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Tag: "Vietnam"

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Note to most mourning journalists: You are not like Walter Cronkite
By Erich Vieth on July 18th, 2009

Note to most mourning journalists: You are not like Walter Cronkite

Glenn Greenwald offers yet another column sharply critical of many of today’s so-called journalists. It is well worth reading the entire thing. Here’s an excerpt:

[M]edia stars will spend ample time flamboyantly commemorating Cronkite’s death as though he reflects well on what they do (though probably not nearly as much time as they spent dwelling on the death of Tim Russert, whose sycophantic servitude to Beltway power and “accommodating head waiter”-like, mindless stenography did indeed represent quite accurately what today’s media stars actually do). In fact, within Cronkite’s most

[caption id="attachment_8158" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image: public domain: Library of Congress"]Image: public domain: Library of Congress[/caption]

important moments one finds the essence of journalism that today’s modern media stars not only fail to exhibit, but explicitly disclaim as their responsibility.

Greenwald also quotes New York Magazine’s Yada Juan, quoting Harper’s Lewis Lapham:

The new tradition is that the press speaks on behalf of the government.” An example? “Tim Russert was a spokesman for power, wealth, and privilege,” Lapham said. “That’s why 1,000 people came to his memorial service. Because essentially he was a shill for the government. It didn’t matter whether it was Democratic or Republican. It was for the status quo.” What about Russert’s rep for catching pols in lies? “That was bullshit,” he said.

Greenwald includes a short clip of an interview where Walter Cronkite expresses his greatest regret. And here is one of his best moments, when he forcefully spoke truth to power.

Note:, Even Cronkite got caught up on the power and patriotism of war, a fact that is documented in the transcript of the excellent documentary, “War Made Easy,” which I reviewed here.

NORMAN SOLOMON: Every war, we have US news media that have praised the latest
in the state-of-the-art killing technology, from the present moment to the war in Vietnam.

WALTER CRONKITE: B-57s — the British call them Canberra jets — we’re using them
very effectively here in this war in Vietnam to dive-bomb the Vietcong in these jungles
beyond Da Nang here. Colonel, what’s our mission we’re about to embark on?

AIR FORCE COLONEL: Well, our mission today, sir, is to report down to the site of the
ambush seventy miles south of here and attempt to kill the VC.

WALTER CRONKITE: The colonel has just advised me that that is our target area right
over there. One, two, three, four, we dropped our bomb, but now a tremendous G-load as
we pull out of that dive. Oh, I know something of what those astronauts must go through.
Well, colonel.

AIR FORCE COLONEL: Yes, sir.

WALTER CRONKITE: It’s a great way to go to war.

You can watch the entire documentary here (1 hour and 10 mintes) .

Featured • Media • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on November 05th, 2008

Who is William Ayers, really?

The New Yorker has just published an interview of William Ayers. It humanizes him and clears up some misconceptions. It makes me wonder why Ayers didn’t speak up earlier, while he was being portrayed in a grotesque way that was pulling down the Obama campaign. Here’s an excerpt:
Ayers said that he had [...]

American Culture • History • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on June 21st, 2008

When the executive branch acts in secrecy . . .

What happens when the executive branch is allowed to operate in secrecy and without constraint? This was answered in 1976, by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church:
The natural tendency of Government is toward abuse of power. Men entrusted [...]

Censorship • Civil Rights • Communication • Corruption • Humor • Military • Politics • War
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By Erich Vieth on June 11th, 2008

“War Made Easy” presents us with the time-tested recipe for going to war

In 2006, Norman Solomon wrote War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. His book detailed the information tactics the American government uses to launch wars.

War Made Easy has been such an influential book that it has now been made into a movie of the same name. You can view it here or you can order a copy of the DVD here.

I was able to attend a viewing of “War Made Easy” last Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis (NCMR2008). This crisply edited movie was narrated by Sean Penn. Much of what keeps this movie engaging are the dozens of carefully chosen news media clips generated during various American wars for the past 50 years, including large numbers of videos clips from the Vietnam war and the Iraq occupation. The magic of “War Made Easy” is that the directors carefully edited and arranged these clips to show us that nothing much has really changed: If an American president has decided that he wants to go to war, the watchdog American media is likely to become a lapdog and we will inevitably go to war.

Following the screening of “War Made Easy,” I attended a discussion of the movie led by media critic Norman Solomon and the co-director and producer of the movie, Loretta Alper. The following morning, Ms. Alper granted me the opportunity to interview her further regarding the making of “War Made Easy.”

Whenever we Americans go to war, we get there through a well-documented series of stages. As I watched “War Made Easy,” I saw better than ever that these stages are entirely predictable in the context of America’s warmongering ways.

Perhaps this characterization of America sounds too shrill, but just look around. The evidence is everywhere that war is a sport in America just as sports are warlike. Our TV shows and movies overflow with violence as a first-rate method of dealing with conflict. The toys we foist on our boys extol violence as the most obvious way of settling disputes. We challenge each other with statements like “support the troops,” no matter what those troops are doing (and see here ). We are all too ready to invoke the word “war,” because that word triggers a ready-made conceptual frame for freely and guiltlessly expressing ourselves with bullets, bombs and blood. In America, this frame of war is such an incredibly effective filter that we proceed to consider only the “benefits” of war and we ignore the massive damages inflicted on both war-zone civilians and upon millions of Americans (and see here).

American Culture • Bigotry • Iraq • Media • Military • Politics • Psychology Cognition • Technology • The Middle East • Uncategorized • Video by DI • Videos • War • ignorance
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By Erich Vieth on December 01st, 2006

Bush on “the lesson of Viet Nam”

According to our president, here is the lesson about Iraq that America learned from Vietnam:  “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”
Keith Olbermann doesn’t see it that way.  

Iraq • Military • Politics • War
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