As news reporting quickly segues into opinion journalism…
…it’s the public—and the facts—that are the great losers.
Tony Blankley has it right. The reporting on Basra was an excellent example of the decline of news coverage: practically no correspondents and no expertise, but no dearth of firm opinions and prognostications.
Blankley connects this problem to another story, concerning talks between CBS and CNN involving the former’s plan to cut back on news gathering sources, relying instead on the CNN feed.
It reminds me a bit of what Barnes and Noble has done in the bookselling world. News sources are collapsing in on themselves, and pretty soon we may be left with just the AP and CNN, and Al Jazeera. And then don’t be surprised if those three merge some day.
That’s a bit of a joke—at least, regarding Al Jazeera—but not it’s really not farfetched enough.
News gathering has always been an iffy and challenging proposition, especially in foreign countries. But with the explosion of 24-hour cable news coverage and the need to jump on a story before verifying it, the shrinking of print MSM revenues (competition from Craigslist one important factor), the decline of fact-checking and the overuse of the anonymous source, the emphasis on television news personalities’ looking good vs. knowing something, the cost (both financial and human) of placing staff in war zones or unstable countries, the need to suck up to dictatorships in order to continue what little presence a news organization already has there, and the growth of the use of the indigenous stringer, it’s not surprising that the foreign correspondent is at risk of becoming an endangered species.
With the paucity and unreliability of news has come another troubling trend that has greatly exacerbated the problem: the blurring of the distinction between news and opinion. Into the knowledge gap has come the analyzer and prognosticator. The watershed moment for this troubling development came at the hands of one of the supposed giants of old-fashioned journalism, Walter Cronkite, right after the Tet offensive in 1968.
I’ve written at great length about what caused Cronkite to take that leap (here and here), but the summary version is that “reporters getting the story” segued into “journalists with a calling to tell a higher truth.”
The fact that this higher truth might have little relation to facts—or what we used to regard as truth itself—is no barrier. And this attitude has only grown stronger since that fateful day when Uncle Walter took it upon himself to advise the American people.
In an interview that took place only two years ago, Cronkite recalled his famous Tet coverage (I almost wrote “policy speech,” because that’s what it was):
There is a point at which it seems to me if an individual reporter has gained a reputation of being honest, fair as can be, and helps the American people in trying to make a decision on a major issue, I think we ought to take that opportunity.
Cronkite had come to believe his own stellar reputation, based partly on his avuncular looks and that deep, reassuring voice. In his Tet reportage he went far beyond whatever facts were known about the campaign at the time and projected his own disappointment, anger, and disillusionment onto a future in which we would inevitably continue to be “mired in stalemate” forever in Vietnam, no matter what course we decided to take.
Cronkite’s hubris, however misplaced, at least had some basis in his position as one of the beloved and most highly respected journalists in history. Today’s journalists seem to have inherited that hubris en masse, with far less justification.
I think there is a fallacy that too many believe about news and that is that news agencies, news reporters or news outlets are supposed to be objective. It’s just not the case. Never has been and never will be. They are all made up of people. And people have opinions. And as soon as you make a decision to report one thing and not another you have made a subjective choice. When people [the public] is smart enough to figure that out then they can begin to make choices on their own from as many news agnecies as possible. From FOX to CNN from Al Jaseera to The Guardian. Unfortunately much of the public is not too canny on this.
Walter Cronkite was in a position where he could either continue to report many of the lies that Johnson et al were propagating thus being a tool of the government. Or he could express his feelings towards a war that many people were feeling bad about. He chose to not be a tool of the government. And that was because it was not a winnable war. And let’s face it, Vietnam was not winnable. It was a tragic war.
Iraq is different. It is winnable.
However I do not think the media have been completely against the war. There are many who are skeptical why we went there in the first place and what our overall objectives and goals are. There is also the fact that the planning of the war by the Administration has been pretty bad all along. And 4000 American soldier deaths is not nothing. When the media reports these things they are being honest.
This trend has been brewing for decades. I *highly* recommend “Three Blind Mice” by Ken Auletta. 20 years old, and it nailed the problem perfectly.
