--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_re...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robert <babajii_99@> wrote: > > > > The New York Times > > Editorial | Appreciations > > Walter Cronkite > > . . . > > VERLYN KLINKENBORG > > One wonders whether Mr. Klinkenborg, whose writing tends > to rhapsodize the "rural life" and whose closest brush with > "hard news" and controversy seems to have been contributing > a quote to the furor surrounding an author who expressed his > distaste at one of his books being chosen for "Oprah's Book > Club," might fall into the category of journalists described in > this article. They seem to be falling all over themselves to laud > a man who would not have considered *any* of them journalists.
Klinkenborg would not fall into this category of journalists, no, since he would fall into only the very broadest category of those considered journalists, i.e., those who write for publication in newspapers and magazines. He isn't a reporter, has no journalism degree, and has never worked for a newspaper or magazine except as a member of the NYTimes editorial board, or as a freelance contributor. His editorials for the Times are typically about rural life, as you note. You might call him a "literary journalist." He's basically a writer of nonfiction. In other words, for Cronkite not to have considered him a journalist would not have been a criticism, nor is he among those "media stars" Greenwald is (entirely appropriately, IMHO) criticizing. Sorry, but you goofed again, Barry. There are any number of other journalists of the type Greenwald excoriates who have written paeans to Cronkite that you could have picked. Here's one from WaPo by Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC News: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/18/AR2009071800610.html http://tinyurl.com/m68pk8 He devotes one sentence to Cronkite's public disillusionment with the Vietnam War and fails to draw any contrast with the current generation of journalists, who wouldn't and didn't dare claim the administration's portrayals of what it was doing in Iraq were not to be trusted, as Cronkite asserted of the Johnson administration's claims about what it was doing in Vietnam. Howard Kurtz, another media star who styles himself a media critic, also wrote an appreciation of Cronkite for WaPo. He mentions Cronkite's criticism of Vietnam in passing, but only in the context of maintaining at some length that the fact that the public no longer trusts journalists as they trusted Cronkite is a *good* thing, that *journalists* should be "challenged and fact-checked": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071703787.html?sid=ST2009071703376 http://tinyurl.com/n2eht4 Had you been interested in making a solid point instead of just mouthing off, you could have found these two articles in about a minute and a half and used either to introduce Greenwald's piece. But you were too lazy; instead you smeared somebody who didn't deserve it because his column about Cronkite was ready to hand in Robert's post.
