Nostalgia for Cronkite: How Cronkite Changed America

My last and most vivid memory of Walter Cronkite is Bill and Hillary Clinton on the Cronkite yacht. That coverage made a impression on me. I never forgot it, probably because it was a turbulent time for America. When I heard of Mr. Cronkite's death, I remembered those photographs and the media coverage - it was huge. The photo below is from August 25, 1998 and the photo caption said the location is "near Edgartown, Mass." I do not have nostalgia for Cronkite, although the remembrances have been interesting. Everyone who is "anyone" wants to tell their story of Walter Cronkite to one of America's current important anchors. The stories would be important if the real stories, or perhaps all the stories were told, which would lead us to how Cronkite changed America.

Walter Cronkite

The photo above is less than month after Monica Lewinsky delivered her semen-stained blue dress to Ken Starr. On August 17th President Bill Clinton admitted his "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky and that evening he addressed the Nation. Eleven days later, Walter Cronkite took Clinton under his wing and offered respectability from the "most trusted man in America." JoshuaPundit at Watcher of Weasels remembers Walter Cronkite and his contribution to the Viet Nam War...remembers the disinformation, and the "abandonment of any semblance of journalistic ethics," and then links to a John Podhoretz piece at Commentary Magazine.

Cronkite didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to Tet, as the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his colossal expose of the scandalous media coverage of the battle, Big Story. But he knew that among the people who mattered to him, and who were the leading edge of ideological fashion, Tet was a failure because the war in Vietnam was bad, and he took to the airwaves to say so.

I hope you'll read these two posts. The Watcher of Weasels commentary is excellent. You'll find the link to Commentary Magazine there. It will jog your memory and bring some reasoning to why the media has gone so far Left.