Matt,
If you had any deep and extensive knowledge of the military situation and what we were doing to the enemy in South Vietnam, you would not be saying that you agree with Cronkite that the war was unwinnable. Yes, I am accusing Cronkite of interjecting an opinion about the war that was biased in favor of Communist propaganda. Yes, he decided not to be a tool of the Johnson Administration, but he was a tool nonetheless of other actors in the drama. His late in life admission that he is a socialist says a lot.
The war was winnable if different strategies were pursued, but Johnson was gutless and Nixon was under tremendous pressure to make Vietnamization a very rapid process. Anyway, as it was we were utterly destroying the enemy on the ground, and the North Vietnamese generals have admitted as much. But they knew they had the agents of dizinformatzia over here and that the MSM was also on their side.
Cronkite knew dick about how much of a defeat the Tet Offensive was for the enemy when he went public with his opinion about the war.
Wrong Matt. As soon as we got McNamara out of the Defense Dept, we started to win the Vietnam war. In fact, we successfully trained and armed the South Vietnamese and removed over 99% of our troops. Look at US casualty lists for the early 70s. We won. We accomplished exactly what we are trying to accomplish in Iraq now.
Tet was early 1968. Saigon fell in April 75 — that’s seven years! It fell because the Dems in Congress reneged on our promises and cut off all military assistance to the South. Just as they are trying to do in Iraq.
Fredjr / Stan
You guys are re-writing history from a right wing perspective. You’re entitled to do this. But blaming Cronkite for Vietnam loss is off base. And blaming Nixon because he was under pressure! That’s classic. How much longer would we have had to be in Vietnam before we would have won? It’s pure speculation and moot at this point.
Americans get tired of long wars. Rightly or wrongly there comes a time when you have to call it quits or the American people demand change. Blame the people. Sorry – that’s the way I see it. Maybe Nixon had no balls and caved in? Blame Nixon. Don’t blame some other faction you don’t like.
Iraq is different – I will agree. I do not support immediate withdrawal. But I think many want an eventual draw down within the next couple of years. If we do pull out there will be this who will find a way to blame every democrat who agrees with this but then forgive every republican who thinks the same because they were under pressure. Please!
Or he could express his feelings towards a war that many people were feeling bad about. He chose to not be a tool of the government. And that was because it was not a winnable war.
Just cause you stepped on the fingers of a man desperately hanging onto a lifeline, thus causing him to fall to his death at the bottom of a canyon, doesn’t mean the man could never have held on and won the fight against gravity.
Cronkite didn’t express his feelings, Cronkite shilled for the North Vietnamese baby killers by declaring the war lost when he had no idea how wars were won or lost.
Americans get tired of long wars.
This must be why Americans are clamoring for US troop withdrawals from Korea, Japan, and Germany.
Blame the people.
Right. Let’s blame the man who fell to his death for being weak, just because he couldn’t hold on when you stepped on his fingers a few hundred times.
Blame Nixon. Don’t blame some other faction you don’t like.
Nixon wasn’t the one that cut off the air support and logistics support to the South Vietnamese Army successfully fighting off a Northern force armed, trained, and supplied by Soviets.
And let’s face it, Vietnam was not winnable. It was a tragic war.
Iraq is different. It is winnable.
I assure you that people just like you in the future will see Iraq as unwinnable when the Left and the Democrats made Iraq unwinnable.
Wars are won or lost because people made it that way. Not because it just happened.
Iraq’s going to become a tragic war when people like Teddy Kennedy that dropped the Vietnamese off a bridge will be doing the same thing to Iraq.
When I asked a Vietnam Vet friend of mine he told me, what was there to win in Vietnam,? We would have gotten nothing out of it. Sure we could have killed thousands of more North Vietnamese but do you really think you could have stopped a civil war?
Anyway, the American people vote [and voted] in the Democrats. Blame them. Blame the American people for apparently being dumb or not as astute and smart as the hard right wing voters. Seriously, who else can you blame? Ultimately this is your only argument. Dumb American voters – and TV watchers too.
Neocon! Great! The US military says we don’t have enough troops, when you joining up?
Don’t know how, no problem. I can tell you how. Where? no problem, we can use Google maps.
