Kronite Moment

Originator

David Sachs

Core Concept

Geopolitical narrative shift

Source Media

All-In Podcast (Episode 152)

Triggering Event

Time Magazine article quoting Zelenskyy's aides

Historical Parallel

Walter Cronkite's 1968 Vietnam War report

1968-02-27

2023-10-30

Another example I cited was the so-called “Cronkite Moment,” the occasion in 1968 when the views of CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite were supposedly so powerful and persuasive they swiftly altered U.S. policy in Vietnam. That anecdote centers around Cronkite’s special program on the Vietnam War, a show that aired February 27, 1968. Near the end of the program, Cronkite declared the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate” and suggested negotiations with the communist North Vietnamese to end the conflict. At the White House, President Lyndon Johnson supposedly watched the Cronkite program and snapped off the television set when he heard the anchorman’s dire assessment, telling an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Or something to that effect. [...] # W. Joseph Campbell # Media Myth Alert About Archives RSS Feed 1968, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Getting It Wrong, Media-driven myths ## The ‘Cronkite Moment’: That famous, dubious turn of phrase In Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths on January 8, 2010 at 6:57 pm I blogged not long ago about what may be the most famous words in American journalism, offering a couple of media myths as examples. One was the enduring anecdote about William Randolph Hearst’s supposed vow to “furnish the war” with Spain. That one’s been retold many, many since it first appeared in print in 1901. It is arguably American journalism’s most tenacious myth. Those words attributed to Hearst surely are some of the most famous in journalism. Even though it’s quite unlikely he ever made such a vow. [...] The point is that Cronkite was such a trusted figure that his views could sway the opinions of countless thousands of Americans. With Cronkite gone wobbly on Vietnam, the Johnson White House supposedly reeled. At the end of March 1968, Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. The “Cronkite Moment” made yet another appearance the other day in a blog of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The blog comment, posted by an editorial writer for the newspaper, stated: “One of the standard views of why America turned on the Vietnam War focuses on CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s increasingly obvious pessimism about President Lyndon Johnson’s statements about and management of the war. LBJ reportedly told an aide, ‘That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.'”

[…] The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth […] […] 57 YEARS AGO TODAY: The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth. […] Comments are closed. ### Top Posts ### Archives ### Recent Tweets ### Categories ### Email Subscription Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address: Sign me up! ### Meta Blog at WordPress.com. ## ## ### [...] # W. Joseph Campbell # Media Myth Alert 1968, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Distortion, Fact-checking, Getting It Wrong, History, Journalism, Media, Media-driven myths, News, Research, Version variability, Vietnam War ## The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth Cronkite in Vietnam, 1968 Fifty-two years ago tonight, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite presented a prime-time report about the war in Vietnam and declared in closing that the U.S. military effort was “mired in stalemate” and that negotiations might eventually offer a way out. [...] More from Media Myth Alert: ### Share this: ### Related […] 52 YEARS AGO TONIGHT: The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth. […] […] Johnson did not see the Cronkite report when it aired; the President at the time was at a black-tie birthday party for a political ally, Governor John Connally, in Austin, […] […] The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth […] […] scandal. They include the notion that a pessimistic, on-air assessment by anchorman Walter Cronkite about the Vietnam War in 1968 turned American public opinion against the […] […] thread also defines the presumptive “Cronkite Moment” of 1968, when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite declared on air that the U.S. military was “mired in […]

Cronkite was America’s most trusted reporter at the time, and his broadcast has come to be seen as a turning point in the war the “Cronkite moment” when the attitude of many Americans toward the war changed irreversibly. So argued David Halberstam in his 1979 book The Powers That Be, which solidified much of the myths around Cronkite and his impact on the media. “It was the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman,” Halberstam wrote. Lyndon Johnson was said to have watched the broadcast and exclaimed to his press secretary, George Christian, “that if he had lost Walter Cronkite he had lost Mr. Average Citizen.” The historical facts belie that statement; there is no evidence that LBJ watched the broadcast. [...] On February 27, 1968, a few weeks after returning from a reporting trip to Vietnam, Cronkite famously offered an editorial regarding the war which stated, in part, “The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic if unsatisfactory conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations.” [...] Select Page # War and Public Opinion: The Myth of the “Cronkite Moment” Joseph Hamond | 02.27.18 Share on Facebook Share Share on TwitterTweet Share on LinkedIn Share Send email Mail Print Print; "Print") What is often considered one of the most important events of the Vietnam War took place not on the battlefield, but in a New York television studio. Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the date on which television news anchor Walter Cronkite gave a famed commentary on the ongoing war in Vietnam. The anniversary comes just weeks after Secretary of Defense James Mattis visited Vietnam on a trip to Asia. Asked to comment on the US-Vietnamese relationship, Mattis acknowledged the war’s historical importance but told reporters, “That has been largely made a matter of the past.”

During the early part of his tenure anchoring the CBS Evening News, Cronkite competed against NBC's anchor team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, who anchored The Huntley–Brinkley Report. For much of the 1960s, The Huntley–Brinkley Report had more viewers than Cronkite's broadcast. A key moment for Cronkite came during his coverage of John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.-34) Another factor in Cronkite and CBS' ascendancy to the top of the ratings was that, as the decade progressed, RCA made a corporate decision not to fund NBC News at the levels that CBS provided for its news broadcasts. Consequently, CBS News acquired a reputation for greater accuracy and depth in coverage. This reputation meshed well with Cronkite's wire service experience, and in 1967 the CBS Evening [...] Cronkite was a finalist for NASA's Journalist in Space program, which mirrored the Teacher in Space Project, an opportunity that was suspended after the Challenger disaster in 1986. He recorded voice-overs for the 1995 film Apollo 13 "Apollo 13 (film)"), modifying the script he was given to make it more "Cronkitian." In 2002, Cronkite was the voice of Benjamin Franklin in the educational television cartoon Liberty's Kids, which included a news segment ending with the same phrase he did back on the CBS Evening News. This role earned him Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series, in 2003 and 2004, but he did not win. His distinctive voice provided the narration for the television ads of the University of Texas, Austin, his alma mater, with its 'We're Texas' [...] Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. Cronkite received numerous honors including two Peabody Awards, a George Polk Award, an Emmy Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.