Wasn't Walter Cronkite just another mouthpiece for the "puppet masters"?

[Silent3]

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: SARCASM ALERT FOR THREAD TITLE!!! :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

Now, without so much sarcasm...

Given the sizable (or at least very noisy) contingent on DU who seem to have a world view where practically everything that happens in politics, in the economy, in warfare, everything that gets reported in the news, is all controlled by a powerful, invisible elite, how, in that view, could Cronkite deserve the praise he's now getting?

By that extremist logic, wouldn't such a very public face of the news, trusted by so many people, had to have been "in on it", a shill for the power elite?

[Rick Myers]

1. Ask LBJ...

[lilytea]

25. That's really insensitive of you

he's not alive anymore

[Sebastian Doyle]

2. I think its fairly obvious whom the shill for the power elite is.

It's blatantly obvious from the venom (not sarcasm)dripping in every one of your posts towards anyone who questions ANY so called "official" government story.

And for the record, while CBS was certainly never a "liberal" corporation, there's a damn sight of difference between the Cronkite era, when actual NEWS was reported, and the ex-Today show host twit current era when you have two minutes at most for any story, and even that filtered through corporate interests.

If you can't remember the difference, then you (like most of the DLC interns) weren't there.

[Silent3]

4. You talk about "questioning"...

...but the "questioning" is typically of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" variety -- accusations in the form of questions, if someone even bothers with the formality of forming a question.

I have no problem with questioning at all. I questioned, for example, the whole WMD rationale for invading Iraq. I don't buy every "official" story. I questioned a whole lot about Bush, and I question a bit about Obama, such as his reluctance to pursue prosecution for war crimes.

My big problem is with crazy logic-defying paranoia and alternatives for "official stories" that are far more questionable than the official stories they're supposed to supplant.

[Lerkfish]

3. so, you're taking the opportunity of his death to attack other DUers?

stay classy.

[Silent3]

5. People have used whole wars as starting points for a thread...

...where they voice disagreements with other DUers. Would you characterize that as using the deaths of thousands to make a point?

I haven't said a single bad thing here about Walter Cronkite. I liked and respected him myself. His death marks a turning point of sorts, and that sort of thing legitimately sparks all sorts of discussions.

[Lerkfish]

17. I never said you disparaged Cronkite.

that's YOUR strawman.
but no matter, you admitted to what I accused you of.

[FrenchieCat]

6. Cronkite was there BEFORE the dismantling of the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987,

the passage of the Telecomm Act of 1996, and before 5 conglomerates owned our airwaves, and television news was about making money, or at least not losing any, while influencing the citizenry.

See, I'm one of the ones that believes that there is collusion that goes on between the 5 giant corporations who own 90% of the media, although I don't call them "invisible elites" as they are quite out there with their agenda. Their motive is quite simple; protect their monied interests at all cost, which includes supporting the party whose platform clearly is about keeping business tax rates as low as possible, and minimizing any regulations that might impact their empire. If you think General Electric has a television station or two or three in order to benefit viewers, you've got another think coming!

But you don't have to believe what I say based on faith, you can just keep your eyes open and you'll see the evidence right before your every eyes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=389&topic_id=6093197&mesg_id=6093197

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6072639

[Silent3]

11. I'd love to see a return of the Fairness Doctrine, and I also...

...believe corporate ownership and consolidation of media have slanted the news.

That's a very different position from the hyper-paranoia of big-time conspiracists who don't merely see slant, but who see total or near total control media control, and whose delusions of such massive conspiracy go back way before 1987.

[Marr]

7. News outlets have always reported from the perspective of their owners. But-

media consolidation and enormous growth of corporate power has meant the "owners" are not just some group of local interests, but something far more monolithic and "elite", for the want of a better word. It's GE nowadays, rather than the local factory owner. What's more, the fact that these corporate media outlets are now just small pieces of larger conglomerate has made them something more like PR departments than news organizations.

It's a different time.

[blondeatlast]

8. This thread is an exercise in assholery; trying to stir up controversy and dischord among DUers

in a rare moment of unity, reflection, and mourning over a great American who served his democracy well beyond the call of duty.

Stay classy, jackass.