I’m sure you can’t wait to put your body where your mouth is. Oh, you’re not a Chicken Hawk, are you? Of course not, you’re Neo-Neocon Man! ha ha
Stewart Nusbaumer
USMC, Ret
Withdrawing from Vietnam was a big win for Cronkite. Not so much for the South Vietnamese and the Cambodians.
The neo-cons support Iraq. And for that they should lose a seat at the policy table. The folks that set in motion events that killed 1 to 3 million Cambodians and hundreds of thousands of our Vietnamese allies we call the Democratic leadership. Through the looking glass indeed.
Sweetie
The very architects of the war in Vietnam ballked as well. Kissinger, Gen Maxwell Taylor, Gen Westmorland, Gen Krulak, Robert McNamara all by the end questioned the ways the war was fought. As well as what could be done to prevent what was essentially a civil war. I think it was a lose lose situation all around.
Iraq can be different. But we better understand what’s on the table. And right now there is no way any one of the presumtive leaders of the to-be Iraqi government are going to welcome the other side to that table. We have a tough decision to make. But it’s sort of a we broke it we own it thing now. I think we are unfortunately obligated to see it to the end.
Matt,
I’m not a “hard, right wing voter.” I happen to be slightly right-of-center and I used to be a Democrat. In fact, Matt, after I got out of the Army in 1976 and started college the following year I gravitated towards revisionist Marxism (which is Euro-socialism, kind of what much of the U.S. Left is nowadays). I didn’t break with Marxist thought until 1986-87. There was a lot stored away in my mental inbox of cognizant dissonance that I had to honestly deal with. My degree was in economics, with a minor in philosophy. As a Jesuit seminarian after college I studied philosophy at Loyola Chicago and was still a Leftist in those days. After I left the Society of Jesus I entered the MBA program at Boston College to study finance. And it was a year before I started that when I had my falling out with socialism-lite.
When I was in the Army (1973-76) I knew many Vietnam vets. They were the guys with the horizontal blue Combat Infantryman’s Badge and the yellow and red striped campaign ribbon signifying their service in the Republic of Vietnam. But it was only in the years after I left the Left when I began to read voraciously about that war, and in so doing I learned the truth about it. It really bothered me at the time to realize that much of what our media and academia told us about the war was dizinformatzia from a deliberate campaign run by the KGB to demoralize the nation. And I see Walter Cronkite as one of those useful idiots who does not rise, for lack of a really solid mind, to the level of fellow-traveler. I tend to find that journalists underwhelm me with the quality of their minds and the breadth of their knowledge.
I agree with Ymarsakar’s views of the conflict. I was indeed a winnable war, just as I see this war as winnable too. But it is winnable only if the American people have the will to fight it to its conclusion. You may argue that the People are right and supreme. Their will may be supreme, but not always their judgment and certainly not always right. Do you think that the majority of Americans were right in 1864 when they wanted Lincoln to negotiate a peace with the South? Do you think the majority of Americans, in early 1945, were right when they were losing the will to see the fight to its conclusion?
By the way, we are a Republic, not a democracy. We elect people to office who should have the ability to sometimes go against popular will in order to be statesmen, not sycophants.
If we had been more aggressive against the North Vietnamese in Laos and Cambodia, and had also been more aggressive in our bombing campaigns early in the war, we would have pretty much defeated the Communists for good. And in fact by late 1972, after Operations Linebacker I and II and the defeat of the ’72 Communist Spring Offensive, the Communists limped back to the table and agreed to a peace agreement. And then they went to work to violate every term of that agreement, right at the time when The People here in the States elected men to Congress who cravenly pulled the rug out from under the Saigon government.
That same mentality is at work in our country again. And make no mistake, if they have their way the consequences will be equally sanguinary and will have far-reaching consequences for our nation. If you cannot reason out what those consequences are, then you are no student of history, but are just a political partisan trying to bluff your way inside a forum with some people who have done some of the spade work on this issue.
