On March 1, 2006, in the Huffington Post he said:

"While the politicians stutter and stall - while they chase their losses by claiming we could win this war if only we committed more resources, jailed more people and knocked down more doors - the Drug Policy Alliance continues to tell the American people the truth - 'the way it is.'

"When I wanted to understand the truth about the war on drugs, I took the same approach I did to the war in Vietnam: I hit the streets and reported the story myself. I sought out the people whose lives this war has affected."

What a novel idea. He sought out the people whose lives were affected by our government's policies.

I've waited in vain for tv and radio interviews with ordinary people in Iraq, Afganistan, the streets of Camden and Detroit, where there is immense suffering caused by our government's brutal wars. Where are the interviews with ex-detainees, who are now speaking out about their treatment, or with those imprisoned for years, sometimes in terrible conditions, for minor drug offenses? Cronkite's vision of journalism is a far cry from the role our media functionaries play today. We now have a copy-and-paste media, anxious to please powerful politicians and their conservative corporate masters, who speak for the powerful, never to them, who time after time, do not present "both sides" as they claim, but who only mouth establishment talking points. The voices of the powerless are seldom heard in today's vacuous media wasteland.

I'm afraid Walter Cronkite wouldn't make it in television news today, with its practice of substituting cliches and groupthink for true reporting. These days, honest journalists need not apply.

I felt the same way as you did, Glenn, I got pretty angry when I heard Brian Williams waxing about Walter Cronkite on Rachel Maddow's "show". I think it is not true that Cronkite was the man who started crossing the line to opinionated journalism and induced others to follow suit. I also happen to think that to question the war in February 1968 was - while important and in some ways decisive - not the heroic act some make us believe it was. I remember also the feeling: Why only now?

However, if he had followed the rulebook of today, all he would have had to do is to collect the statements of General Westmoreland and (North Vietnamese) General Giap, present them to the nation and "let the viewer decide". Instead, he went out for himself, trying to find out what was going on, he was R E P O R T I N G. And that's what many of his and other reporters did, they went and tried to find out what was going on. They presented the facts, peeling them out of many layers of propaganda by both sides - well actually three sides because there were the sorry South Vietnamese administartion people, too. Reporters also did not only report that General Westmoreland said this, Major Powell said that: They confronted the generals with what their junior officers were saying. The responses of the generals often needed no comment, they were painfully unmasking. That is what made journalists so credible.

It is true that Cronkite crossed the line in that one historic moment, it is true that because he normally let only the facts speak for themselves, with his February 28, 1968 statement he had such an impact on public opinion. Maybe that was what took courage: to understand when to step over one's own dearly held professional belief and offer an opinion.

But between letting the facts speak for themselves and letting two opposing opinions speak for themselves lies the difference between journalism and stenographing.

I'd like also to comment on Tim Russert: I could follow Tim regularly only in the late nineties, and I remember enjoying his confronting politicians rather relentlessly with their contradicting previous statements. My wife very early on after September 11 called my attention to Russert's softening on the Bush administration, she accused him of partisanship where I only saw continuance. Well, she was right. He let people far too easy off the hook. Once a politician weaseled through the first statements, it was all nice and friendly Tim. It was a pity that he lost his way.

"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"

IMO, the "in the face of the evidence" is what is most important. It means that the journalist is supposed to evaluate what is being said against the evidence.

I think it means this:

If you say that we are closer to victory today, then you believe the optimists who have been wrong in the past, and your belief is contrary to current evidence.

This is contrary to what you think it means, right?

for speaking out on behalf of Tonya Harding.

Then I knew for sure my hunch about Cronkite was correct.

A true lib postulating from the left to the folks out there in tv land.

Absolutely. That's why Richard Nixon's plan to end the Vietnam War consumed most of the time he spent in the Oval Office. That's what the Powell Doctrine was intended to address, it delineated the type of conflict where American military power would be effective. It was disregarded and so here we are, the war on terror is not the Vietnam War but America remains much the same. Moreover, there's little prospect of change given investigative journalism, other than of sex scandals, is dead.

Much of the discussion of Cronkite has correctly focused on his Vietnam pronouncement in 1968 in the aftermath of the Tet offensive. I've always found Cronkite's lead-in to the announcement of King's assassination equally remarkable or even more remarkable.

"Doctor Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee."

It's difficult for anyone under 50 to really remember, but at the time of his assassination MLK was hardly the figure he is today. He was a very controversial figure even before he expressed vehement opposition to the Vietnam war, and his opposition to the war made him a target of some pretty vile abuse from the right wing.

I simply cannot imagine any of our contemporary newsreaders referring to someone like MLK as an "apostle of non-violence." Indeed, I'm quite certain that they would never use the term "apostle" for fear of incurring savage criticism from the christian right.

There were many ways Cronkite could have referred to MLK's advocacy of non-violence. The use by Cronkite of the term "apostle" staked out a very clear (and very editorial) position on MLK's stature and significance, in a way that simply never would happen today. A present day MLK would still be a very controversial figure, largely reviled by the right, and accordingly contemporary news figures would undoubtedly deem Cronkite's laudatory phrase inappropriate because it so clearly would contradict the prevailing view of one end of the political spectrum.

As should be obvious, even now the great martyr of the civil rights movement makes republicans and the right wing very uncomfortable, and they simply cannot embrace this American hero without reservation. David Gregory and Katie Couric and the rest would never dare speak of MLK in the immediate aftermath of his assassination in the way Cronkite did, with words that expressed an unambiguous and direct judgment that King was a great figure. They would fear the reaction of Sessions and Kyl and Cornyn.

In short, today's news figures would, I'm quite certain, consider Cronkite's announcement of King's assassination an unduly editorial statement.

Think about that.