WWWCD?

I could be wrong, since some of these are the product of the times we live in as much as the access-addicted pretty girls and boys who cover politics today, and I don't want to romanticize the past, but here are some things I'm willing to bet Walter Cronkite wouldn't have done:

• Report Sen. Jeff Sessions' accusations of racism against Sonia Sotomayor without mentioning Sessions' own racist résumé .


• Give more coverage to the Michael Jackson funeral than to the ongoing health care reform debate (to say nothing of the JFK funeral).


• Email Mark Sanford's staff and tell them that if the Governor's up to something you'll be happy to give him some sympathetic coverage in exchange for the exclusive.


• Sit quietly while Pat Buchanan uses airtime to advance the white supremacy cause, or dignify Buchanan by "debating" his white supremacist views with him.


• Refuse to use the word "torture" to describe what was done to prisoners at GITMO, calling it "harsh interrogation tactics" or something similarly inoffensive.


• Publish Dick Cheney's disinformation about Iraq WMDs in exchange for access.


• Repeat the popular falsehoods that "Al Gore claims he invented the Internet," "Al Gore claims he discovered Love Canal," and "Al Gore says that 'Love Story' is about him"--or sit quietly while they're repeated.


• Sit on the Bob Packwood story until after his re-election.