The Left can always find a disgruntled veteran of that war to back their opposition to it. But, for the most part, and every veteran of that war, if he is honest, will tell you that they did not have the benefit of seeing the big picture. And if they truly are combat veterans they would have to honestly tell you that we won almost every engagement with the Communists in that war – and the NVA and VC were a tough enemy. Our boys did outstanding work over there and to say they didn’t or that their work could not mean anything is to give the benefit of the doubt to the people who were working to make sure that our boys did not have a nation behind them. It is precisely because of the collective guilt of the nation that today you have some of these Leftist shuck and jivers using the stickers “Support the Troops.” Even as they do not support the war.
The debate about the winnability of Viet Nam is a long one. It’s been had many times. Did you consider, Matt, that South Viet Nam’s army successfully fought back the army of the North once, and was in the process of doing so again when we cut off their lifeline while the North was being supplied from Russia? Did you consider the possibility of pushing the DMZ far to the west, through Laos and into Cambodia? This would not have been a war crime; a neutral is obliged to defend its territory to prevent one belligerant (the North) from using against the other (eg. the Ho Chi Min Trail?), and that if it cannot or will not the attacked belligerant has the right to enter that territory and occupy it as necessary for its own defense?
Somehow MacNamara, Johnson and Company forgot all of history and international law and let the enemy call the tune.
That doesn’t make the war unwinnable. That makes LBJ one of the least capable presidents we’ve ever had. Does his record on civil rights inside the US balance what he cost the people of Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia? Not in my book. He was a damned good politician, and a double-damned rotten statesman.
You especially need to read On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Don’t decide that it’s a whitewash before you read it. It’s not. But it does contradict most of the conclusions you’ve been fed for the last thirty-three years–by comparing them to cold, hard fact.
We have a tough decision to make.
No matter how many Diem assassinations you promote and advocate, nothing good will come out of it. You can get rid of a leader if you don’t like them, but don’t act like this will have positive consequences for the people at the front lines. Starting up a civil war just cause you don’t like one of the elected leaders is pretty unethical, you know.
Responsible people have problems dumped on them which must be solved, irrespective of how much you like or dislike the boss who dumped the problems on your desk in the first place.
You say there is a choice to be made. The only choices are to meddle in things you don’t know how to fix or to allow people who know how to fix it do the job.
The very architects of the war in Vietnam ballked as well. Kissinger, Gen Maxwell Taylor, Gen Westmorland, Gen Krulak, Robert McNamara all by the end questioned the ways the war was fought.
As if this is supposed to convince the people of America that America deserves a defeat and not a victory at the time of Vietnam? Are the political elites in this minority rules all system of yours the sole determiner of what war is winnable or not, Matt?
Both the Democrat leadership and the Democrat administration of Lyndon Johnson and John F Kennedy had started and escalated a war that they had no intention of seeing to its final end in a way that would force the NVA to surrender with the least amount of casualties. Everything Johnson did was to increase attrition rates and casualty numbers. Whether leaders of a nation start a war or not, ultimately it will always be the citizens that fight in those wars. And after the citizens have bled and paid much for that war, the leaders should not suddenly say “oh, we now give up and surrender”. It’s easy for the leaders to give up cause they don’t lose anything by surrendering.
I think it was a lose lose situation all around.
That’s cause in comparison to the people who had something called a life and a family to lose in Vietnam, you had nothing to lose if South Vietnam was invaded and occupied. It’s easy for you to say that there was nothing to be won in Vietnam because you had nobody important to you whose fate could be negatively affected by the conquest of Vietnam by Leftist ideologues. Although the fate of POWs became worse when the Vietnamese no longer needed to worry about ultimate defeat at the hands of Americans. Made things much more fun for those at the Hilton.
People living a life with their family and not being separated at the Fall of Saigon, that’s a “lose lose situation” to you. Which is true. It is a loss to you, because you have nothing to gain from having peaceful men and women benefit in the Republic of Vietnam. If you have nothing to gain, then even if South Vietnam won, you would still lose. And even if South Vietnam lost, you would still lose.
And right now there is no way any one of the presumtive leaders of the to-be Iraqi government are going to welcome the other side to that table.
Diem’s assassination by CIA and State Department affiliated elements of South Vietnam’s government is what ultimately fragmented the Republic of South Vietnam into squabbling and corrupt factions that made Vietnam the bloodbath that it was. You want to take your hand in and stir the pot around, thus making Iraq into Vietnam, an “unwinnable” war because people will never admit the cost of their actions to people they never really cared about in the first place.
