Realisation.

The BBC’s Paul Reynolds, who has occasionally commented here, has written an article entitled, “Pentagon gears up for new media war.” Towards the end, it says:

A cautionary tale comes from the Vietnam War. There, the war was lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. No amount of spin could change it. The turning point in the media war came when the veteran CBS News presenter, Walter Cronkite, went to Vietnam after the Tet offensive in 1968. He came back and declared that there was “stalemate”.

Pete in London comments:

No, the war wasn’t lost when viewers in the living room realised what was happening on the battlefield. The war was lost when Walther Cronkite and others lied to obscure what was happening on the battlefield. This was covered in here on the 19th and 20th October, following Bush remarks apparently likening Iraq to the Tet Offensive (again, another case of skewed reporting by the BBC).

Personally, I’d say it was more likely that Cronkite et al were fooled – fooled with the assistance of their own anti-anti-communist worldview – rather than that they lied, but the result was the same.