Krugman: In This War, Walter Cronkite “Would Have Been Called A Traitor”

On Sunday’s Reliable Source,s Howard Kurtz discussed the similarities and differences in the media’s coverage of Vietnam and Iraq. Kurtzplayed a Walter Cronkite clip from 1968:

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion.

Then he asked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to chime in. Krugman said there couldn’t be a “Cronkite moment” in the Iraq war, because “we are not Walter Cronkite’s country anymore. We are a much more polarized nation.” Here’s the most interesting excerpt:

If Walter Cronkite were alive — sorry, he is alive. If Walter Cronkite were on the news today, if a Walter Cronkite equivalent were on the news, he would — immediately after that broadcast we just saw, he would have been called a traitor.

The full transcript…