[NoPasaran]

9. What's the octane rating for this flamebait?

[TahitiNut]

10. Cronkite left at least in part due to the reorganization of the news division of CBS into ...

... a profit center, treating the news like the entertainment division. Until the late 70s, network news organizations were partitioned and managed by professional journalists, adhering to a tradition of ethics that came out of a reaction to the "yellow journalism" era of Hearst and others. (e.g. Charles Foster Kane, Rosebud)

The "grand old men" of network news were all veterans of wartime foreign correspondence and acolytes of the Edward R. Murrow sense of integrity. The advent of "news magazine" and proto-tabloid news on network televison is, in large part simultaneous with Cronkite's decision to retire. It's not accidental that it also corresponded with the ascendancy of Reagan, Reagan Democrats, and the attitude of corporate arbitrage that included rampant mergers and aquisition, hybridization of conglomeration, and the various predations of the MBA financial types that suppl;anted operational experience.

[XOKCowboy]

12. Well said as usual...

The NYT story about the time that Cronkite met with RFK "off the record" after his visit to VietNam shows his integrity. He regretted stepping over the line and it came back to bite him.

[Silent3]

16. The problem is you're trying to use logic.

The conspiracists I'm addressing talk as if the whole thing has been a "puppet show" all the way back to the moon landings, Viet Nam, the King assassination, the JFK assassination, the Cold War, Nazi Germany, the Great Depression, etc.

"They" only let you know what they want you to know, see what they want you to see, hear what they want you to hear. The end of the Fairness Doctrine and the increased conglomeration and corporate control of news organizations would at most be merely a streamlining of old tactics in the paranoid conspiracy mindset, not the beginning of something very new.

To this mind set, Cronkite's appearance of honesty and integrity would only be the appearance of such, simply one ploy among many in how "they" market their propaganda and disinformation.

[readmoreoften]

13. That's pretty ridiculous. Cronkite was from a thoroughly different era.

The American public was an entirely different animal back then.

[johnaries]

14. That was when NEWS was a public service, not a profit center.

Networks pretty much ignored their news branches.

[Vidar]

15. Cheerfully Unrecommended.

[AnnInLa]

18. No

Times were somewhat diff then.

Your original supposition is a straw man:

"Given the sizable (or at least very noisy) contingent on DU who seem to have a world view where practically everything that happens in politics, in the economy, in warfare, everything that gets reported in the news, is all controlled by a powerful, invisible elite, how, in that view, could Cronkite deserve the praise he's now getting?"

DUers make noise when they see control/subservience to some elite force, but are not stupid enough to think that every thing happens this way. If we had such a world view, we would have given up long ago.

[Silent3]

24. DUers do lots of things. They're hardly monolithic.

And a few, those I'm referring to, don't merely "see control/subservience", they attribute unbelievable (and I mean literally not worthy of belief) capabilities of secrecy, media manipulation, unified influence and control to those they believe are "really" in charge of things.

[Mrs. Overall]

19. .

[uppityperson]

20. k&u, times change and no.

[Critters2]

21. For some reason, my folks always watched NBC--Huntley and Brinkley.

I remember that the show was really called "The Texaco Huntley Brinkley Report". No doubt, Cronkite had a sponsor or two as well. Yet, there wasn't the sense of being beholden to sponsors that there seems to be now. At least, that's how it seems to me.

[Odin2005]

22. There is no reasoning with conspiracy nuts.

They'll just accuse you of either being duped by the conspiracy or being "in on it". It's self-reinforcing and thus you can't reason with a person with such thinking. It's a kind of self-created psychosis, and kind of mental pit that only the individuals themselves can pull themselves out of.

[Gabi Hayes]

23. which conspiracy nuts are you talking about?

as opposed to, say, coincidence nuts.....

[dflprincess]

27. Probably the nuts who think Cheney was running an assassination squad

oh wait...

[Odin2005]

28. There are conspiracies and then there are Conspiracies.

When I dismiss something as a "conspiracy theory" I am not saying there are no conspiracies. What I am rejecting is the "Conspiracy Theory of Society", the popular notion that society is micromanaged by a united shadowy force, a primitive belief that is merely a secularized version of ancient beliefs in when everything that happened was the result of the actions of the gods on Olympus. The law of unintended consequences is ignored by such notions. Even if a group tried to do such a thing they would fail because society is to complex to predict and micromanage, which is why the Neo-Cons got thrown out of power last fall and Cheney is throwing fits.

[Lerkfish]

29. even a small bump can change the course of a large car

I think your straw man of an all pervasive all tentacles-on complete control conspiracy IS unwieldy and complex.

