1968 - Mark Kurlansky [36]
A difference in generations labeled “the generation gap” was not only dividing society, but was apparent in journalism as well. Author David Halberstam, who had been a New York Times correspondent in Vietnam, recalled that the older reporters and editors who had come out of World War II tended to side with the military. “They thought we were unpatriotic and didn’t believe that generals lied.” Younger reporters such as Halberstam and Gene Roberts created a sensation, both in public opinion and in journalism, by reporting that the generals were lying. “Then came another generation,” Halberstam said, “who smoked pot and knew all the music. We called them the heads.” The heads never trusted a word from the generals.
Walter Cronkite was from that old World War II generation that believed generals and which Halberstam had found to be such an obstacle when he first started reporting on Vietnam. But, though his thirty minutes of evening news did not reflect this, Cronkite was growing increasingly suspicious that the U.S. government and the military were not telling the truth. He did not see “the light at the end of the tunnel” that General Westmoreland continually promised.
It seemed that in order to understand what was going on in Vietnam, he would have to go and see for himself. This decision worried the U.S. government. They could survive temporarily losing control of their own embassy, but the American people would never forgive their losing Walter Cronkite. The head of CBS News, Richard Salant, had similar fears. Journalists were sent into combat, but not corporate treasures.
“I said,” Cronkite recalled, “well, I need to go because I thought we needed this documentary about Tet. We were getting daily reports, but we didn’t know where it was going at that time; we may lose the war; if we’re going to lose the war, I should be there, that was one thing. If the Tet Offensive was successful in the end, it meant that we were going to be fleeing, as we did eventually anyway, but I wanted to be there for the clash.”
Walter Cronkite never saw himself as a piece of broadcast history or a national treasure, any of the things others saw in him. All his life he saw himself as a reporter, and he never wanted to miss the big story. Covering World War II for United Press International, he had been with the Allies when they landed in North Africa, when the first bombing missions flew over Germany, when they landed in Normandy, parachuted into the Netherlands, broke out of the Bulge. He always wanted to be there.
Salant’s first response was predictable. As Cronkite remembered it, he said, “If you need to be there, if you are demanding to go, I’m not going to stop you, but I think it’s foolish to risk your life in a situation like this, risk the life of our anchorman, and I’ve got to think about it.” His next thoughts were what surprised Cronkite. “But if you are going to go,” he said, “I think you ought to do a documentary about going, about why you went, and maybe you are going to have to say something about where the war ought to go at that point.”
The one thing Dick Salant had been known for among CBS journalists was forbidding any kind of editorializing of the news. Cronkite said of Salant, “If he were to detect any word in a reporter’s report that seemed to have been editorializing at all, personal opinion, he was dead set against it—against doing it at all. Not just mine. I’m talking about any kind of editorializing of anybody.”
So when Salant told Cronkite his idea for a Vietnam special, Cronkite answered, “That would be an editorial.”
“Well,” said Salant, “I’m thinking that maybe it’s time for that. You have established a reputation, and thanks to you and through us we at CBS have established a reputation for