CBS News correspondent, tabloid fodder, and alleged homewrecker Lara Logan finds a sympathetic ear today in Howard Kurtz's column. Plagued by gossip drummed up by the National Enquirer — like how she was dating CNN's Michael Ware in Baghdad for a bit, then moved on to State Department contractor Joe Burkett, who then flew home to tell his wife about it and divorce her — Logan smartly relies on Kurtz to refocus the coverage. Sure, Logan might be a beautiful seductress who tempts men aboard, but she's also damn good at her job and has risked her life to report from Iraq. And also: BABY NEWS! She's preggers with Burkett's kid and is expected to deliver in January.
Kurtz, of course, was on his show Reliable Sources two weekends ago to "ask" whether the Logan gossip was something the media should even be reporting on, conveniently allowing himself to report on the Logan gossip.
With today's article, it's clear he's made up his mind about that quandary.
But that Kurtz's article plays nice with Logan isn't what makes it worth reading — it's that Kurtz makes it a point to, not once, but twice note the fact that Logan did not know she was pregnant until recently. Inteeeeeresting. CONTINUED »
That's what Washington City Paper Angela Valdez is asking to mostly deaf ears. The National Enquirer ran with a story about CBS star Lara Logan having Baghdad romances with CNN's Michael Ware and U.S. State Department contractor Joe Burkett, and the New York Post picked it up from there. The story even made it to Howard Kurtz's CNN show Reliable Sources (video here), where he played Jossip's favorite game: Cover the gossip by reporting on the coverage of the gossip, and asking whether we should be reporting on this at all. Well, perhaps somebody like Kurtz shouldn't be wasting air time with it, but the Enquirer has a history of reporting on our news men and women; it just so happens that Logan's story involves sex, with multiple partners, and she's a pretty lady. So should we be upset by it? Maybe — it's likely Logan got heavier treatment because she's a woman, while plenty of male on-air sex trysts go unreported. But also: She's a high-paid attractive public figure who brought together the words "sex" and "Iraq" for the first time since this war began, and shouldn't the gossip industry be celebrated for that?
There's a rumor going around MSNBC that Howard Kurtz's unfriendly article about the network, "MSNBC, Leaning Left And Getting Flak From Both Sides," was a David Gregory-orchestrated hit job against his colleagues.
Kurtz's piece, which followed up earlier items about the (invisible?) controversy brewing now that NBC News and MSNBC are both housed at 30 Rock and sharing resources, slammed the network for the convergence of hard news reporting and opinion.
We're hearing that when the article hit yesterday, Keith Olbermann and his camp began raging over Kurtz's printed criticism about Olbermann manning the anchor chair during primary coverage, a time when, one might suggest, a newsman without obvious bias should be running the show.
Of course, this isn't the first time Olbermann has directed his anger Gregory's way.
But what really sent Olbermann over the edge was this line: "Some top NBC journalists say privately they are troubled by the overlapping identities."
All eyes have been on Gregory as one of those "top NBC journalists" who spoke with Kurtz. And to those who think so, one of the next lines, a pro-Gregory plug, wasn't a surprise: "Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory, both well-regarded NBC correspondents, now anchor hour-long programs on the cable outlet. Gregory replaced Tucker Carlson, leaving former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough as the channel's only conservative host."
And if Olbermann needed more evidence that Gregory helped steer Kurtz's item, it came here: CONTINUED »
Jacques Steinberg's article in today's Times about a media ethics quandary is not a throwaway article: It represents one media critic taking on another, which is something usually left to Jack Shafer's rants and websites like this one.
Steinberg, very carefully, throws Howard Kurtz under the bus.
And for good reason: Kurtz, who writes a media crit column for the Washington Post, also hosts CNN's Reliable Sources, where he invited Kimberly Dozier (the CBS journalist wounded in Iraq) on the show to talk about her book Breathing the Fire.
Turns out, Kurtz's wife Sheri Annis, is Dozier's book publicist, which makes Kurtz's decision to have her on the program – and calling Dozier things like "a remarkable woman" – quite questionable.
Though for what it's worth, Kurtz did disclose his wife's involvement, in a throwaway aside at the end of the interview.
Now Steinberg is talking up media ethics types, who maintain Kurtz's interview crossed the line.
And Kurtz? He's saying he did nothing wrong, and accepting zero responsibility for semi-sneaking things past viewers.
But shouldn't a media critic be the first to understand that even the mere perception of wrongdoing is justification enough to place blame? And that, hey, maybe he did make a misstep, and he should probably own up to it? CONTINUED »
Segment-stealing Howie Kurtz's Katie Couric profile cannot be described in any other way but a softball reputation resuscitator. But we're not faulting either of them for it. Couric could use, and perhaps deserves, the good press; Kurtz enjoys zagging when others zig. Now nineteen months on the job, Couric treats us to her brand of:
• Sympathy: "She is trailing in a highly competitive contest against her male rivals, is occasionally covered in a condescending way and faces predictions that she'll be forced out of the race. Katie Couric understands what Hillary Clinton is going through."
• Charity: "On Saturday she will be in Charlottesville to help the University of Virginia break ground for a $74 million Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center, funded by both the state and private donations."
• Congeniality: "On the political front, Couric believes the imbalance in the way the Democratic candidates are portrayed stems in part from some reporters 'who are predisposed not to like the Clintons."'But she says the coverage has evened out recently, thanks to a pair of comedy skits that portrayed journalists as being in the tank for Barack Obama. 'Saturday Night Live did have a big impact on the media,' she says."
• Originality: CONTINUED »
The Daily Show's signature trick of mashing up cable news soundbites to take entire conversations out of context and create a funny bit is, well, brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that Dan Abrams has been repurposing the tactic for his own MSNBC show, now renamed Verdict. Even we talked about it, and our standards for Talking About Things are fractions of a point among the industry average.
