Walter Cronkite's Legacy Was Not Objectivity, but One of Honesty
By Al Giordano
"Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure."
- Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)
The late television anchorman Walter Cronkite was eulogized this morning at Lincoln Center in New York, including by President Barack Obama, who quite mistakenly praised Cronkite for “his passionate defense of objective reporting.”
But what made Cronkite “the most trusted man in America” for decades was not an adherence to the rigid concept of objectivity that corporate media and its official journalism schools preach, but, to the contrary, that he would from time to time disclose his views and explain them to the public; for Civil Rights, against the Vietnam war, and later in life against the war in Iraq, and against the drug war. Cronkite fought unsuccessfully to force TV networks to provide free airtime for political candidates, and issued harsh criticism of Fox News, calling it “a far right organization.” Cronkite signed fundraising appeals for Danny Schechter’s The Media Channel and for the Drug Policy Alliance, among other causes.
And not just in retirement: In February of 1968, Cronkite returned from a reporting mission in Vietnam and told the nation:
“…for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.
“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”
That's clearly not the kind of frank talk we've heard in recent years from the national TV anchors and reporters.
It was not “objectivity” that made Cronkite so beloved and trusted, but, rather, his lack of slavish devotion to it: the honesty to tell us when he had a strong opinion based on the facts that he and his team were reporting.
Interesting, too, is how his memorial service today became a metaphor for the death of the news media industry and its own crisis of credibility, and a mourning ceremony for it.
Read between the lines on the President’s remarks there, and the cat is out of the bag:
“We also remember and celebrate the journalism that Walter practiced -- a standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility to which so many of you have committed your careers. It's a standard that's a little bit harder to find today. We know that this is a difficult time for journalism. Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing. Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.
“And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. ‘What happened today?’ is replaced with ‘Who won today?’ The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should –- and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation. We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society. Which price is higher to pay? Which cost is harder to bear?
“’This democracy,’ Walter said, ‘cannot function without a reasonably well-informed electorate.’ That's why the honest, objective, meticulous reporting that so many of you pursue with the same zeal that Walter did is so vital to our democracy and our society: Our future depends on it…
“Our American story continues. It needs to be told. And if we choose to live up to Walter's example, if we realize that the kind of journalism he embodied will not simply rekindle itself as part of a natural cycle, but will come alive only if we stand up and demand it and resolve to value it once again, then I'm convinced that the choice between profit and progress is a false one -- and that the golden days of journalism still lie ahead.”
As a working journalist who runs an online newspaper and a journalism school, I must correct the president: the choice is between profit and progress. The news organizations of the advertising model that exist primarily to make money for investors are precisely those that are either already dead, are dying or are cheapening their content to the extreme that what they produce can no longer honestly be called journalism or news. And the solution to "rekindle" journalism is coming from media that do not have that profit motive as its reason to exist.
If the golden days of journalism lie ahead, they will come from below, and faster still when the dead wood of dead tree journalism is finally brushed aside: from a journalism that is of the people, by the people and for the people.
In the coming days we’re going to, in the process of announcing two dozen scholarships in authentic journalism, while making the applications available and recruiting the best and brightest talents of our profession from throughout América and the world, begin an international months long teach-in to redefine journalism and take it back from the commercial media – which has plagued the word with a crisis of credibility – returning journalism from the hands of a few to the hands of all.
And you, kind reader, will be invited along for the ride every mile of the way. And when it happens Walter Cronkite, wherever he's broadcasting from now, will be able to say, again: "And you were there."
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Yes, Al, Yes
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by E. Duvert (not verified)Every time I read of the America I believed in and hear your words redolent of that country and hopeful for the future, tears come to remind me it is still possible after all. Thanks, Al, for all you are doing to inform us of what we need so desperately to know, understand, and act upon.
Honesty
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Lorie CavinAs I am picking up my house before our "Watch Party" for President Obama's speech tonight, I had some news loop videos from ABC on the MAChine. I listened to PBO speaking at Mr. Cronkite's memorial. Then I pop over here to The Field and Al gives me another way to look at what Autherntic Journalism is.
