Cronkite, Rather, Thomas: Another Media-Anointed ‘Legend’ Reveals True Colors
Dan Rather commandeered the CBS Evening News for 24 years before sustaining a self-inflicted career wound. Conservatives knew of his liberal biases for years, as they did with Thomas, but the general public likely did not. That all changed with the forged National Guard documents, the media scandal which essentially ended Rather’s big-league news career. Rather didn’t just get caught propping up faux documents in an attempt to derail President George W. Bush’s attempt at a second term. He stood behind his shoddy reporting for far too long, proving he cared more about his image — and possibly swinging a presidential election — than the facts. Rather now toils for HDNet, an outlet with a minuscule audience.
Cronkite’s late career descent was far less dramatic and didn’t involve any ill-advised rants or journalistic malpractice. Instead, his final years revealed a man with a sometimes loose grip on logic and a hardcore liberal ideology that belied his fair and balanced reputation. Cronkite began penning op-ed pieces from a left point of view, and suddenly the notion of an old-school newshound was replaced by that of yet another partisan writer.
Did his views affect his coverage of the Vietnam War? Consider allegations Cronkite offered up CBS transportation services to a fierce anti-war critic during the 1960s. And there’s little doubt his proclamations regarding the Tet offensive proved a huge propaganda coup for the Viet Cong. Many years later, Cronkite hurt his legacy by saying presidential advisor Karl Rove “probably” arranged for an Osama bin Laden video to be released before the 2004 presidential election.
These individual events are having an impact on how people view the mainstream press. A September 2009 survey of 800 Americans revealed most people think the press is either “somewhat” or “very” biased, and helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. The same poll found people viewed the press as being in favor of Obama’s health care plan, not treating it with appropriate skepticism and examination.
Consider recent comments by former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges, who rooted on Greek-style rioting in the United States last month. It should have been another Helen Thomas-type disaster, but most people wouldn’t know Hedges if he dropped in on their Thanksgiving dinner. His personal biases may be extreme, but he’s never been considered a recognizable — and reliable — name to the public at large.
But Thomas is, or rather was. And her downfall gives news consumers one more reason to be wary of traditional press.
It’s an old maxim that the definition of gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Perhaps we should expand that: …or when a journalist unthinkingly reveals his biases.
I remember when Katie Couric made those self promoting promos for CBS touting how she’d not only be bringing us the news – but would explain what it means for us. My older sis saw through that ad exclaiming “I can think for myself”! I gotta give her credit for beginning to see what is happening to our country. Granted – she’s about as slow turning to starboard as the Queen Mary – but she’s coming around!
CBS is unabashed in their ‘we’re smarter than you’ attitude. That Couric promo proves it to anyone not a dunderhead. Happily – my sis is no longer one!
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Hillary Clinton were to be caught wrong- footed on the same subject. For those who have followed her career from the moment she became a “public figure”, much the same attitude as in H. Thomas’ remark would not be surprising.(but Thomas is 89 years old and can be given a little slack. She has no power, no real influence /effect on the “lives of others”). The behaviour of the “compassionate” preachers and sermonisers of the LEFT has always been gang, bullies and thugs attacks on the weak. So Helen Thomas is target for their “indignation”, because? her remarks put the cat among the pigeons. Hillary isn’t 89 and her attitudes about Jews/Israel AND her “championship” of the dignity and rights of women, EXCEPT as cheer-leaders of her game to power is at the center of the Obama Administration, and is no secret. As Secretary of State, the face of America to other nations, ask yourself why she accepted without demur the “booby prize” when her goal was the brass ring. Watch what she does, NOT what she says. AND FINALLY — LISTEN TO WHAT SHE AND ALL THE “LIBERALS” ARE AND HAVE BEEN SAYING FROM THE BEGINNING OF THEIR ASCENT TO POWER. Note that it is POWER, NOT REPRESENTATION of the American People that is and has been the GOAL of these “compassionate liberals”.They are now assuring the POWER stays in their hands by the LAWS they are enacting in Congress by “encouraging” those who might vote against their grab by “giving them an offer they can’t refuse” . PAR FOR THE COURSE !
Reporting the news and being honest is so boring and unfulfilling when you can tilt at windmills and vicariously try to change things in fields which you might’ve preferred to be in if only you were more qualified and/or braver… the mental masturbation and delusion of modern reporters. Chroniclers they’re not; wannabe, intrusive and unqualified experts ther are. They should stick to their proper jobs or go do something else where they risk their own butts.
At least now old Helen can go back under the bridge with the other Trolls. Everyone forming opinions on public policy and ” reporting” news along with editorials need to be careful with their comments and should be held accountable, regardless of their age, alcohol content, or any other excuse.