Curious, then, that another show has been borrowing from Jon Stewart's playbook: Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources. And not only is the CNN show taking liberty with The Daily Show's skill set, but they're nearly copying Dan Abrams's copying.
As Rachel Sklar reports, "Kurtz showcased three corrspondents: FNC's Eric Shawn, CNN's Jason Carroll and ABC's Brian Ross, in that order. Earlier in the week on Abrams' regular "Beat The Press" segment, they featured the following: Two clips from Eric Shawn, Jason Carroll on CNN, John Roberts on CNN, and Brian Ross on ABC, in that order."
It's hard to argue sequence-based plagiarism. But it isn't hard to argue Kurtz's team knew all about Abrams' segment, given they featured a clip from the very Abrams show they lifted from.
As they say: Roll that beautiful bean footage! CONTINUED »
David Carr isn't the only media critic drinking the Karl Rove Kool-Aid. Having had a chance to watch the former deputy chief of staff on his new Fox News gig, WaPo's Howie Kurtz weighs in. His summation? Rove is "generally fair-minded in his commentary." He even refuses to answer "yes or no" questions because "life is more complex sometimes than a binary choice." It's as if the most bias voice in all of Republica actually wears the most level-headed hat.
What we wear, what we buy, who we like and what we’re like, duh, it’s all controlled by the media. And politics is no different.
So if you’re the kind of person who likes to gamble on the future of our nation, Barack Obama and John McCain winning the primary today in New Hampshire seems like a good bet. Because as some outlets are admitting, the media has a huge crush on both of them. CONTINUED »
In today's Marketwatch, our favorite slow-to-catch-on media columnist Jon Friedman puts his (cough) credibility on the line to vouch for Howard Kurtz, who's taken a beating in the press (and on unimportant media blogs) over that plagiarism kerfuffle and subsequent cover-up attempt. To prove his point—by making a flimsy unrelated one—Friedman commends Gawker's recent addition Maggie Shnayerson on her top notch, behind-the-scenes reporting.
Writes Friedman:
The biggest flap occurred when Gawker's Maggie Shnayerson did some terrific fact-checking and revealed that Kurtz's work contained a passage that had originally appeared in David Blum's 2004 book on "60 Minutes."
We're sure the fact that the enterprising Maggie used to WORK FOR BLUM at The Village Voice (a possibly-related factoid she readily discloses in her coup!) had absolutely nothing to do w/ that "terrific fact-checking."*
Although we can’t always shake the nasty habit of writing in the royal we, occasionally one of our editors decides to shake off the cloak of anonymity to write a short, pithy statement long, rambling diatribe about a topic of their choice. Today, Debbie Newman is that editor.
After a long and somewhat confusing morning – spent predominantly browsing the internets while under the (still negligible) influence of non-drowsy cold medication – I stumbled onto an amazingly informative article in which WaPo's Howie "Story Stealer" Kurtz interviews Mediabistro founder Laurel "Suck It, I'm Rich" Touby about her extraordinary success. In the course of their discussion, Kurtz helpfully explains that Touby's website utilizes a newfangled technology called "blogging," which are, in Touby's case, "short real-time scooplets" written by media insiders, for media insiders, about media insiders.
Needless to say, my head is still spinning.*
It's getting exhausting just keeping tabs on your friends' Facebook status updates, let alone worrying about letting friends know what you're up to … via status updates.
(Us? That's why we've resorted to doing it the fly via BlackBerry. Lame, we know. But also, we get to taunt our friends with news that we're "three feet from Kanye" in real time.)
But just imagine if one of your Facebook friends has a new book to promote — and his name is Howard Kurtz. The Washington Post columnist has been making the talk show rounds like he's a meth dealer and everyone else is suddenly out of Sudafed.
And every time he appears on one of those shows, or gets name dropped by a website that rhymes with Fudge Support, he needs to tell his entire Facebook posse.
Although we can’t always shake the nasty habit of writing in the royal we, occasionally one of our editors decides to shake off the cloak of anonymity to write a short, pithy statement long, rambling diatribe about a topic of their choice. Today, Debbie Newman is that editor.
A few days ago, passages from Howard Kurtz's new book surfaced on the web, purporting to shed new light on what transpired behind the scenes at CBS headquarters less than twenty-four hours before the network ran its now-infamous National Guard story.
Strangely, Howard Kurtz' new book eschews questionable ethnic metaphors in favor of shedding new light on the Dan Rather/CBS controversy. Kurtz claims Rather argued with Josh Howard (the exec producer of 60 Minutes Wednesday) over the Bush/National Guard story and refused to listen when Howard said they weren't yet fully convinced of the story's authenticity.
[DrudgeReport via TVNewser]
How did Olbermann do? He asked substantive questions, kept things moving crisply and followed up. But I have to say that he seemed less aggressive than he does when picking apart President Bush's record on "Countdown." He mostly threw straight policy pitches that the candidates hit easily, with no curveballs about contradictions in their records.
–WaPo columnist Howard Kurtz evaluates Olbermann on his surprisingly even-keeled performances as AFL-CIO Presidential Forum moderator, that left NewsBusters' Brad Wilmouth wondering "Did the sweltering Chicago temperatures somehow get to him?
Dan Rather has made quite a mess for himself lately, what with his recent comments about the degeneration of CBS' primetime network news broadcast, the awkward potshots directed at Les Moonves, and the highly controversial remarks that may or may not have been targeted at third-place news anchor, Katie Couric.
Fortunately, despite taking on the network bigshots, Rather still has his supporters. Like, for instance, former CBS News reporter Terry Smith, who appeared on CNN's Reliable Source this Sunday to defend Rather's use of the phrase "tarting it up."
Editorial Director
