Exposed: WP media critic Howard Kurtz's conflicts of interest and love affair with the Right

[DeepModem Mom]

Radar: Full Court Press
Charles Kaiser on Howard Kurtz's conflicting interests (and the CNN pundit's love affair with the right)


UNRELIABLE SOURCE? Howie Kurtz

Howard Kurtz is the self-styled prince of American media reporters, a writing, blogging, book-writing machine who has covered the press for the Washington Post since 1990, and pontificated about it for CNN — as host of Reliable Sources — since 1998. Last week was typical for Kurtz: nine articles in the Post, including a big profile of Chris Matthews, three blogs, and one online discussion, all capped off with his Sunday show on CNN. This never-ending blizzard of activity has sometimes obscured the basic fact about Kurtz's career: His dual roles as salaried press critic for the Post and salaried host on CNN put Howie at the heart of the most blatant and longest-lasting conflict of interests I know of in big-time, mainstream journalism.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, when I was the press critic for Newsweek, the rules about this sort of thing were simple: If you were a full-time staff critic of the media, you were not allowed to be paid by any of the people you were writing about....According to Nexis and the Washington Post's own website, during the past 12 months, the one subject the media reporter for the Post has almost never written about is ... CNN....All of this might be forgivable—or at least understandable—if Kurtz did a great job of covering the rest of his beat. But while he may well be the most energetic reporter in Washington, he also has unbelievably bad judgment.

The latter quality was on full display last week in the 2,800-word love letter Kurtz wrote to MSNBC host Chris Matthews, just in time for Valentine's Day, on the front page of the Post's Style section....This is typical of Kurtz's warm embrace of fellow members of the permanent Washington press club. But as Eric Alterman documented in his fine book What Liberal Media?, there is another love that Kurtz dares to speak all the time. Kurtz recently described himself to Media Matters as a "down-the-middle reporter who doesn't consider ideology," even though his second wife is a Republican campaign consultant. But careful students of the Kurtz oeuvre know how often, and how easily, he falls hopelessly in love with Washington conservatives — especially if they happen to be youngish, boyish, or good-looking....

Alterman's bottom line: "...Howard Kurtz loves conservatives but has little time for liberals ... Given the power and influence of his position, (this is) not unlike having the police chief in the hands of one faction of the mob." Over at Media Matters last December, Eric Boehlert reached exactly the same conclusion: Kurtz "remains chronically oblivious to breaking stories that have a strong progressive media angle" while simultaneously displaying "a chronic overeagerness to amplify any minor media story being advanced by conservatives."

There are two lessons from Kurtz's career. First of all, there is never any penalty for a Washington reporter who relentlessly sucks up to the right. Secondly, his extraordinary productivity is vastly more important to his editors than his blatant conflicts of interest—and his dreadful judgement.

The Kurtz brand has gotten so large that he's routinely allowed to violate some of journalism's most basic principles — and his superiors don't even seem to notice anymore.

http://radaronline.com/features/2008/02/howard_kurtz_chris_matthews_full_court_press_02.php