CBS News correspondent Lara Logan didn't just brave war-torn Iraq — she also braved American media gossips. From sleeping with a CNN correspondent and boinking a married Defense Department contractor (whose child she now carries) to allegedly lifting Iraqi souvenirs, Logan's Stateside return — CBS moved the chief foreign affairs correspondent to a homebase in D.C. — has been met with rife speculation about her personal life. But fret not, she does have a defender, and his name is Howard Kurtz. On the Washington Post media guy's CNN show, Reliable Sources, Logan got to explain the "difficult burden" she carries being a celebrity journalist: "Yes, I think it's very difficult, especially when your job is to be a journalist and not to be a celebrity and you don't make your living out of being a celebrity, as a journalist and especially the last seven years of my life has been mostly spent in Iraq and Afghanistan and it's not just a question of being the only person willing to be out there or one of the few, it's a question of, that's what you believe in, that's what's important. [...] It is demeaning. I think it is demeaning."
And, well, she's right. But on to less important concerns, like the fact that Howard Kurtz is obsessed with this woman! And, more precisely, defending her. 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 »
