Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [236]
Cronkite’s “special” is exhibit A in the Freedom House indictment. The example is typical of the relation between their conclusions and the evidence they cite.
Braestrup refers to a television comment by Robert Schakne on February 28 for which he gives the following paraphrase: “In short, the United States would now have to take over the whole war, including the permanently damaged pacification program, because of Saigon’s failures” (I, 562–63). Braestrup claims further that Schackne attributed “this argument” to Robert Komer. This he calls “a CBS exclusive,” his standard term of derision. In fact, “this argument” is yet another “Freedom House exclusive.” What Schackne said, according to Braestrup, is that it was “likely” that Komer was in Washington with General Wheeler to ask for more troops “to help get the Vietnam pacification program back on the road.” The preceding day, Wheeler had requested that the troop level be raised from 525,000 to 731,756, one primary concern being that “There is no doubt that the RD Program [pacification] has suffered a severe set back,” that “To a large extent the VC now control the countryside,” and that “U.S. forces will be required in a number of places to assist and encourage the Vietnamese Army to leave the cities and towns and reenter the country.”1 While Braestrup’s version of Schackne’s “argument” has little resemblance to the actual words he attributes to Schackne, these words were, if anything, understated.
Braestrup then goes on to claim that Cronkite “used the same argument almost verbatim, but with an even stronger conclusion” in a February 28 radio broadcast. There is no hint in the actual broadcast of Braestrup’s “argument.” The closest Cronkite came to this “argument” is his statement that “presumably, Ambassador Komer told a sad tale to President Johnson” $$$(Braestrup’s emphasis). Cronkite then repeated accurately the basic facts presented by Komer in a briefing four days earlier. He concluded that “it seems likely that today Ambassador Komer asked President Johnson for more American troops so that we can permanently occupy the hamlets and fulfill the promise of security [sic] to their residents, a promise the Vietnamese alone apparently cannot honor,” the NLF not being Vietnamese, as usual. Apart from the tacit assumption of the propaganda system that the villagers yearn for the fulfillment of this “promise of security” from the NLF, Cronkite’s speculation that U.S. troops would have to fulfill a promise that ARVN alone apparently could not honor hardly seems unreasonable, three days after General Westmoreland had stated that “additional U.S. forces would probably be required” (II, 159), and that with them “we could more effectively deny the enemy his objectives”; four days after Komer had described the Tet offensive as a “considerable setback” to pacification; a day after Cronkite had presented a television interview with Captain Donald Jones, deputy pacification adviser for the district regarded as “the bowl of pacification,” who said that “for most of the District, pacification does not exist,” and travel there is impossible (CBS-TV “special” of February 27, cited above); and one day after General Wheeler had asked for a huge troop increase justified in part by the need to overcome the fact that “To a large extent the VC now control the countryside.”
Television and radio are not alone in being subjected to “Freedom House exclusives.” Here are a few examples.
Exuding contempt and derision, the study informs us that “no one” except for George McArthur (AP) and Don Oberdorfer (Knight) “reported . . . on what happened to Hue’s civilians under Vietcong rule” (I, 299). Again demonstrating his considerable gift for self-refutation, Braestrup cites reports on Vietcong executions, kidnappings, burial of executed civilians in mass graves, etc.,