Today's spineless media mourns Walter Cronkite, apparently not noticing journalism itself is dead, too

I was just now watching CNN. They did a piece on Walter Cronkite, in which they used the clip of him flatly contradicting the government party line on the war in Viet Nam, and Johnson responding that if he'd lost Cronkite, he'd lost America.

And then the same anchor followed it up with an example of  the most egregious and vacuous "he said she said, fake balance" crap on health care reform, in which she didn't even comment or put anything at all in context. And that was followed with a piece of political advertising reinforcing the exact message of the (factually false) Republican talking head sound bite that preceded it.

The media today lacks all awareness, all understanding of its role and how they have abdicated it. They mourn Cronkite while they spit on and disgrace his legacy.

I went to journalism school in the years immediately after Watergate. I thought it was my job to tell the truth about the powerful, not regurgitate their messages without analysis or judgment.

RIP Walter Cronkite. And RIP journalism as he knew it.

Comments

[Red]

I grew up on Walter. I loved his voice, the way he seemed to explain rather than just report. In these days of cable celebrities, real reporting has taken a back seat to theatrical posturing and bloviation. Sad. I'll bet Cronkite hated Bill O'Reilly.

It's funny. I was thinking about the moon landing conspiracy theorists. Walter Cronkite told me, a 7 year old little girl, that a man had landed on the moon. And then he smiled. I believed him, and ran out of the house to see if I could see them. Because if he said it happened, it did. I still believe it.

[Ark Lady]

Well said, I am so sick of "anchors" who try to be amusing and give their own commentary versus actually reporting--never mind focusing on small, local issues instead of giving a global overview or focusing on hard news topics.