Consider however, how relatively small events (or relatively small to carry out) can have large consequences:

1. 911: one day's worth of attacks, 9 years worth of repressive evaporation of civil rights, two wars, over 2 million dead.
2. OPEC collusion on oil price *small number of countries*: global economic ruin.
3. Sudden death of one witness on voting irregularities: investigation of an entire election quagmires
4. Anthrax attacks of less than a dozen people: Patriot act passes without challenge
5. Outing of ONE CIA agent: the complete collapse of an entire network meant to safeguard against stolen nuclear weapons.


should I go on?

anyways, your central point is that conspiracies are too large and complex to carry out. My point is that events only need a small nudge to change directions. Conspiracies can be small, in fact work better if small.

[Silent3]

30. Even small nudges can have totally unintended consequences.

As Odin2005 just said, it's the law of unintended consequences. It's one thing to make the shit hit the fan, it's another to think you can do it so precisely that you control exactly where each spatter lands, and not get spattered yourself.

Further, some "small nudges" are a lot more plausible than others. If I thought 9/11 was an inside job (and I'm still open to at least consider the basic concept as possible, but it's IN SPITE OF, certainly not because of, the utter stupidity of most LIHOP/MIHOP scenarios), the smallest nudge is a very simply LIHOP, exactly the same as the "official story" in most respects, but just ignorning known threats, and maybe weakening some defenses. The most plausible MIHOP is still very much like the "official story", but we use someone we've worked with before (say Osama bin Laden), and he helps arrange exactly what the official story says happened.

The above are simple, at least plausible, small nudges. Drone plans, space lasers, rigging huge occupied buildings for controlled detonation right under the noses of their many occupants, all of which increase operational complexity and greatly expand the scope of those who have to be involved in a secret plan, all of which have far more opportunity for accidental failure and exposure of the operation, all for absolutely no identifiable gain over the effect on the public of simpler, more apparent explanations. Thousands dead from smashing ordinary passenger planes into the WTC would have been more than enough to get the Patriot Act, to whip up support for the Iraq war, etc., whether or not the WTC buildings actually fell down or not -- so why bother to rig them for collapse?

I could go on, there are so many other basic flaws to many popular conspiracy theories and the world views behind them, but I doubt it's worth the effort to keep typing and typing because the responses are always so predictable.

[Odin2005]

31. Exactly, it's the illogical context that such ideas are given in that betrays their ridicuousness.

The conspiracy nuts that believe in things that are simply factually incorrect keep on believing in their nonsense because they have convinced themselves that their beliefs are true and the actual facts are propaganda and lies. It is this self-reinforcing delusional thinking that results in such conspiracy theories. It's not the theories themselves, it's that when anyone tries to falsify the theory he or she is scolded by the conspiracy theorist for not accepting "the truth" and thus must be either duped or be in on it, any criticism is seen as confirming the theory, reinforcing the delusion.

[Odin2005]

32. Example of unintended consequences when it come to the financial industry BS

A lot of people are screaming "it's all a planned conspiracy", but...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6101758&mesg_id=6101785

Okay, let me rephrase. What idiot group of bankers decided to go to a model of mortgage servicers, selling off bundles, and all the rest?

That would be the current group of bankers. For centuries, bankers made loans, people made payments, bankers made money. Then all this imaginary bullshit with all these useless middlemen were invented as ways to skim even more from the actual productive people in society.

When enough was finally skimmed off through organized fraud and systemic design, the productive people couldn't make it and revenues ended to the crooks.

Except of course for the part where they get the taxpayers to stand good for their stupid schemes.

All of the current system was designed by the bankers. They instituted it. Hardly my fault they were too stupid to see that it just could not work. When the Mafia steals all the production from a factory, sooner of later the factory will close, and they will have nothing to steal.

Not too hard to figure. What's hard for me to figure is why we must subsidize a group of idiotic schmucks that I wouldn't trust to rake leaves, to the tune of trillions so far?

Let me recap. Bankers are idiots. They are favored by the system for now, but that can't last any longer than the system can make up for. That fail point is near. Bankers planned it. They executed it. They continue to reap welfare from it. They will collapse it. Stupid, blind, unyielding greed combined with no ability to see long term is their epitaph.

They were the kids your mom wouldn't let you play with. Glad I listened.

If it was a conspiracy it was a conspiracy run by morons.

[Silent3]

35. With the power of hindsight at your disposal, however...

...you can always reinterpret the facts to fit your conspiracy. Some people did manage to come out ahead in the banking mess, and some people who caused the mess are doing well at tax payer expense even now.

Without exaggerating things to Conspiracy-with-a-capital-C extremes, there probably is a lot of small-c conspiracy going on here, a lot of corrupt influence of business on government to be found.

In the Big Conspiracy view of things, however, the whole thing has and is shaking down just like how some "THEY" wanted it to. Whoever got rich was among those intended to get rich in the Big Plan, whoever lost their shirt was either intentionally targetted or collateral damage of no concern. Whatever the details, in retrospect you can say those were the intended outcomes.

