About Cronkite

The passing of iconic TV journalist Walter Cronkite, who died at aged 92 this week, has led to mythical claims of his objectivity from the same media that violates standards of objective journalism daily. Some thoughts on his influence on TV journalism led me to comment on his status and changes in the media:

Cronkite was respected in part because there was no reference point or alternative views to observe or contrast his bias. One major problem with the liberal media bias of the Cronkite era you mention was their blindness to their own subjectivity and the myth-creation of an ‘objective media’, when in fact it was anything but. They could get away with it because the liberal media had a virtual monopoly on national inside-the-beltway news for many decades.

Yet through a historical lens, we can review how for example CBS / 60 minutes went after General Westmoreland, Cronkite’s famous declaration that Tet was a defeat for the US (a dubious claim now we know that it decimated the VietCong), etc.

Now that we live in a world of a plethora of news and opinion sources, anyone can triangulate where any particular news source is, in terms of their reliability, objectivity, and bias. If you have any questions, you can always go to http://newsbusters.org or other media ‘watchdog’ places to see what critics have to say about it.