I am so excited for the people that will attend the school. I am thrilled as a reader that more Auttentic Journalists are being trained and honed via Al and the team of instructors dedicated to:
Honesty.
Cronkite-Gioradno
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Roger Milbrandt (not verified)A remarkably deep and senstive reflection on the Cronkite legacy. It is the steady, solid, unpretentious work of guys like you, Al, that keep many thousands of us from giving up.
(Well chosen photograph of Cronkite too.)
I guess I kind of understand
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Azhrie139 (not verified)I guess I kind of understand the linguistic criticism, but I don't really see a functional difference between honesty and "real" objectivity.
I think the problem is that the media has redefined objectivity to mean something else entirely (e.g. he said/she said reporting). I really don't see how this would describe external reality in any meaningful way. Unless we are narowing the focus of our examination of reality to only what people say about it.
Integrity did not use to be ideological
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by super390 (not verified)I often complain about the crimes and abuses in America's past, ones which were backed by the mainstream of Americans. Yet those same Americans were full of decent surprises. The American media of Murrow and Cronkite was effortlessly misled by the CIA about the facts of Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and so many other places they had no past knowledge of. Yet when the presence of facts on the ground, 18-year-old American facts, forced journalists to pay attention in Vietnam, they learned not to believe the stories they were fed, and the public slowly came to see that the war simply made no sense, regardless of one's personal politics.
Now, it seems that none of this is true. The death of the American character can be measured in many ways, but one of them is its replacement by a studied ignorance, a henchman's instinct to avoid opening the door on his boss' misdeeds, to be able to claim sincere and violent support for the leaders whom one expects rewards from by veering away from the bad news about them. It comes in the rise of professional lie factories on every issue where profit brings harm, eagerly supported not just by the investors who will profit by their obfuscation, but partisans who just want to destroy the other side. It comes in the way pro-growth Americans avoid the environmental stories, pro-imperial Americans the stories about Pentagon waste, Christian Americans yet another story about another of their leaders caught in adultery.
Nowhere is this death of character more stark than in the way that 1974 Americans, having overwhelmingly re-elected Richard Nixon, stood by and let legal processes force him to resign though they were still unclear as to the nature of his crimes. Even the GOP in Congress respected the process. Yet for the last decade, a public that was split in electing George Bush tolerated crime after crime, and raised no serious complaint, while watching the disastrous consequences.
They had come to believe that any power that could be grabbed by any devil on their side would bring them more benefit than the facts that stood in their way. They cannot interpret any data, or even view photos of any atrocity, without the wheels turning in their lizard brains: will this keep me from more goodies? Will this keep me from feeling superior to my enemies? Will this keep me from crushing my child into an obedient mirror of my own inflated self-image, to carry on blindly in my tradition?
Because there's not enough goodies out there anymore to satisfy both our hungers and our integrity, we are no longer Walter Cronkite's America. We are a nation of henchmen, willing to beat up on any truth you will pay us to.
Great post.
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Rhoda (not verified)Did you see Ben Smith at Politico gnashing his teeth at the President's remark. His post boiled down to: the media made you sucker! HRC got taken down by Drudge for you! The freakshow cleared the field for you; not your organizing.
The folks at Politico are pissed b/c he called out the "win the day" mentality that defines them; they have a who won the day feature.
This is the online paper that's become the gossip rag for the media elite and the Capitol: and it's where the school story and the town halls stuff was birthed IMO.
Owned by a Republican operative; they're starting to let their slip show.
Discovering Honesty
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Bill ConroyIn Discovering the News (1978), a book that used to be standard fare for journalism students back when I did that dance, sociologist Michael Schudson describes objectivity, in the sense normally advanced in modern journalism, as "a faith in 'facts,' a distrust in 'values,' and a commitment to their segregation."
Hence, a sentence declaring that “The vehicle is white” represents an objective statement; but when the statement “And I don’t like white vehicles” is added, the sentence suddenly communicates a value that is not “segregated” from the alleged fact that the car is white — though it doesn’t change the alleged fact that the car is white.
