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?

For his part, Mr. Kurtz said in an interview on Wednesday that his disclosure had been sufficient. He disagreed with the argument, made by both Mr. Huang and Mr. Clark, that at the least he owed his viewers a disclaimer at the outset of the interview, so that they might bear his potential conflict of interest in mind as they listened to the interview.

“Let me say this,” Mr. Kurtz added, “the notion that my wife got Dozier on the show is a bit silly. I have wanted to book Kimberly on the show for a year, since she told me she was writing a book, which I mentioned in a lengthy Washington Post profile.”

Which is not to say that Mr. Kurtz did not have any qualms about going forward with the interview.

“When my wife agreed to promote the book, I asked my producers if we should drop the idea,” he said. Their advice was to go ahead, as long as he included a disclaimer, he said.

Asked if Mr. Kurtz had disclosed to his supervisors in advance that his wife had been paid to promote Ms. Dozier’s book, and what guidance CNN’s ethics policy provided in such situations, a CNN spokeswoman, Edie Emery, responded with a written statement. It read, in part, “Kurtz discussed the interview in advance with the show’s senior producer, and they agreed to disclose his wife’s working relationship with Ms. Dozier, which is exactly what he did.” [NYT]