Walter Cronkite Is No More

Figuratively speaking, I mean.

Norman Podhoretz writes a monumental tour-de-force at Commentary, Sep. 2004. I spent Saturday reading it; printing it out, I used up what was left of the toner in my laser printer.

Reading the whole thing is well worth the time. (It is here, too.) I want to call your attention to this little bit, though, discussing the change in American attitude towards the Vietnam War:

.... Even when all but one or two of the people who had either directly led us into Vietnam, or had applauded our intervention, commenced falling all over themselves to join the antiwar parade, public opinion continued supporting the war.

But it did not matter. Public opinion had ceased to count. Indeed, as the Tet offensive of 1968 revealed, reality itself had ceased to count. As all would later come to agree and some vainly struggled to insist at the time, Tet was a crushing defeat not for us but for the North Vietnamese. But Walter Cronkite had only to declare it a defeat for us from the anchor desk of the CBS Evening News, and a defeat it became....

One of the biggest differences, Faithful Reader, between then and now is that no Walter Cronkite can make a pronouncement in flat contradiction to reality and have it become the dominant factor in public opinion without being challenged mightily. Walter Cronkite, of course, is only emblematic of the larger mainstream media — a wing of the Democratic Establishment — that no longer has a monopoly on the dissemination of information & opinion.

Podhoretz references four of his earlier articles; I have been able to find these three:

• How to Win World War IV
• In Praise of the Bush Doctrine
• Israel Isn't the Issue

Podhoretz also references four of George W. Bush's speeches:

• Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People
• The President's State of the Union Address
• Remarks by the President at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy
• President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership

This extra reading is the kind of service you've come to expect from The Blog from the Core, though you don't necessarily get it from other sources. No need to thank me: just throw money my way. :-)

See also World War IV.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 08/16/04 05:52:27 PM
Categorized as George W. Bush & Social/Cultural & Speeches and Suchlike.

"On Kerry, News Services Play Catch-up"

See if you can read this article by the Kansas City Star's reader representative, yesterday, without laughing.

Some of you think the paper isn't doing its job of covering Sen. John Kerry and the controversy surrounding his military record.

Last week, readers called and wrote in, saying The Star hasn't covered critics' assertions that:

1) Kerry's claim of being in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968 was a lie; and that

2) One of the swift boat veterans says he was misquoted by the Boston Globe, and is still fully behind the anti-Kerry movement....

The Star subscribes to several news wire services — the aforementioned credible sources — including Knight Ridder (The Star's parent company), The Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post wire services.

On Friday, a Google News search turned up dozens of references to the Kerry stories. Many of them were on fringe news and personal Internet pages, sites that The Star and other mainstream media don't recognize as credible by themselves. Such news must be verified, preferably with two independent sources. That doesn't always happen on Internet sites, talk radio and cable TV news shows — even though such electronic media often are far ahead of other traditional news media in reporting controversy.

Sometimes the early reports do get it right. When that happens, traditional news media look like slowpokes. As with other celebrity and political news stories, electronic media frequently move faster than print news does. That's because they don't always have the system of checks and balances newspapers require....

As to the system of checks and balances newspapers require, one need only bring up two names to get an idea of what passes for checks & balances at mainstream newspapers: Jayson Blair and Michael Kranish.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 08/16/04 07:44:36 AM
Categorized as Media.

No Wonder Swiftees Scare Democrats Silly

Thanks to a reader for calling this study at Read My Lipz to our attention:

A video released last week by the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth (www.swiftvets.com), an organization aiming to refute John Kerry’s Vietnam war record, proves to be highly effective in raising questions among Independents about the Democratic candidate's military service.

The Swift Boat video – primarily a montage of outspoken Vietnam veterans claiming that Kerry has lied about his Vietnam service – was found by a majority of Independents to be persuasive, with 53.89% responding that this was the case.

See HCD and MCIPO.

P.S. Here are some highlights from the report:

.... Note: These results reflect a small sample of potential pool of Independent voters in the 2004 Presidential Election, and as such should be considered directional in nature.... [p. 4]

1. Confirming expectations, viewers find the Swift Boat ad to be highly negative.
2. Despite high negativity, the Swift Boat ad does not push away Independents intending to vote for Bush.
3. As with past negative political advertising, the Swift Boat ad captures the attention of viewers.
4. Independents show belief in the Swift Boat ad.
5. The Swift Boat ad proves quite effective in raising questions about Kerry’s Vietnam service among Independents.... [p. 5]

According to AdverTest real-time tracking data, Independents showed strong belief in the Swift Boat ad. Furthermore, belief rose as the video progressed, which suggests that the continuous clips of veterans denouncing Kerry each add more credibility to the ad as a whole.

Belief in the ad is high at the beginning as Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards is speaking, but it declines when a photo of John Kerry in Vietnam is shown. Belief begins to rise again when the veterans challenging Kerry’s claim appear, marked in green in Figure 4.1 below, and does not significantly fall again. By the end of the video, belief in the ad is at its highest point. This data suggests that Independent viewers find the claims of the veterans in the ad to be more believable than the claims being made by the Kerry campaign at the beginning of the ad in support of the Democratic candidate’s Vietnam service.... [p. 14]

In the most important aspect of advertising – effectiveness – the Swift Boat ad significantly outperformed the Kerry ad. Not only did Independent viewers consciously attest to the persuasiveness of the Swift Boat ad, but they also reconsidered intentions to vote for Kerry at startling levels after viewing the video.

In overall persuasiveness, Independents were more convinced by the attacks of the Swift Boat ad than by the supporting message of the Kerry ad. 53.89% of Independent viewers agreed to some extent that the Swift Boat ad was persuasive. Meanwhile, 43.25% felt so about the Kerry ad. Also, the Swift Boat ad managed to outperform the Kerry ad yet again in the intensity with which viewers accepted its message. 15.03% of Swift Boat ad viewers chose the strongest level of agreement with the notion that the ad is persuasive, while only 7.30% of Kerry ad viewers did so.... [p. 15]

These results should dismay the Kerry campaign. While maintaining a positive image has become an important theme, the response to the negative Swift Boat ad compared to the positive Kerry ad shows a potential area of weakness that could be further exploited. Merely running support ads may not be enough to sustain Kerry’s image in the face of attacks such as that run by the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth organization. [p. 17]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 08/16/04 07:23:51 AM
Categorized as Political.