How would Cronkite have responded just after the 9/11 attack? To the invasion of Iraq? How would Gregory have responded to the Viet Nam war? These were very emotive events, and the propaganda machines have become much more sophisticated since Viet Nam. For all we know Cronkite may have taken sides with the infantile, senseless, vengeful Bush approach, and Gregory may well have railed against sending youthful fodder into the jungles. Who among us doesn't let emotion get the better of our judgement at times? There are many reasonable people who supported Viet Nam and/or the Iraq invasion who shortly afterwards came to their senses.

It's like comparing baseball players and their statistics: it is fairer to compare players with their peers of the day, and not with players of another era. And once that is done, a between era comparison can be made by measuring the gap between the best player of an era and the runner up, and then comparing the size of that gap era-to-era to determine best over all. (Ty Cobb was the best hitter by this method).

So by the same token, Cronkite can't fairly be compared to Russert, Gregory and Williams. Cronkite with David and Chet, with Edward R. Murrow, etc; Russert, Gregory, Williams with....holy shit, Russert with feelthy little left wing bloggers who were right about the idiot Bush from the start!

As for Lewis Lapham, he was pretty much the only reason I bought Harper's all those years. I considered him (and still do) the best writer I have ever read.

Thanks for a very accurate account of what men like Cronkite stood for that no longer exists in American journalism. Dissent makes us strong, it is the mechanism by which we question ourseves and the yardstick that measures real truth and defies attempts to manage the news.

Today's journalists are by and large total cowards, unwilling to stand up against the tyranny of disinformation foisted on the gullible and lazy American public by the military-industrial complex.

When Cronkite came out against the war in Vietnam, he did so by publicly proclaiming his opinion as editorializing but with the conviction of a man who was sure of his facts. We desperately need more journalists who possess Cronkite's enthusiasm, integrity, attention to detail, and unwillingness to compromise the truth.

If you read the article

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/07/councilman-sent-brazenly-racist-obama-e-mails/

Good sendoff. Great last quote.

Cronkite hasn't been silent on Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start. Not only was Congress lied to in order to secure its support for the invasion of Iraq, but the war lacked the support of the United Nations Security Council and thus was an aggressive war initiated on the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nor has any assertion of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda proven to be true. In the end, democracy has not come to Iraq. Its government is still being forced to bend to the will of the US administration.

What the war has accomplished is the undermining of US credibility throughout the world, the weakening of our military forces, and the erosion of our Bill of Rights. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz calculates that the war is costing American tax payers more than $1 trillion. This amount could double if we continue the war. Each minute we are spending $500,000 in Iraq. Our losses are incalculable. It is time to remove our military forces from Iraq.

We must ask ourselves whether continuing to pursue this war is benefiting the American people or weakening us. We must ask whether continuing the war is benefiting the Iraqi people or inflicting greater suffering upon them. We believe the answer to these inquiries is that both the American and Iraqi people would benefit by ending the US military presence in Iraq.

Moving forward is not complicated, but it will require courage. Step one is to proceed with the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and hand over the responsibility for the security of Iraq to Iraqi forces. Step two is to remove our military bases from Iraq and to turn Iraqi oil over to Iraqis. Step three is to provide resources to the Iraqis to rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed in the war.

Congress must act. Although Congress never declared war, as required by the Constitution, they did give the president the authority to invade Iraq. Congress must now withdraw that authority and cease its funding of the war.

It is not likely, however, that Congress will act unless the American people make their voices heard with unmistakable clarity. That is the way the Vietnam War was brought to an end. It is the way that the Iraq War will also be brought to an end. The only question is whether it will be now, or whether the war will drag on, with all the suffering that implies, to an even more tragic, costly and degrading defeat. We will be a better, stronger and more decent country to bring the troops home now.

Walter Cronkite is the former long-time anchor for CBS Evening News. David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

(Linked at sig)

see the CNN coverage of the Gulf War I(at sig)and the real journalism of the... I have and had more faith in PRAVDA and TASS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0VxWZszyg

I was born in 1940, came to majority in the fifties, and saw some terribly weak and terribly strong journalism while growing up. Don't think that a lot of people like Halberstam were around in the old days, with today being the bottom of the sink in journalistic behavior.

Growing up in McCarthy's America scared the hell out of everyone. Everybody cringed. People like Halberstam were a breath of fresh air compared to the usual bullshit from NBC, CBS, and ABC. Really: except for a few programs run as specials by Murrow, the news and documentary landscape was bleak.

When the Army-McCarthy hearings ran on TV, the medium was seen as having a fantastic potential to expose the truth by putting actual hearings on air. It was all that, to an extent, but we had to wait for people like William Mandel, who broadcasted weekly from Pacifica Radio - KPFA in Berkeley, who began to speak up against the House Unamerican Activities Committee, get people down to protest their appearance in San Francisco, and to show that the emperor had no clothes. Newspeople were amazed. Ten years later, Halberstam began to insist that the Times support him in his reporting. The reporters of old were just as timid as the reporters today. They just didn't understand their environment. They always went for the Government story, because that was the only story there was. There was little independent reporting.