The failure shortcoming of Schudson’s definition of objectivity is that it fails to account for the mutable nature of supposed facts as they play against human perceptions — and not infrequently deceptions — as well as the very subjective process of how facts are selected or not selected in the writing and editing process.
Acknowledging that reality in journalism is what helps to make it honest.
Hence, an honest statement about the vehicle would acknowledge that it was actually a small car that appeared white as it buzzed by me, though I can’t really be sure, as my focus was distracted by the gunshot, or at least what I thought was a gunshot, yet others near me, when talking to the police officer, described as a car backfiring or maybe a firecracker thrown into the car as a prank. All I know is that the sight of the blood on the pavement made me uneasy, and quite certain my gunshot theory couldn’t be ruled out.
Sort that one out, and I think you’ll see there’s a good argument against putting objectivity and honesty in the same box.
The lie of "objectivity"
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Nancy Chester@Azhrie
My take on this isn't that what passes for corporate journalist "objectivity" is the he said/she said presentations or even "some" or unnamed "officials" disagree discussions. It's the fundamental lie that all views have equal merit. We saw that kind of reporting with Lou Dobbs treating the story that Obama was born in Kenya as a serious story and cutsy comment that Obama might be "undocumented" because he didn't present a paper birth certificate. It's treating the essentially racist views of the "birthers" as having equal merit with a story confirming Obama's Hawaii birth certificate, newspaper announcements of the birth at the time, etc and calling it "objective". It's also ducking the real story of the underlying racism of the whole "birthers" movement.
Lou Dobbs was so over the top on this one that even the corporate media cringed. Unfortunately I can't remember who, but one of the media watchers commented on the story, "Stay tuned for CNN's upcoming documentary, 'Is the World Flat? We report, you decide'."
Nancy, I agree. What I was
Submitted on September 9th, 2009 by Azhrie139 (not verified)Nancy, I agree.
What I was inartfully trying to say is that an approach that gives all views equal credit inherently cannot be objective because all views will not adhere well to external reality. The only way it could resemble objectivity is if you narrowed the definition of objective to cover only what is believed and said by people.
It might just reflect my scientific indoctrination, but as a professional when I am called to be objective I should ideally have to treat the subject matter in a way that doesn't voice all points of views as having equal merits and to try and articulate the weaknesses and strengths of all remaining plauable views (assuming no one clear answer presents itself).
Actually, this brings up a related complaint about journalists that I have had for a while. It strikes me that in this matter and many others (as an example, conflicts of interests); the journalistic profession is not required to adhere to the same ethical and professional standards as scientists despite their relative similar position in the public dialogue.
I hope so!
Submitted on September 10th, 2009 by Christi DemuthGreat post, I really hope you have a hand in teaching up and coming journalists what true reporting is supposed to look and read like.
Hillary rumors starting now
Submitted on September 10th, 2009 by Jim (not verified)I realize this is off-topic, but wanted to bring to Al's attention the latest (probably unsubstantiated rumor), posted at The Weekly Standard:
Story is that Hillary is considering resigning as early as this fall, to run for NY Governor. http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/09/go_hillary_go.asp
I repeat: it's probably unsubstantiated.
@ Jim
Submitted on September 10th, 2009 by Al GiordanoJim - From your lips to god's ears. Let it please be true. It wouldn't be the first time New York took a hit for the nation, but she's a train wreck at State.
On Hillary
Submitted on September 11th, 2009 by Elliot KaufmanAl, I wonder why this rumor is popping up now, and more to the point, if the ones pushing this are Obama's allies, might this be a sign that they want to get rid of her? I happen to know of a certain New Mexico governor who got a clean bill from the Justice Department who President Obama would probably be delighted to have (and not to mention would still be good for Democrats in New Mexico).
U.S. pulls visas of top Honduran officials over coup
Submitted on September 13th, 2009 by barbs (not verified)Roberto Micheletti, acting as president since the June 28 coup, said on a radio program that the visas of his foreign minister, Carlos Lopez, and 14 Supreme Court justices were also revoked.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-honduras13-2009sep13,0,6402009.story
UN cancels election aid to Honduras
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/542677/...