1968 - Mark Kurlansky [38]
Report from Vietnam by Walter Cronkite aired on February 27 at 10:00 P.M. eastern time. Cronkite fans, who seemed to include almost everyone, were thrilled to see Walter in Vietnam, out on the story, where in his heart Cronkite always believed he belonged. Then, after the last station break, he was back where CBS thought he belonged, behind a desk, dressed in a suit. He stared into the camera with a look so personal, so straightforward and devoid of artifice, that his nine million viewers could almost believe he was talking directly to each of them. The impression of sincerity was helped by his insistence on writing his own script:
To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, though unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next months we must test the enemy’s intentions in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. 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.
This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.
It was hardly a radical position. Few of its premises would have been acceptable to most leaders of the antiwar movement. But at a time of polarization, where every opinion was either for the war or against it, Walter Cronkite’s statement was against the war. He was not of the sixties generation, he was of the World War II generation, his career had been built on war. Cronkite thought supporting democracy against communism was such a given that it never occurred to him his open backing of the cold war was a violation of his own neutrality. Now he was saying that we ought to get out. Of course, by this time he was not alone. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page said, “The whole Vietnam effort may be doomed.”
Yet despite all his troubles, Johnson reacted to the Cronkite special as though now, for the first time, he had a real problem. There are two versions of Johnson’s response. In one version he said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” In the other the president was quoted saying, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.”
The show was said to have had a great effect on the president. Cronkite insisted that his role was greatly exaggerated. “I never asked Johnson about it, though we were pretty friendly. But there is no question that it was one more straw on the camel’s back, perhaps no more important than that, but the camel, the back of the camel, was getting ready to collapse.”
Hue, the former Vietnamese capital, after being bombed into rubble by the United States, February 1968
(Photo by Marc Riboud/Magnum Photos)
What is as important for broadcast history, Cronkite’s ratings went up rather than down after giving his opinion, and few broadcasters would ever again wrestle with his and Salant’s qualms about a little editorializing. In fact, starting in 1968 there was a noted increase in political opinion from entertainers, disc jockeys, and radio talk show hosts. Suddenly everyone on the air, regardless of his or her credentials, was being asked to state a position on issues from Vietnam to the plight of inner cities. The other new trend was for political figures to appear on television entertainment programs, most notably Johnny Carson’s Tonight show but also such shows as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Some found this increased blending of news and entertainment disturbing. Jack Gould wrote