Politicians also need to be accountable. Patrick Kennedy, Robert Bird, Hank Johnson, and Larry Craig to name a few.
Bubba and LeRoy down at the local booze hall mill may get some slack, but no one in public life or reporting” news ” should have any wiggle room. Do you hear me Obama?
Don’t add to the drivel about Helen Thomas “shattering the glass ceiling”.
Biased liberal MEN pushed the dumpling through the glass.
The rebirth of the Margaret Sanger feminist movement in the 60s gave rise to the sham of male public figures riding on the coattails of the “movement” (yes, it includes eugenics) by hoisting dumb dumplings like Thomas after due service as an office punchboard.
Get real.
Hilary? She of the corkscrew landing under sniper fire at Tusla? She of the it’s too dangerous to send the President, so send the First Lady tripe? She’s been caught wrong-footed more times than Sinbad has jokes! Not that the MSM has ever noticed though …
One question: What great journalism did Helen Thomas ever do? She seems to be one of those people who is famous for being famous. Of these three miscreants Cronkite deserves the greatest contempt. Thomas and Rather are small potatoes compared the treasonous Uncle Walter. He contributed to the death or enslavement of untold numbers of Vietnamese.
Walt, I ask myself the same question. For the life of me, I can’t remember a single article, essay or book she’s ever written. I can’t even think of any subject she’s covered – and I KNOW which journalist covers what. If I see a certain journalist, I say ‘oh, yeah, he did that piece on Goldman Sachs’ or ‘she reported from Bosnia wearing that ugly parka’, etc. In short, I know their work. But not Helen’s. All I heard was people TELLING me she was a journalist but – like Obama’s ‘brilliance’ – there was never any actual proof of it. The only ‘proof’ I ever saw was this hag slumped like a dirty bean bag in the front row of the White House Press Room, snarling and going off on rants like a demented aunt who needed medication and Depends. What I did NOT see was any proof as to why this woman was called a journalist, let alone a ‘legend’.
It has become increasingly obvious that the MSM has been almost totally captured by the Left and that for some time. Prior to the very beginnings of WWII, Italian Communist Party member and Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci was writing his notebooks in prison, laying out the case and tactical playbook for his thesis that by using the media—then only starting to expand to the enormous penetration, scope and reach that is has attained today–to push its propaganda, Marxists and their agents and fellow travelers among educators, cultural élites, artists, entertainers, and opinion makers, could bring about a revolution—not quickly or primarily with guns and violence, but a slow, gradual subversion leading to a revolution that would take many decades of work to achieve, but one that would have a much greater chance of success, and that is what has happened in the decades since then.
In previous decades, when the grip of the MSM on news was almost total, this bias was able to be, wanted to be and needed to be hidden, but now when their goal is so close, those in the MSM are starting to take off their masks—and many are also being unmasked by what has been termed the “undermedia”—the alternative news and opinion sources found on the Internet and a few larger news outlets like FOX; and the “cognitive dissonance” just keeps growing.
In the case of Obama & Co., the MSM has been all in for them since the very beginning, and the MSM has wrung the neck of the “news” like a chicken and has rendered it just as dead, and the stink of that rotting corpse is starting to penetrate into all sorts of places.
I am hoping that when Obama & Co. goes down, it takes the MSM and its nauseating pretense of professionalism and objectivity crashing down with it.
“an icon in her field”
Nonsense. Thomas was famous not for anything she ever did, but what she was- a person with ovaries. That, and loaded-question harangues worthy of a Jack McCoy posed as “questions” (attacking the President, if Republican, and the President’s critics, if a Democrat).
Will it be truth or Pravda, comrades?
“Walter Cronkite’s transformation from trusted anchor to partisan scribe”
Actually, many of us who witnessed firsthand Cronkite and CBS’s slanted – and at times, outright false – reporting from Viet-Nam the 1960′s, knew over 40 years ago that Cronkite was a liar and a shill for Marxists. Cronkite was never anything BUT partisan. Helen Thomas wore her hatred on her sleeve, but among the Leftists that constitute the “Main Stream Media” in this country, her hatred of Israel was a badge of honor.
These are the very reasons why the MSM is dying. They have offender half of their target audience to the point that that portion of their audience no longer watches/buys the product they offer. Thus the FCC’s attempt to bailout newspapers and create a state run media on the order of Pravda/Der Angriff…
Think about that. The federal government would give funds directly to newspapers to keep them afloat. Who here thinks that government bureaucrats wouldn’t then interfere directly on what stories could be published and what could not?
“It’s an old maxim that the definition of gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Perhaps we should expand that: …or when a journalist unthinkingly reveals his biases.”
