Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There was a mercifully brief period in this country’s history where most people unquestioningly accepted whatever Walter Cronkite told them. You know, it's before my time, but when Cronkite suggested in 1968 that the United States withdraw from Vietnam, I believe what he said was taken seriously. I do not believe it resulted in the country unifying behind the peace movement and immediately withdrawing from Vietnam,…
> You know, it's before my time, but when Cronkite suggested in 1968 that the United States withdraw from Vietnam, I believe what he said was taken seriously. I do not believe it resulted in the country unifying behind the peace movement and immediately withdrawing from Vietnam, which is the sort thing that would happen if "most people unquestioningly accepted whatever Walter Cronkite told them." It took a few years,…
That's actually not something I argued, although I understand there's a subthread or something about it.
> More essential though was the unquestioning acceptance of the mainstream media's power to selectively report the facts they considered most pertinent, to decide the issues of the day by choosing what to report and what not to report, and to establish governing narratives around their coverage. There is an enormous degree of power that the media can and does exercise in this fashion. Today that power is much less centralized than it once was. I consider this a net good, and am suspicious of any nostalgia for the days of greater centralization.
I'm not sure how much I actually agree or disagree because you're being so blatantly hyperbolic ("unquestioning acceptance," etc.) about things that frankly aren't key to what I believe is the interesting point.
Decentralization and news apart from the mainstream media seems like it should be be a great benefit. Like them or not, it was never a good situation that GE owned NBC, one family owned the Washington Post, or whatever. The trouble is, one thing that has not happened has been greater empowerment of small newspapers and local journalists who are best positioned to serve their communities. They're simply being driven out of business by large companies.
On the other hand, "mainstream media" is often just code for non-conservative media, whatever exists outside of Fox, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and assorted AM radio garbage. If that's how you look at things, the "mainstream media" is definitely losing some market share and mindshare.
> It took a few years, but the ultimate outcome of the Vietnam War was probably sealed at that moment, and everybody including President Johnson and Walter Cronkite himself knew it.
Johnson made a comment to the effect that he'd just lost the war, but when it came to war fighting, Johnson was honestly quite an idiot. The ultimate outcome of the war had many more years to be determined and a lot of other people had their say, including, you know, the enemy.