Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in Vietnam?
CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam to provide viewers with an assessment of the war’s progress. His one-hour special report aired on Feb. 27, 1968.
Until 1968, Walter Cronkite believed what his government told him about the Vietnam War. He was an old-school journalist, a patriot, a man who came of age covering World War II as a wire-service reporter and then taking over as the anchor of “The CBS Evening News” at the height of the Cold War. Like most journalists of his generation, he embraced the fight against communism and understood why the United States had intervened in the war raging in Vietnam.