Right on, brother. I would add a corollary that “The liberal bias is there, and we know it, but they think they’re clever enough to hide it so that we can’t figure it out, but the gaffe occurs when it slips through and they then act shocked when there are consequences.”
I wish they would let Thomas continue to sit in the WH Briefing Room & be the face on the liberal recruiting poster. That mug would send people running to conservatism!
You can talk ’till you’re blue in the face, but most people still don’t, or won’t, see the left media bias.
Should it really be a surprise to anyone why the conservative media outlets are enjoying such popularity these days?
I agree with the notion that the dear Ms. Thomas should have been allowed to keep her seat and have future opportunities to make an utter ass of herself, as her views represent the sentiments of the left so very well.
Don’t kid yourself. If Fox, talk radio and the internet didn’t exist, the MSM would be just as successful as they ever were, because the center-right majority would have no where else to go, just like back in the generations prior to the mid-1990′s. Now that we do actually have media that more reflect our views, we’re deserting the old line media in droves, driving down both their circulation/viewership and advertising revenues.
Note how the attacks from the left are directed not at media in general, but at Fox, talk radio and the internet. They don’t want us to have the ability to actually hear differing opinions from theirs. That is the whole point of Political Correctness, campus speech codes, “hate crime” laws, kangaroo “human rights commissions” to punish speech that offends (only) their approved victim groups, corporate “sensitivity” training, etc, ad nauseum. Once they control the rest of the new media, the only language available to even think in will be NewSpeak, which for the left would be doubleplusgood.
The left already controls Hollywood, the arts, the university and public school faculties, and resent like hell the fact that they are no longer totally in control of the “news” media. They are already proposing “bailouts” for failing old-line media, laws to control the internet, back and side door methods to impose the Orwellian named “Fairness Doctrine” without calling it that. The latest and greatest FTC proposals even call for the government to “train” “journalists” through AmeriCorps and vastly increase the subsidies to public TV and radio.
If the left wins this one, the only thing Orwell will have gotten wrong will be the year.
“untrustworthy mainstream media.”
You can trust them. To push a left wing agenda and serve as the mouthpiece for the Democrat Party.
Same for the schools, the entertainment industry, the government bureacracy. Every institution that dispenses information is effectively controlled by left wingers, and the information is presented accordingly.
That’s why most people in this country actually believe that FDR was a great guy and one of our best presidents, while Dick Nixon was the essence of evil and a terrible president. It’s absurdly wrong, but that’s the kind of stuff people are bombarded with all their lives in America, so that’s what most folks believe, even if it is total baloney.
Which it is.
O wow, did Hell’n Thomass need CALLING OUT! And talk about scary; everytime her picture was posted along with her really clueless comments, I was, with all due respect to one who broke through the “GLASS CEILING,” TOTALLY CREEPED OUT! She could have given a run for the money to BELA & BORIS.
Once again, she really needed to be deep-sixed by the press establishment @ the W.H., & it FINALLY HAPPENED. And it was a direct result of her own un-selfedited mouth; SHE DID HERSELF IN with no help from ANYONE in the washington press corps, it was all her OWN DOING in her CONSTANTLY CRACKPOT WORDS. The latest in a series of truly DELUSIONAL STATEMENTS, & HER SELF-ADMINISTERED COUP-DE GRASS was the one about the Jews. I don’t think Goebbels could have said it “better.” GOOD RIDDANCE, HELL’N, & don’t let the back door hit you on the ass on your way to a WELL-DESERVED retirement.—GOD BLESS, MARKRITE
American does not trust the socialist frauds that have infiltrated the MSM, academia and government. The tide is now turning and the democrat frauds that continue to provide defense for the undefensable, such as covering up obama’s secretive past, ignoring climategate, treating CO2 as a pollutant and the main cause of the global warming hoax, to name a few, has exposed them for what they are. Radical american hating democrats. We must make amends in 2010 and boot their non american commie rear ends all the way to cuba and retake this great country which they have an agenda to destroy.
Actual, objective journalism does not exist today in the main stream media. Period. It’s broken. It’s like buggy-whips.
It’s endemic, the losers go to journalism school and emerge regarding themselves as the only ones capable of knowing that the federal government can sustain a nation. Very bright, especially when coupled with a cultivated distaste for America and Americans, a “racist” society you see.
And millions of little apes fret and wet themselves over Fox News. ONE network and they’re dropping cows over it. Loons.
FINALLY! That old hag – and wicked witch of the Swampland – is dead & gone!! Actually, gone is good enough – the Lord is very hesitant to take her; and, even as we speak, he is in top-secret negotiations with Lucifer to ready her “front row” seat – next to the furnace – in Hell….
