Events Leading up to My Death.

• Author: Dunsmore, Barrie

On January 30, 1968, the beginning of the Chinese lunar new

year festival known as Tet, 70,000 communist troops launched a surprise

offensive throughout South Vietnam. The attackers surged into more than a

hundred cities and towns, and, for the first time, Saigon and the vast U.S.

Embassy complex in the heart of the city came under rocket fire.

A few weeks later, the U.S. military claimed that because of the heavy

losses the Viet Cong had suffered, "Tet" was a defeat for the communists.

That was literally true, but Tet was nevertheless both a political and

propaganda victory for the communists, and a key turning point in the war in

Vietnam. This was because the intensity and scope of the Tet Offensive

shocked most Americans, who had been led to believe that given American

superiority in firepower and technology, victory in Vietnam was inevitable

if not imminent.

This sense of shock acquired a significant amplification in the key

electronic media - television. At a time when television news anchormen

rarely left their studios, CBS News' Walter Cronkite hurried to Vietnam to

prepare a special report on the Tet Offensive and its implications for

American involvement in the war. As a veteran war correspondent, with the

clout and contacts that only an anchorman can have, Cronkite was certainly

qualified to do such a report. And, of course, according to numerous polls,

he was at that time "the most trusted man in America."

At the conclusion of that special broadcast on Tet in late February,

Cronkite did something he had almost never done before, and certainly not on

the subject of Vietnam. After much agonizing he decided that he had to put

his credibility on the line and offer a personal opinion. This is what he

said:

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the

evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest that we

are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that

we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory

conclusion. . . . It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only

rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as

honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did

the best they could.

At the White House, President Lyndon Johnson watched the special report with

some of his staff, including News Secretary George Christian and his

assistant, Bill Moyers. According to Moyers, when the program was over, "The

President flipped off the set and said 'If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost

Middle America.'" Five weeks later, on March 31, Johnson announced that he

would not seek reelection, this in the context of a unilateral bombing pause

of North Vietnam.

No one would suggest that Cronkite changed the course of the Vietnam War, or

that he was singly responsible for the President's decision to throw in the

towel. But Johnson was prescient when he noted Cronkite's link with "Middle

America", for by the end of 1968 most of Middle America came to share

Cronkite's views on the war.

In the formative years of television, from about the mid-Fifties to the

mid-Seventies, before the proliferation of channels that came with cable and

satellites, CBS, NBC, and ABC were indeed the windows on the world for the

great majority of the American people. Each night, more than fifty million

Americans would gather in front of their TV sets at the dinner hour to watch

the evening news. (Fewer than twenty million do so today. And while ABC was

number three in that race, it actually had about twice as many viewers in

the late Sixties and Seventies as it had in the early nineties when it was

number one.)

The newscasts evolved into a combination national town meeting, teach-in,

and therapy session, where people could learn about and ponder the momentous

events of their world, their nation, and their neighborhoods. And these were

momentous times. The Cold War was at its height and nuclear war was widely

believed to be a very real possibility. By 1965, the war in Vietnam was

raging. Much of the Middle East and Africa was in turmoil and either region

had the potential to ignite a superpower confrontation. At home, a

president, his brother, and the country's most prominent black leader were

assassinated - the latter two in a single year, 1968. Below the seething

surface, too, the country was in the throes of at least four ongoing and

interlocking social revolutions over race, feminism, sexual freedom, and an

array of new technologies. At such a moment, the newly found power of

television could have become an instrument for division and extremism, as a

free but irresponsible press has been in other times and in other places. It

did not.

Perhaps more by accident than design, the television news broadcasts of that

era were voices of moderation amid chaos. They reflected middle class values

and essentially centrist politics, mainly because the men who produced and

presented them were middle class and moderate - sometimes a little to the

left, sometimes a bit to the right, but never far from the center.

While there were many people involved in these news programs, three men

became their personifications: Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and Howard

Kingsbury Smith. All three men have now written memoirs. In addition to

serving as fascinating first-hand accounts of much of the history of this

century, these books also tell us much about how and why television news did

what it did back then. In the interests of full disclosure ! must say that

as a network television correspondent with ABC News, I was part of that era

and worked, quite closely at times, with both Smith and Brinkley. I have

great respect for all three men. As I do know them all personally, I can say

that in their memoirs each author has found his authentic voice. As you read

along you can hear Cronkite's earnest high-to-low cadences; Brinkley's

short, staccato sentences touched with irony; and Smith's soft, slight

Southern drawl.

The same was true when we watched them on television. We were getting an

authentic person, not the creation of show-doctors working with focus groups

and Q-ratings, makeup artists, or publicity departments. These were genuine,

bona fide journalists who came across on television very much the way they

came across in person. They do so, too, in their books.

While the personality of each man was certainly different, it is remarkable

how similar the men were in terms of background and personal and

journalistic philosophy. All are white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (though

Smith's mother was a Catholic). All were from middle class families, though

their early lives were far from idyllic. Their mothers were strong and

dominant women who seem not to have liked their husbands much. Brinkley says

he was an unwanted child. Smith's father was a ne'er-do-well from an

antebellum aristocratic family since gone broke. And Cronkite's...