Liberal Walter Cronkite Was Also Unethical

Biography paints Cronkite’s darker side
To millions of TV news viewers, Walter Cronkite might well have been the most trusted man in America. But, according to a new biography, he committed unethical, biased no-nos that would get him fired these days, writes Newsweek's Howard Kurtz.
Kurtz describes the new book, Cronkite, by Douglas Brinkley, as "sweeping and masterful" in its portrayal of the newsman who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981.

Kurtz draws on his own first-hand dealings with Cronkite, who died in 2009. After reading the book, which will be released May 29, Kurtz notes that the former anchor was not exactly the man he knew.

In reading this first major biography of Cronkite, I came to realize that the man who once dominated television journalism was more complicated—and occasionally more unethical—than the legend that surrounds him. Had Cronkite engaged in some of the same questionable conduct today—he secretly bugged a committee room at the 1952 GOP convention—he would have been bashed by the blogs, pilloried by the pundits, and quite possibly ousted by his employer.​

Kurtz also writes that Cronkite was much more liberal than TV viewers would have thought. He dissed Barry Goldwater on the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination.

[Related: Key witness says Sirhan Sirhan didn't act alone]

In another questionable move, he met privately with Robert Kennedy and encouraged him to run for president, only later to get an exclusive interview to discuss Kennedy's plan to run for president. Kurtz adds:

I am shaking my head at the spectacle of a network anchor secretly urging a politician to mount a White House campaign—and then interviewing him about that very question. This was duplicitous, a major breach of trust.​

There also was the time when Cronkite spliced unflattering segments of an interview with Johnson about the Vietnam War—editing that was later undone by CBS.

And despite the news anchor's "pipe-puffing family man" image, Cronkite did get into a bit of, er, manly mischief. Kurtz notes a reference in the biography to a night that Cronkite went to an "infamous topless bar."

[Cronkite] was later spotted dining with a go-go dancer in a miniskirt and plunging neckline. Cronkite drew a bit of tabloid attention for his exploits; I can only imagine what TMZ would have done with the inevitable paparazzi shots.​

Indeed, you do have to wonder.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/biography-paints-cronkite-darker-side-175158957.html

 

We couldn't trust the lamestream media even before it WAS called the lamestream media.

 

You're outraged about something that may have happended over 50 years ago but silent about NewCorp aka Fox tapping people's phones today? I thought we couldn't look backwards past January 20th 2009 because that is when history started in this country. Rethugs!

 

Cronkite has long been reviled (correctly, in my opinion) by those on the right for his subtle but transparent editorializing, even as he presented a supposedly impartial rundown of the day's news. Considering the adulation given by many of the same people to clearly biased news presentations from the current "most trusted news source" (including blatant misinformation repeatedly excused as "mistakes"), I have to laugh.

The yahoo news article quoted and linked above is in my opinion a poor rehash (with quotes) of Howard Kurtz's piece on the biography.

 

Hey I recently learned about this guy named William Hearst. His daddy gave him a newspaper about 200 years ago when Billy was young and aimless and when newspapers were just about all that people had when it came to getting news.

He takes this thing and through very selective coverage, saber rattling, war mongering, tabloid sensationalism and pure newspaper marketing genius (plus contacts) turns it into a media empire that set a new model for the industry and blazed the way for giants like Ruppy Murdoch, not to mention tertiary hacks such as the late Breitbart. Kind of ironic cuz Hearst considered himself a Democrat most of the time. I was really struck by his eerie resemblance to that Citizen Kane guy in the movie of the same name made by that well-known RW progagandist Orson Wells.

Anyway, I guess it just goes to show you. Oh btw, if you couldn't tell I'm sooo outraged by this whole thing. All the horrible revelations in this thread about W Cronkite and the "Lame Stream" media. Shocking. Simply Shocking.

 

Dan Rather kept the proud line of CBS anchors going...

 

North Vietnam lost the Tet offensive. It was a miiltary disaster but they knew that going in and wanted the leftist american media coverage that would be a major proganda victory that would lead to winning the war. Cronkite did not practice yellow journalism like Hearst but rather red journalism.