The Fromson File

Reporting, analysis and commentary on current and historical events by Murray Fromson, veteran journalist and professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication.

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And That’s the Way it Was…

July 21st, 2009 No Comments

I had dinner with Walter Cronkite the first night he arrived in Saigon on what was his personal fact finding trip “into country” after the Communists’ 1968 Tet Offensive. He was a hawk, a supporter of the conflict in Vietnam like so many Americans of his generation. Walter clearly was troubled by the visual images [...]

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A Postscript on McNamara’s Death

July 12th, 2009 1 Comment

It has taken me nearly a week to reflect on how figures like Robert McNamara contributed to the erosion of the American people’s trust in so many of their institutions. It was his arrogance and self-confidence that so diminished whatever he had to say about Vietnam from the time the war began. McNamara was so [...]

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The Horror… The Horror of it All…

June 12th, 2009 No Comments

Those were the dying words uttered by Colonel Walter Kurtz, the half-crazed Special Forces officer portrayed by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, the classic war film about Vietnam. It could have been a precursor to Afghanistan or Pakistan. From my encounters in all three countries going back more than 50 years the future is not [...]

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WHAAAT?

April 22nd, 2009 No Comments

If you wonder what you’ll be missing when newspapers vanish, consider two stories that appeared in morning newspapers that have yet to make it to the online geniuses who will decide the content of alternative journalism in the near future. Both examples deal with the infuriating decisions rendered by the bureaucrats in the service of [...]

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