If data doesn't fit support your conspiracy theory, it's the data, not your theory, which is suspect. If a wild idea with no little or no evidence and just the barest plausibility fits your theory, "Well, you can't prove it's wrong!" makes it as good as fact.

[Odin2005]

36. Good point.

Dogmatic ideologies are the same way. When the Great Revolution never happens the Marxists never admit that the Marxist conception of history is wrong, they just create ad-hoc arguments to rationalize away the refutation of their beliefs. In reality, Marx's conception of history was falsified by the Progressive Era and the Depression.

[SidneyCarton]

38. And Archduke Ferdinand's driver makes a wrong turn, and finds Gavrillo Princip.

A fatal wrong turn, that leads to:

WWI
The Bolshevik Revolution
Italian Fascism
The Third Reich
WWII
The Holocaust
The Cold War
The founding of the State of Israel and the subsequent mess in the Middle East
The Korean War
The Vietnam War
Dirty wars in Latin America
The collapse of the Communist Bloc
etc.

World War one would have likely happened anyway, but that wrong turn in Sarajevo in 1914 has had lingering echoes. There was a conspiracy involved, but it was hardly to reshape the face of the 20th
Century, and slaughter tens of millions of people.

[endarkenment]

54. Or the ones who think the Iraq war was planned before 9-11

in a secret series of meetings that included top 'energy sector' executives.

Oh wait....

[dflprincess]

26. In Cronkite's day the major networks were stand alone companies

they weren't owned by larger companies and certainly not by defense contractors.

The networks supplied the news sections with large budgets and they expected they would lose money, unlike today when they're expected to be profitable.

[madamesilverspurs]

33. Case in point,

Cronkite was part of the 'Eisenhower generation' of journalists. He would not have endured in his profession once the media had been swallowed whole by the very military-industrial complex against which Eisenhower inveighed. Integrity was requisite for those of Cronkite's ilk; it's in damn short supply today among those who pass themselves off as journalists.

[Hannah Bell]

34. Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were

William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.

http://danwismar.com/uploads/Bernstein%20-%20CIA%20and%20Media.htm

[Silent3]

37. Instances of influence and cooperation, which I'd of course imagine...

...aren't unusual, are support for what, exactly?

What happens in Grand Conspiracy is that starting with the meager facts that some particular corrupt and conspiratorial acts have happened, or can happen, this becomes enough to justify, even without specific evidence, that whatever similar corrupt and conspiratorial acts are needed to support a particular imagined Big Conspiracy have happened as would be required, with the burden of proof being turned on its head and placed upon anyone who doubts that.

[Hannah Bell]

39. you leap to a lot of conclusions yourself.

[Silent3]

40. Could you cut the melodramatic flare...

...and just fucking say what conclusions you think are being jumped to?

Probably not.

[Hannah Bell]

43. the conclusion that your post was the appropriate response to mine.

[Silent3]

47. It's like pulling teeth.

I have an amazing ability to state that I see a contradiction, point to the contradiction, and describe what I think is contradictory -- ALL IN ONE POST! Sometimes I even mix in multiple points, examples, analogies, comparison and contrast, all of that all in the SAME SINGLE POST.

Make sure you're wearing the appropriate safety gear and give it a try sometime.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[apocalypsehow]

42. It's a fair point. You're catching hell over it, of course, because folks don't like the truth

served up to them in a distilled shot that burns all the way down, whether they be Freepers or DU'ers or about any human being with a political bent in between.

But it's still a fair point.

[Silent3]

46. Thank you.

I think part of the problem with the reaction I've received is that some people who aren't over-the-top conspiracy nuts, who rightly recognize small-c conspiracy in things like the Iraq/WMD/Saddam/Al Qaeda fiasco, might be identifying with the Grand Conspiracists that I'm talking about, and think they're being criticized too.

[Vinca]

44. Walter Cronkite was no David Gregory.

[Silent3]

45. If you thought I was suggesting that he was...

...you didn't detect the very-clearly-marked-as-such sarcasm. :)

My point isn't about the merit of Cronkite as a journalist, it's about consistency (or lack thereof) in conspiratorial thinking.

[endarkenment]

48. media control was less organized then compared to now

but yes Cronkite's break with 'the establishment' over Vietnam reflected the wider schism in that same establishment over war policy. That does not make Cronkite's actions directed by his corporate masters, one would have to produce actual evidence to make that case. Instead it reflected the dialog within the establishment over Vietnam. Cronkite, part of the establishment, was hearing more and more dissent from peers and superiors in his social set, and felt emboldened to act as he did. Overt conspiracies in back rooms are not required. See Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. Cronkite was still a hero for acting as he did, he still took considerable personal risk by doing so.

