Thursday, October 18, 2018

The most trusted man in America, part 3






Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll.
 He reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War, the Dawson's Field hijackingsWatergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon.
He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of an Ambassador of Exploration award. Cronkite is well known for his departing catchphrase, "And that's the way it is," followed by the date of the broadcast.

The journalism program at Arizona State University was named in honor of former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in 1984.The relationship started when Tom Chauncey, the longtime owner of the CBS affiliate in Phoenix and a leading supporter of journalism education at ASU, contacted his old friend in an effort to help the program. An endowment on behalf of the program was soon established in Cronkite’s name, and the school was named in honor of the former CBS anchor.
Attaching the name of the nation’s most prominent and respected journalist to ASU’s program gave the school an immediate boost and national recognition, but that was just the beginning. Cronkite became intimately involved with ASU, advising the journalism school’s leadership, meeting with students and faculty, and traveling to Arizona each year to personally give the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to a media leader.
Since Cronkite's death on July 17, 2009, the school has renewed its commitment to carrying on his ideals and values.
“The values that Mr. Cronkite embodies – excellence, integrity, accuracy, fairness, objectivity – we try to instill in our students each and every day,” said Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan. “There is no better role model for our faculty or our students. There’s no doubt that our close affiliation with Walter Cronkite has helped the school become a national journalism powerhouse over the past 20 years, and will continue to help us as we grow into the best professional journalism program in the nation.”
This year’s winner of the Cronkite award, Anderson Cooper of CNN, was announced at a luncheon at the Sheraton in Phoenix yesterday, October 17. During his remarks to the audience, Cooper told the audience that the best way to handle attacks against the media is “more reporting”.


The world that we live in today is far different from the one that we lived in when Walter Cronkite was on the air. If you go to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, you can see a sign hanging there that tells you what to look for if you’re worried that your country may be slipping into fascism. You can read their twelve early warning signs of fascism at the link below.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/01/31/the-12-early-warning-signs-of-fascism/https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/01/31/the-12-early-warning-signs-of-fascism/

If shouldn’t take you long to figure out that the Trump administration is guilty of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. 
 Trump’s favorite news channel, FOX “news” is nothing more than a propaganda channel for the Republican Party, which would qualify it as “controlled mass media”. Donald Trump talks with Sean Hannity on a regular basis, since he seems to think that he is a credible source. At the same time, he criticizes LEGITIMATE news sources, like CNN, The New York Times, and the Washington Post as “fake news”. Unless you’ve consumed the Republican “Kool aid”, you’ll realize that they ARE highly reliable sources of information. The New York Times has won 125 Pulitzer Prizes since the inception of the award in 1918. Prior to this year, the Washington Post had won 63. In April, the Washington Post was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, capturing journalism’s most prestigious honor for its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and for its coverage of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, in which The Post broke the story of sexual misconduct allegations against the Republican candidate, Roy Moore.

The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards honoring excellence in broadcast journalism were established in 1942 by Jessie Ball duPont in memory of her husband, Alfred I. duPont. The duPont Awards, administered since 1968 by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, are considered to be the most prestigious broadcast journalism awards and the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, which are also administered at the Journalism School.
In 2017, public broadcasting was the cream of the crop. PBS had 23 awards, WBGH in Boston had 21 (many shared with PBS), National Public Radio had earned 17. CBS and ABC each had 13, NBC 7, and CNN 6. MSNBC and Court TV had two, and National Geographic, CNBC and Current TV all have one. Fox News Channel?
Zero.
In February of this year, the Trump administration announced plans to cut 97% of the funding for public broadcasting in the 2019 budget.
The odd thing about society today is that in 2011, Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, broadcast “fake news” every day, yet he was the most trusted man in America
 How can you tell if a politician is lying?
If his lips are moving.
Since the Washington Post has documented that Donald Trump has uttered more than 5000 lies since his inauguration, he has definitely put “the ring of truth” to the above statement. As of today, more than 1 million copies of "Fear," Bob Woodward's new book about Donald Trump, have been released into the world. In the index, under "Trump, Donald," is this entry: "as liar."
In spite of the tendency for politicians to stretch the truth a bit, it definitely should surprise you to learn that the “most trusted man in America” 5 years ago was a politician:

In my opinion, Bill’s wife Hillary is one of the most qualified people to ever run for the office of president, but she is also the most demonized:




Since Anderson Cooper was just given the Walter Cronkite award, most people would (or should) consider him to be the most trusted man in America, but his allusion to the attacks on news sources reminds us of the fact that journalism can sometimes be a dangerous profession.

In June of 1976, Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, was killed by a car bomb because of his coverage of the Mafia. In November of 2016, the Republic also received death threats because they endorsed Hillary Clinton for president instead of the tweeter-in-chief.

Earlier this month, a Washington Post columnist named Jamal Khasoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. The link below goes into more detail about his death, and it also references the significant financial ties that Trump has with Saudi Arabia.


As a result, Trump is doing as much as he can to draw suspicion away from the Saudis:




In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, President Trump said he wanted answers in the disappearance and suspected murder of a dissident Saudi journalist but stressed the importance of protecting business and security ties with Saudi Arabia, as Washington tried to navigate a dispute pitting the kingdom against another regional power, Turkey. Since “Davos in the Desert” is being held next  week, it will be VERY INTERESTING to see who shows up – and who doesn’t. On the morning of October 18, Treasury Secretary (after consultation with Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo), announced that he has decided to withdraw from the conference.  


Last year, at the inaugural conference (officially the Future Investment Initiative), there were more than 3,800 attendees, Riyadh said. They came from more than 90 countries, representing a vast share of the global economy.

Khasoffi disappeared on October 2, 2018. He is a Saudi Arabian journalist, author, and a former general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel. He also served as editor for the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan, turning it into a platform for Saudi Arabian progressives.
Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia in September 2017 and went into self-imposed exile. He said that the Saudi Arabian government had "banned him from Twitter" and he later wrote newspaper articles critical of the Saudi government. Khashoggi had been sharply critical of Saudi Arabia's crown princeMohammad bin Salman, and the country's kingSalman of Saudi Arabia. He also opposed the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.

While he was in his self=imposed exile, he wrote some columns for the Washington Post. His last column was received by Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor, a day after he disappeared. In the column, he bemoans the fact there is only one country in the Arab world (Tunisia) that truly has a “free press”. Jordan, Morocco, and Kuwait are classified as “partly free”, but the rest of the Arab world is “not free”. (Since Al Jazeera is based in Qatar, that country should also be considered at least “partly free”.


Under the title of its newspaper, the Washington Post lists the phrase “Democracy Dies in Darkness” – an idea that both Anderson Cooper and Jamal Khasoggi would fully embrace.

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