A "Cronkite Moment?"

There have been three significant developments this week having to do with the media and the Iraq war: Doug Vogt and Bob Woodruff's injuries, a second tape from Jill Carroll's captors featuring the kidnapped journalist, and Christiane Amanpour's comments on Larry King. I'm going to assume you know about the first two. As for the third, Amanpour said "[t]he war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster" and called Iraq a "black hole." That prompted Fishbowl DC's Garrett Graff to repeat his claim that "[t]his week is looking more and more like a 'Cronkite moment.'"

A Cronkite moment is, according to one definition, "when a mainstream media or political figure raises questions about a war or a policy that may produce a dramatic shift in public opinion." It's worth pausing for a moment to ask whether such a moment is even possible. Alessandra Stanley doesn't think so. She argues that "[n]obody in this era of what Ted Koppel, the former 'Nightline' host, describes dismissively as 'boutique journalism' has the kind of mass audience and unconditional trust Walter Cronkite held when he shook the nation by declaring the Vietnam War unwinnable." In December, Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell questioned here on Public Eye whether the notion of a Cronkite moment was overblown from its inception.

People have identified other Iraq Cronkite moments in the past – John Murtha's recent comments concerning withdrawing troops spring to mind. Graff argues that this might be the real thing, however – "The [moment] where, despite all the big and little moments and grand statements like the 'Plan for Victory' and tomorrow night's State of the Union address, the American people lost hope in the war. This serious attack on Woodruff's and Vogt's convoy is similar to one that happens hundreds of times a week in Iraq, but it rarely makes the wall-to-wall coverage that yesterday's attack garnered--and it will likely change how every American news organization covers the war."

That possibility has Rush Limbaugh and other war supporters fuming. Here's Rush:

The idea that this makes it real. This is a news organization which participated in the happy count-up to a thousand soldier deaths, 1,500 soldier deaths, 2,000 soldier deaths, that didn't make it real. This makes it real, Bob Woodruff and the ABC cameraman being hurt. This makes it real. The soldiers, ah, that's what they do, they're props, you know, when they die, we can add up the numbers and we can hope to influence policy with this. But, oh, wait a minute, this is real, this is finally real. Our men and women in uniform get hurt every day over there defending freedom. It's been real to all of us since it began. I guess it's a new aspect of journalism. "Well, what we report on, you know, it doesn't really happen until it happens to us, then it's real."