The TV Zone

This war was of course the story of Walter Cronkite's career - the war that never seemed to end, while devouring 58,000 American lives (and countless more Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian lives.) It was the steady drumbeat of "Evening News" - a presence virtually every night on the program until the war's end in 1975.

The general sense - usually voiced as veiled criticism - is that Cronkite didn't come out against the war until the rest of the country had. In fact, Cronkite never saw his role to come out "against" anything - but to report what he saw or learned. What he saw and learned on a trip to the country in 1967 was inescapable, and he said as much in this famous commentary, which aired outside the confines of "Evening News."

Was he an early "booster" in private? That's what some critics have said, but there's evidence to the contrary as well. Here's an early interview with JFK, a couple of months before his death. On the jump, historian Douglas Brinkley says Cronkite was against the war long before his '68 declaration.

My question: Could any single anchor, critic, or news organization have changed the course of this tragic history?