Who would you choose? Helen Thomas or Sarah Palin?
Let’s rundown a brief list of the accomplishments of each:
1. Helen Thomas, liberal copy girl, now-defunct Wash Daily News, 1942.
Sarah Palin, conservative PTA mom, Wasilla city council, 1992.
2. Helen Thomas, liberal WH correspondent, 1962.
Sarah Palin, Mayor of Wasilla, AK, 1996-2002.
3. Helen Thomas, liberal “Sitting Buddha”, 1962.
Sarah Palin, conservative “Sarah Barracuda”, State Hoops Champion, 1982.
4. Helen Thomas, resigns from UPI, 2000, calling it a “bridge too far.”
Sarah Palin, says “thanks but no thanks” to federal money for a “bridge to nowhere,” 2005.
And last but not least:
5. Helen Thomas, “Tell the Jews to get the hell out of Palestine.” 2010.
Sarah Palin, Miss Wasilla, 1984, 3rd Runner-up Miss Alaska, AND Miss Congeniality.
6. Helen Thomas, washed-up liberal mugwump, 2010.
Sarah Palin, best-selling author, public speaker, 100 most influential people, 2010.
You make the call. I know it’s close but try anyway.
Helen Thomas the harridan and long-standing enemy of Israel, or Sarah Palin who had an Israeli flag in her office and broght cheers from the CPAC conference when in her keynote speech she proudly proclaimed her support for Israel?
Again, Rock, tough call…really hard to think about it…after all Palin is, as we all know, a perky ignoramus without an Ivy League education and Thomas has been a colleague of all the right people who write for the right publications.
Whom to choose? It’s a puzzlement.
Yep, `1Alex, it’s a tough call.
Hey, I know! I’ll act like a liberal and pick based on looks. On second thought, scratch that: I’ll pick based on who has the best hair. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out who that might be between the two.
And `1Alex, I especially like ‘harridan’. Very nice. You sent me to the dictionary on that one, but now I won’t forget it. Thanks.
And what of the South Carolina legislator who said “we already have one rag head in the White House – do we want another in the Governors Mansion”
This was his critique of the East Indian woman running for that office…
WHAT? no outrage? — is our outrage selective here at Tel Aviv west.com???
You people either suffer cognitive dissonance … or out and out bigotry.
GM, the comment he made was inappropriate – but name-calling is quite different from Ms. Thomas said. Neither were good – but on the scale of which is worse, Ms. Thomas’ wins by a landslide.
‘Cognitive dissonance’ – how long have you been waiting to squeeze that into a conversation?
Helen Thomas only illustrates in Bold Typeface what the remainder of the White House Correspondents are about. She was always a fool, and they are still fools, even if they don’t completely reveal themselves as she has done.
i can remember the news papers vilifying joe mccarthy on one page and on the next page there would be an article about this harvard grad.or an other defecting to the soviet union one step ahead of the f.b.i.harvard has produced quite a few traitors like the hiss brothers,bongo and the first sasquatch.so i knew they were liars but is was viet nam where they were pro commie by calling demonstrators anti-war when they carried north vietnamese flags.these bums weren’t anti-war they were anti-american and they still are.then we have wally cronkite who said the war was lost during the 1968 tet well that bastard was not their but i was. i served with the 101st airborne and we kicked their ass so bad they could not launch another offensive until 72.we killed over 55,000 nva and wiped out the so called viet cong.if we had gone north that war would have been over in about 6 months.but johson though he was a general but he was just a texas bag man.
Hoo-ee! Waaall, AH am jest SOOOOOPER proud ta be a conservative, a group what has plenny o’ room fer MAH sorry a$$ – AND YOUR’S TOO! All y’all jest make me feel lahk maybe Ah ain’t as dumb as what they’n all said when Ah was at the Aggie. Jethro Billy Joe Corn Pone Bob Daddy, they said ta me, y’all needs ta learn yer sorry a$$ some alphabet… AND some ‘rithmetic! Waaall, that shore took some doin’, but now Ah knows most of the alphabet an’ all the numbers up to about 26 or so. So shore ’nuff, Ah mahself am a prime example o’ how you kin take the “good” outta “good ol’ boy” and then all ya got left is “old boy,” but they ain’t no such thing as an old boy, cuz a boy’s a young ‘un. So it really don’t make no sense, do it? Ah forgot why Ah brought that up. Ah’m jest goin’ to curl up with a bottle and scratch mahself ’til Ah falls asleep right here in tha barn. God bless America except fer the liberals and minorities.
That is very informative piece of writing.
You couldnt be more precise!