Hat tip:
Instapundit.

One of the most persistent – and thoroughly debunked – myths in
American journalism is the notion that CBS anchor Walter Cronkite
possessed the ability to change the course of human history with
every night’s newscast.

The ultimate sign of Cronkite’s power relates to a 1968 special
report he did from Vietnam. Cronkite pronounced the war a
“stalemate” and supposedly Lyndon Johnson uttered something along
the lines of “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country” and
realized his presidency was officially finished.

Here’s MSNBC host and John Kennedy biographer Chris Matthews

reviewing in the New York Times Douglas Brinkley’s recent
biography of Cronkite:

Cronkite never shied away from telling hard truths. Recall his
half-hour “Report From Vietnam” on Feb. 27, 1968, in which he
declared the Vietnam War a “stalemate.” It was a verdict the
veteran war correspondent didn’t relish delivering, but Cronkite,
who had recently returned from reporting on the Tet offensive, now
believed that the war was unwinnable and indefensible. He felt
“conned” by Lyndon Johnson, Brinkley writes, and “sickened” that
his network had swallowed the Pentagon’s spin.

“The aftershock of Cronkite’s reports was seismic,” Brinkley
adds. President Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite,
I’ve lost the country.”

How did Cronkite get the credentials to be taken at his word
that an American war could not be won?

Yeah, well, as American University professor and
Getting It Wrong author Joseph Campbell notes on his great
Media Myth Alert
blog, the Cronkite story is totally bushwah. Campbell notes that
Johnson did not watch the original broadcast and there’s no
indication he ever watched a taped version of the program either.
Cronkite’s invocation of “stalemate” was not original or memorable
– that phrase had been used for a long time by then. And for all
the talk of a “Cronkite moment,” asks Campbell, why did U.S. troops
stick around in Vietnam for another five years?

This is not a tendentious point, Campbell
argues persuasively:

Why bother calling out Matthews for casually invoking the
central component of themythical “Cronkite
Moment”?

Doing so serves to highlight how insidious the myth has become,
how blithely it is marshalled to support the notion that courageous
and motivated journalists can do marvelous things.

Doing so also demonstrates anew that not even prominent and
presumably fact-checkednews
organizations such as the Times are resistant to
the intrusion of hoary media myths.

And doing so indicates that at least some high-profile
contemporary journalists possess a shaky command of
the history of their
field.

I’d go a bit further: The Cronkite story plays into the romance
of supposedly objective journalists having profound effects on the
world. It’s a self-flattering myth that pumps up the ego of
newshounds everywhere, which can only lead them into more and
bigger mistakes. Filled with true tales of massive falsehoods,
Campbell’s
Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in
American Journalism is essential reading not just for
journalists but all consumers of the news.

ReasonTV just interviewed Campbell a couple of weeks back. As he
points out, not only is the “Cronkite moment” stuff malarkey, but
so is the hoary cliche that Cronkite was the “most trusted” man in
America.