New Biography: Walter Cronkite Biased, Unethical
by John Sexton 5 hours ago
A thorough new biography of Walter Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley reveals that he was not the unbiased journalist his supporters have always claimed him to be. In fact, he was a liberal who used his position as America's top anchor to promote the left and damage the right. And that's the way it is. All of this apparently comes as a surprise to Howard Kurtz, who grew up idolizing Cronkite and can't quite shake off the worship of his false idol even when confronted with the facts. Still, there is an interesting admission early on in Kurtz's piece about how the media landscape has changed:
Had Cronkite engaged in some of the same questionable conduct today—he secretly bugged a committee room at the 1952 GOP convention—he would have been bashed by the blogs, pilloried by the pundits, and quite possibly ousted by his employer. That he endured and prospered, essentially unscathed, until his death in 2009 reminded me of how impervious the monopoly media were in those days, largely shielded from the scrutiny they inflicted on everyone else.
Indeed, he would have been. Kurtz might have spent more time discussing the new media landscape and how it benefits the country by allowing alternative points of view to penetrate the public's awareness. Instead, he mostly cops out.
Cronkite's idea of ethical behavior seems to have been pretty broad. Kurtz opens his account of the new book with the fact that Cronkite had a secret deal with Pan Am which flew his family around the world to vacation spots like the South Pacific for free. The President of the CBS News Division knew about the arrangement but did nothing about it.
Cronkite's behavior wasn't just personally unethical, it was also professionally unethical. It was Cronkite who persuaded Robert Kennedy--during a private meeting in his office--to run for President in 1968. Cronkite wanted someone to run to the left of LBJ in opposition to the Vietnam War. Cronkite then interviewed Kennedy about the possibility of running just three days before he announced his candidacy. No doubt Kennedy believed having the support of America's most trusted anchor would be an asset to his campaign. Indeed, it might have been if Kennedy hadn't been killed in June of 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan.
Despite overwhelming evidence that Cronkite never deserved the reputation he was given, Kurtz suggests that perhaps we shouldn't judge a 1960s icon by modern standards. But the basic ideas of journalistic ethics, i.e. remain neutral when covering partisan politics, haven't changed in 50 years. What Cronkite did was just as unethical then as it would be now. The difference is that now a wider swath of the American public would know about it. Liberal journalists who attempt to hide their personal bias behind a claim of professional ethics can't get away with it as easily as they used to. But that doesn't excuse Cronkite's unethical, biased behavior simply because he could get away with it.
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