[Silent3]

50. "One would have to produce actual evidence"?

Hah! You're not at all understanding the conspiratorial mindset. Evidence is good when it supports your case. Evidence is disinformation when it doesn't support your case. Lack of evidence is evidence of a cover-up of the very thing you think is going on.

[endarkenment]

51. There really are conspiracies for which we lack hard evidence.

For example, it is a fair bet that there was an overt conspiracy to LIHOP a catalyzing incident to justify the conquest of Iraq as part of the PNAC plan for USA world dominance via military control of the ME oil fields. And yet we have no good concrete evidence of that conspiracy as the conspirators remain very much in control of all access to such data.

[Silent3]

52. Having some suspicions is a valid thing...

...but you can often tell from the emotional tenor of the way some people talk about these things that they harbor a degree of certainty that goes well beyond mere suspicion, and well beyond what the available facts support. There are reasons to suspect LIHOP or even MIHOP, but there are also reasons to suspect mere opportunism in deceitfully exploiting a tragic event like 9/11 without having contributed to it happening.

When you start using the fact that some evidence is unavailable to assume that if you knew what was hidden, then your suspicions would be confirmed, you end up heading down the rabbit hole. "This way lies madness."

This means, of course, some people will get away with it. Some well-executed conspiracies are going to happen, the perpetrators will go unpunished, and the truth will remain hidden. You can't solve that problem, however, by replacing presumption of innocence with presumption of guilt, or letting a suspicious imagination run wild to fill in the gaps in available information.

What I sometimes feel is happening among the conspiracy-prone is a burning resentment of the idea that someone is getting away with something they shouldn't, a burning resentment that the public is being played for fools -- which no doubt they are in varying degrees all of the time -- and a desperation to at least be able to claim that one was among the people who can claim not to have been fooled.

[endarkenment]

53. You appear to be simply expressing the flip side of the Grand Conspiracy

you ridicule, which is an equally unsustainable position. There really are bad men plotting awful things and our history is full of their activities. We really do live in an absurdly corrupt kleptocracy where a nebulous shadow government frequently acts in a conspiratorial fashion to control outcomes and retain their stranglehold on our republic and its machinary of wealth and power. Denying that reality is as stupid as claiming that everything is an overt conspiracy.

[Silent3]

55. I'd say the burden of proof is on you.

There really are bad men plotting awful things and our history is full of their activities.

No matter how true that is, it doesn't mean that all of the plots and awful things one suspects have happened the way you imagine they've happened, and certainly not with all of the details concocted in many conspiracy theories.

There's also the matter of just how much power these "bad men" have. Some conspiracy theories require nearly magical levels competence, secrecy, coordination, cooperation among apparent rivals, etc.

We really do live in an absurdly corrupt kleptocracy where a nebulous shadow government...

Absurdly corrupt compared to what? There has been, and probably always will be, abuse of power and influence. This has long been possible with diverse, uncoordinated, and shifting centers of power, and often with blatant indifference to secrecy (as monarchs and dictators can often do what they like without being questioned).

Your proof of this "nebulous shadow government" is what? The lack of proof is proof of how well they hide themselves? You think people who don't believe it's there have the burden of proof that it doesn't exist?

Suppose tomorrow some prominent politician is killed. Could a crazed lunatic do such a thing on his own? Yes. Could a conspiracy, large or small, do such a thing? Yes. Does evidence matter, or is it a conspiracy until proved otherwise?

I have no problem believing conspiracies are possible, but I do need proof of a specific conspiracy before I yell conspiracy, and I need something a lot more plausible than secret giant space lasers and buildings rigged for controlled detonation right under the noses of their occupants (all for no good reason, when having a plane smash into a famous building, killing thousands, regardless of whether the building collapses or not, is more than enough excuse to rev people up for a war).

There are some people, however, who will never, EVER believe that an important politician was killed by one person acting on their own (I'm not trying to invoke JFK specifically here, by the way). No matter how good the apparent evidence, it must have been faked. No matter what eyewitnesses say, it must be that they are in on it, or have been coerced into telling the dread "official story". Every inconsistency in eyewitness testimony, regardless of the fact the witnesses are well know not to be terribly reliable, becomes proof that something different than the "official story" must have happened.

[Tor_Hershman]

49. Yes

Yes he was