Cronkite Reflection

One of my prize possessions is an autographed picture of Walter Cronkite with his B-17 crew about the head off on a flight over Europe. I TwitPic'd it and put on my Facebook the day he passed. I've always wanted to know the whole story of "U.S.O." and the crew. I once wrote to Cronkite, who's personal assistant wrote back he remembered the picture but not a lot of details of that day.

I bought the picture at the Sigma Delta Chi/Society of Professional Journalists national student convention back in 1983. National Press Club held the auction and had collected some really nice signed items -- this photo donated from the Kansas City Press Club along with three others. Being the WWII historian, I leaned in hard on this one, and came home with it. It's been either on my business office or home office wall since.

Of course, Cronkite's record and later political statements have become big fodder in the media. The reeking amount of presentism in these reports aside -- you can't judge his work in the 1960s based on political positions of 2000 -- I'm taken by the lack of context given to one of his most significant moments.

This audio clip by Cronkite about Vietnam has received a lot of traffic the past week:

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

I've heard that picked on for being pompus (clear to this reporter) and that he was a news anchor that should not be putting his opinions into the newscast.

Cronkite's quote was as reporter; not as anchor. He had just returned to the anchor desk after traveling to Vietnam to survey the aftermath of Tet. What he saw turned him from on-air neutral to advocate, not unlike the events of McCarthy's excess had done to his CBS predecessor, Edward R. Morrow.

Back to Tet. What motivated Cronkite's sudden turn, in part, were the public relations campaigns waged by the Army, particularly by William Westmoreland, in 1967 and 1968 leading up to Tet. The general and members of this staff had told the American public -- at media oriented venues like the National Press Club -- that the war was almost over, that the NVA and the Viet Cong had been so weakened by the buildup and military pressure of the U.S. One of the most unfortunate statements was the enemy was so weakened it could never mount a major offensive again.

The general public wasn't tracking those position statements, but the media was. The very fact Tet occurred was enough to set the Cronkite statement in motion. That Tet caused the level of damage, and was nationwide in Vietnam -- virtually every city and major town was hit by what we would call "terrorist" attacks. This is the atmosphere that Cronkite then travels to Vietnam, and surveys the situation himself. The two week tour during the continuing battle at Hue led to his special broadcast "Report from Vietnam."

The quote that Westmoreland and others used to attack Cronkite and the media for betraying the American military did not occur as a part of the CBS Evening News. It was from the end of "Report from Vietnam" and was labeled as an "editorial report." I won't copy it here (it's easily found on-line). One cannot say it was out of context, because it was clearly Cronkite's point, but there is a lot more in there than the "stab in the back" it is often portrayed to be toward the military.

Because Cronkite headed CBS News when Mike Wallace went after Westmoreland in 1972 and ended up getting sued for liable, I have the feeling a lot of that animus is pointed incorrectly on the 1968 Tet remarks. But that's another story for another day.