and the AIDS
> epidemic spreading, the idea of diverting money to an
> information infrastructure seemed coldhearted. After
> all, the social problems were visible and immediate;
> the significance of the information battle was more
> theoretical.
> 
> In the early 1990s, I first began approaching major
> liberal foundations about the need to counter
> right-wing pressure on journalism (which I had seen
> first-hand at the Associated Press and Newsweek), but I
> received dismissive or bemused responses.
> 
> One foundation executive smiled and said, "we don't do
> media." Another foundation simply barred media
> proposals outright.
> 
> On occasion, when a few center-left foundations did
> approve media-related grants, they generally went for
> non-controversial projects, such as polling public
> attitudes or tracking money in politics, which
> condemned Democrats and Republicans about equally.
> 
> Meanwhile, through the 1990s, the Right poured billions
> of dollars into their media apparatus.
> 
> Young right-wing writers - such as David Brock and Ann
> Coulter - found they could make fortunes working within
> this structure. Magazine articles by star conservatives
> earned top dollar. Their books - promoted on right-wing
> talk radio and favorably reviewed in right-wing
> publications - jumped to the top of the best-seller
> lists.
> 
> (Brock broke from this right-wing apparatus in the late
> 1990s and described its inner workings in his book,
> Blinded by the Right. By then, however, Brock had
> gotten rich writing hit pieces against people who
> interfered with the Right's agenda, like law professor
> Anita Hill whose testimony about sexual harassment
> endangered Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination.)
> 
> As the 1990s wore on, mainstream journalists adapted to
> this altered media environment by trying desperately
> not to offend the Right. Working journalists knew that
> to do so could damage or destroy their careers. There
> was no comparable danger from offending the Left.
> 
> Thus, many Americans journalists - whether consciously
> or not - protected themselves by being harder on
> Democrats in the Clinton administration than they were
> on Republicans during the Reagan-Bush-41 years.
> 
> Indeed, through much of the 1990s, there was little to
> distinguish the Clinton scandal coverage in the
> Washington Post and the New York Times or on the
> network news from what was in the New York Post and the
> Washington Times or on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's
> show.
> 
> The animus toward Clinton spilled over into Campaign
> 2000 when the major media - both mainstream and
> right-wing - jumped all over Al Gore, freely misquoting
> him and subjecting him to almost unparalleled political
> ridicule. By contrast, George W. Bush - while viewed as
> slightly dimwitted - got the benefit of nearly every
> doubt. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Al Gore v. the Media"
> or "Protecting Bush-Cheney."]
> 
> Siding with Bush
> 
> During the Florida recount battle in November 2000,
> liberals watched passively as Republican activists from
> Washington staged a riot outside the Miami-Dade
> canvassing board, and the Washington Post's center-left
> columnist Richard Cohen called for the selection of
> Bush as "a likable guy who will make things better and
> not worse." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's
> Conspiracy to Riot or "Mob Rule Wins for W."]
> 
> Once five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court blocked
> a state-court-ordered recount and handed Bush the White
> House, both mainstream and right-wing news outlets
> acted as if it were their patriotic duty to rally
> around the legitimacy of the new President. [For more
> on this phenomenon, see our book Neck Deep.]
> 
> The protect-Bush consensus deepened after the Sept. 11,
> 2001, terror attacks as the national news media -
> almost across the board - transformed itself into a
> conveyor belt for White House propaganda. When the Bush
> administration put out dubious claims about Iraq's
> supposed weapons of mass destruction, the major
> newspapers rushed the information into print.
> 
> Many of the most egregious WMD stories appeared in the
> most prestigious establishment newspapers, the New York
> Times and the Washington Post. The New York Times
> fronted bogus assertions about the nuclear-weapons
> capabilities of aluminum tubes that were really for
> conventional weapons. Washington Post editorials
> reported Bush's allegations about Iraqi WMD as fact,
> not a point in dispute.
> 
> Anti-war protests involving millions of American
> citizens received largely dismissive coverage. Critics
> of the administration's WMD claims were ignored or
> derided. When Al Gore offered a thoughtful critique of
> Bush's preemptive-war strategy, he got savaged in the
> national media. [See Consortiumnews.com "Politics of
> Preemption."]
> 
> Over several decades, by investing smartly in media
> infrastructure, the Right had succeeded in reversing
> the media dynamic of the Cronkite era. Instead of a
> serious and skeptical press corps, most national
> journalists knew better than to risk losing their
> careers by getting in the way of the Republican
> juggernaut.
> 
> Many on the Left began acknowledging the danger of this
> media imbalance. But even as the disasters of the Bush
> presidency deepened, wealthy progressives continued to
> spurn proposals for building a media
> counter-infrastructure that could challenge the "group
> think" of Washington journalism and start pushing the
> mainstream news media back to its old principles.
> 
> The Left's media activities centered mostly on holding
> conferences to discuss "media reform," not actually
> doing journalism or building new outlets.
> 
> Some Hopeful Signs
> 
> However, there have been some hopeful signs for
> American liberals. The Air America radio network did
> get off the ground in 2004 (although only barely) and
> helped catapult two rising stars into prominence (Al
> Franken who is now a U.S. senator from Minnesota and
> Rachel Maddow who landed a liberal-oriented show on
> MSNBC).
> 
> But even that limited progress is fragile. General
> Electric has okayed an experimental lineup of liberal
> hosts on its evening MSNBC lineup (also including Ed
> Schultz and Keith Olbermann), a decision that could be
> easily reversed if ratings lag or corporate priorities
> change.
> 
> Meanwhile, the Right continues to consolidate its media
> dominance, either through direct ownership of outlets
> or from the residual impact of three decades of
> successfully intimidating mainstream journalists.
> 
> While Fox News delivers its usual right-wing fare,
> similar viewpoints are common at outlets like CNBC and
> CNN. While the Rev. Moon's Washington Times still
> publishes its right-wing diatribes, the Washington
> Post, the flagship of the Watergate coverage in the
> 1970s, has evolved into a neoconservative newspaper,
> especially its opinion pages.
> 
> The media asymmetry is also not without real-life
> consequences.
> 
> Even after the resounding victories of Barack Obama and
> the congressional Democrats in 2008, there remains a
> primal fear among many Democrats from states dominated
> by right-wing media when votes come up on health-care
> reform or other progressive goals.
> 
> Indeed, it's hard to understand why Democrats from
> Montana, Arkansas and other states remain so timid if
> one doesn't factor in the continuing U.S. media
> imbalance, which is especially intimidating in parts of
> the country where the right-wing media dominance is
> almost total, where a politician can be demonized by
> Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and pro-Republican outlets with
> little opportunity to mount a public defense.
> 
> Walter Cronkite was surely not to blame for this
> ongoing distortion of the American media-political
> process. It was the failure of CBS and other mainstream
> news outlets to live up to Cronkite's standards that
> enabled the Right to take the United States down this
> destructive path.
> 
> The blame also must be shared by the American Left,
> especially liberals with deep pockets, for not backing
> honest journalists who told the truth despite threats
> of career retribution - and for not investing in a
> media infrastructure that could defend the principles
> that Cronkite left behind. (c) 2009 Consortium News
> 
> Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in
> the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His
> latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of
> George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam
> and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy &
> Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate
> to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &
> 'Project Truth'. 
> 
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