Walter Cronkite Remembered
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Ironically, Mr. Cronkite admitted the North Vietnamese suffered a military defeat on the February 16, 1968 edition of The Evening News. But that conclusion was missing from his special report, which aired two weeks later.
To our knowledge, the CBS anchor never bothered to correct the record, or consider the impact of media reporting on the eventual fall of South Vietnam and the bloodbath that followed.
By any standard, Walter Cronkite was an exceptional broadcast journalist who helped define his craft.
But the plaudits he deserved must be balanced against obvious mistakes.
On one of the biggest stories of his career—the Vietnam War—Mr. Cronkite got it horribly wrong, and his reporting helped shape policy mistakes that produced a catastrophe.
That too, is part of Walter Cronkite’s legacy.