I prefer to go a different route.
But it’s sort of a we broke it we own it thing now. I think we are unfortunately obligated to see it to the end.
A selective system where duty only exists when you choose it to exist. What, pray tell, differentiates Iraq from Vietnam in your Colin Powell “if we broke the atom, we have to fix the atom” theme?
Broken nations like Vietnam are useless and thus nobody would care to own it. There are no laws that dictate punishments or rewards or duties paid upon criminals or those that “break” some property of another individual. The world is a lawless jungle and wars are designed to break things and kill people. You only own a nation when that nation surrenders, you don’t own it just cause you broke some of their buildings and nuked some of their cities. Without that kind of acceptance, then the hand stiring the pot will just kill another potential Diem. Which would not be a good thing.
Sure we could have killed thousands of more North Vietnamese but do you really think you could have stopped a civil war?
Do you really think you have to break a person’s kneecap just to stop him from trying to run faster than you could?
Are you sure you could have stopped the American Civil War by killing a few more Southerners and burning Atlanta down? Since you the military strategist here over what can be gained from war victories, wouldn’t you know already?
Blame the American people for apparently being dumb or not as astute and smart as the hard right wing voters.
Why should I blame the American people when you are part of the American people and thus the source of the blame? Are you trying to excuse your own beliefs by diverting them upon some morphous “American people” as if you aren’t one of them? Does spreading the beliefs, that helped Pol Pot’s crimes against humanity, across a couple of hundred million people make it any less worse? I doubt it. What you believe or what you did are your actions, not what the “American people did”. You cannot blame the American people simply to excuse the actions derived from your own beliefs, Matt.
Americans didn’t want to be involved in a civil war in Vietnam because they were deceived into thinking that the war was only ever about fighting nationalists, patriots, freedom fighters, and communists.
Perpetuating that deception does not excuse you while indicting the American people, Matt. It just indicts you.
To get off the Vietnam theme for a bit…
I was appalled at the coverage of the Basra battle. The news report I was watching (I think it was CNN, but I’m not sure) stated more than once that “Iraq needed Iran to step in to broker the cease fire.” Those were the words they used. They didn’t just say that Iran had negotiated a cease fire between the Mahdi army and Iraqi government, they stated it as if this was something desired, and even needed by the Iraqi government, and wasn’t it so nice of Iran to step in and solve this problem for them?
Now, I don’t know a lot about the situation in Iraq, but I do know that Sadr and the Mahdi army are supplied and supported by Iran. So it occured to me that, just maybe, the Iranians might have stepped in to prevent the destruction of their greatest ally within Iraq. And if this occured to me, how could it not occur to the reporters? Did it not occur to them that they might be merely repeating Iranian propaganda? And most of all, why do so many reporters seem to think that it’s better to repeat the propaganda of our enemies, then, God forbid, risk the possibility of repeating our own propaganda? Can you imagine reporters behaving this way during WWII? It’s like they have all taken Tokyo Rose as their role model.
And that was because it was not a winnable war. And let’s face it, Vietnam was not winnable.
Thus we see the end result of the anti-war propaganda – a revision of history. Some of the all too familiar underlying themes: The enemy was ‘undefeatable,’ the war was ‘not worth fighting,’ the South Vietnam government was ‘corrupt,’ the US government ‘lied.’
The simple fact is that the Democrat controlled Congress gave the Communists South Vietnam – literally handed it over to them. That’s when desperate people clutched the skids of a departing helicopter. That’s when the real killing began.
Effete, America-hating, pro-Communist anti-war ‘journalists'(I use the word VERY loosely) did not report on the murder that took place in South Vietnam after the Communists came down from North Vietnam and commenced the slaughter, so the full extent will never be known explicitly but we have the phenomenon of the Boat People and the personal testimony of the few survivors to give us some idea of the carnage.
A dark stain on the flag, a black page of American history, a great crime. And they will do it again in Iraq and Afghanistan if given half a chance. And will declare later that it was not “winnable.”