Tag: Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite Completes Transformation Into Left Wing Nut

Walter Cronkite the other day completed his transformation from former respected newsman to left wing nut with his appearance on Larry King Live (emphasis added),

CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I’m a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principal subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the al Qaqaa explosive dump. Right now, that, the last couple of days, has, I think, upset the Republican campaign.

Since the original just conveniently died, Cronkite seems intent on becoming the new Pierre Salinger.

Source:

Bin Laden Releases New Videotape. Larry King Live, October 29, 2004.

Which Walter Is Which?

Which Walter Cronkite is which? The Cronkite who complains,

I am dumbfounded that there hasn’t been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet. I expect that to develop in the fairly near future.

Or the Cronkite who complains (emphasis added),

Corporate censorship is just as dangerous as government censorship, you know, and self-censorship can be the most insidious form of pulling punches. Pressures to go along, to get along, or to place the needs of advertisers or companies above the public’s need for reliable information distort a free press and threaten democracy itself.

A “crackdown” on Internet speech would, of course, increase self-censorship.

Cronkite apparently had a bad experience with an unfunny Internet parody that targeted him. Cronkite threatened to sue the maintainers of a site called “Walter Cronkite Spit In My Soup,” and the site shut down rather than take on the millionaire reporter.

Daniel Schorr Can’t Stop Lying

One of the people I really loathe is reporter Daniel Schorr who is now with National Public Radio. Gregory Bresiger has a nice review that slams Schorr’s recent autobiography, Staying Tuned: A Life In Journalism.

The interesting thing in the review is Schorr’s continuing prevarication over one of the more audacious lies in broadcast news. Prior to his party’s convention, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater travelled to Germany for a vacation. Schorr went on-air and reported that while in Germany, Goldwater had been forging links with right wing extremists, going so far as to visit an old vacation spot used by the Nazis.

According to Bresiger, Schorr claims in his autobiography that, “In reporting that right-wing German groups were rallying to Goldwater, I had not intended to suggest that he was cultivating ties with them.”

That is a bit hard to swallow since what Schorr told CBS viewers was that, “It is now clear that Senator Goldwater’s interview with Der Spiegel with its hard line appealing to right-wing elements in Germany was only the start of a move to link up with his opposite numbers in Germany.”

The odd thing is this distortion was relatively mild compared to Walter Cronkite’s bogus on-air report that Goldwater would skip John F. Kennedy’s funeral in order to make a speech to political supporters in Indiana. In fact Goldwater was there to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law (Goldwater almost stayed out of the presidential race due to such blatant media attacks).