Critiquing the Press

Howard Kurtz has been The Washington Post's media reporter since 1990. He is also the host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" and the author of "Media Circus," "Hot Air," "Spin Cycle" and "The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media and Manipulation." Kurtz talks about the press and the stories of the day in "Media Backtalk."

The Democrats Are Coming! (Right?) , ( Post, Nov. 6 )

The transcript follows.

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Dobson, N.C.: Would you consider it perhaps more than a coincidence that Saddam Hussein was sentenced to be hanged two days before the US election?

Howard Kurtz: Tony Snow says those who believe Iraq deliberately timed the sentencing must be "smoking rope." Maybe I'm high, but it does seem like quite an amazing coincidence.

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New York, N.Y.: In today's article you said the media's overplaying of Allen's 'macaca' comment might be an indication of liberal bias. Why then isn't media's coverage of Kerry's botched joke, which got about 100 times more air-time then macaca, an indication of conservative media bias?

Howard Kurtz: First, because Kerry, as the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, is much more of a national figure than a Senate candidate whose gaffe affected only his race. But more important, KERRY made it a national story by not only refusing to apologize but delivering a full-throated denunciation of the Bush White House for daring to criticize him, thus setting up a rematch between the '04 contenders that was an irresistible media story. Once Kerry apologized and went underground, the story immediately favored.

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Alexandria, Va.: Would you agree that this second trial of Saddam Hussein has been mostly absent from the news in the last few months? I understand that nobody thinks Saddam is innocent of these charges, but is there any political tilt in the lack of coverage?

Howard Kurtz: I don't know -- the trial seemed to convene for a day or two, we all got to watch Saddam's courtroom antics, and then it would recess for some long period of time. So unlike a regular U.S. trial, it never built up any momentum and remained more of an occasional spectacle.

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Sterling, Va.: Hello Howard. Why does Mr. "no-spin" O'Reilly have it in for you? I think that you present balance in your reporting by including blogs and reports from liberals AND conservatives. I also see no overbashing of the right in your articles. From Mr. "no-spin Independent" we get a daily bashing of liberals (with a very rare exception of criticizing the right).

Howard Kurtz: I've poked fun at him on a couple of occasions, such as when he used his interview with Bush to plug his book, and I guess he didn't like that. But I have interviewed him a number of times and remain committed to being fair and balanced in my approach to Mr. O'Reilly.

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Burke, Va.: I'm really frustrated the way the news media at large played up the Kerry gaffe time and time again last week. Bush will have gaffes all the time and they are correctly, not made a big deal of. We usually know what he meant. Who decided to make this story as big as it was?

Howard Kurtz: The secret committee of biased journalists, a select and shadowy group.

Actually, as I noted a moment ago, it was John Kerry, by escalating his rhetoric after what he admits was a botched joke, who sent this story into the media stratosphere. The fact that several Democrats publicly criticized or distanced themselves from Kerry's joke-gone-bad didn't hurt.

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Bethesda, Md.: Didn't you think the NYT editorial yesterday congratulating itself for not endorsing any Republican was a hoot? What self-respecting Republican would want the endorsement of a fading glory whose main purpose seems to be publishing secrets used against the terrorists? when the NYT public editor writes that the story on tracking terrorist finances was perfectly legal, despite the breathless warnings in the NYT, you have to wonder what's going on up there. They seem still to be fixated on the 2000 election.

Howard Kurtz: Obviously you don't think much of the paper. I must say it gives me pause when an editorial page admits that it is not making endorsements based on who is the best candidate in individual races, but based on party affiliation alone. The Times went on to make an argument that the Republican majority in the House has been so awful that it must oppose all GOP candidates in an effort to break that majority. That's an understandable argument, but if I were a moderate Republican candidate who had won the paper's support in the past, I would feel that I'm not being judged on the merits.

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Sewickley, Pa.: Hello Howard-- thank you for taking questions today. Yesterday on Reliable Sources you criticized the media for failing to report on the "good" economy. A couple of observations: first, total private employment since the Bush administration took over in 2001 has risen by only 2.1 million jobs. In the same time frame during the previous administration, private employment grew by 15.6 million jobs. My second point is that if 1 million people are looking for work in September and 100,000 of them get so discouraged that they quit looking in October, the UNemployment rate goes down even if NO jobs were created. So the focus on the unemployment rate is frequently misleading. The partisan political argument is that the economy is great because the stock market, corporate profits and executive compensation are all up while unemployment is down and that the MSM is failing to report the good news. The flip side of that coin is that wage and salary earners are receiving the lowest percentage since 1947 of the national economic pie and that job creation during the recovery is very poor. I made my living in banking and brokerage, a field where these numbers are very important. Why don't journalists learn to read and analyze these basic economic reports when they spill over into the political stories they must cover? It's not that hard.

Howard Kurtz: Please don't confuse my asking questions with criticism. What I did was play a clip of Dick Cheney telling George Stephanopoulos that the administration wasn't getting credit for the lowest unemployment rate in five years because the media only report bad news. I said I didn't buy the conspiracy-theory argument but that Friday's announcement of 4.4 percent unemployment only got a few sentences on the various networks (it was front-page news in the WP and NYT). A couple of my guests said people still feel stressed about the economy, despite some of the recently improving statistics. I certainly think it's a worthy subject for debate.

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Anonymous: CNN has a poll with Dems ahead by 20% while Washington Post has a poll with Dems ahead by 6%.

Both of them can not possibly be correct. Which one of your employers do you believe?

Howard Kurtz: Neither. I've learned to be skeptical of all polls.

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Oxford, Miss.: I heard a report this weekend on "On The Media" criticizing news orgs for giving airtime to "Borat" (i.e., the character, not the actor who plays him), insisting that journalists should not interview fictional characters even for entertainment news. I can see the point but I'm not sure it's really worth getting riled up over. What do you think?

Howard Kurtz: I'm not sure it's worth getting riled up about. When I interviewed Darrell Hammond on the air a couple of years ago, I spent all my time trying to get him to play Gore, Koppel, Arnold, etc.

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Virginia: Howard,

I'm actually grateful to the media for giving as much attention as it did to Kerry's "stuck in Iraq" comment. It helped me decide that I am definitely NOT voting for him this year.

Howard Kurtz: That's good. Since he's not on the ballot, you might have had trouble had you decided to go the other way.

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Bethesda, Md.: I'm seeing some headlines that say the Republicans are making some last minute gains. Not to celebrate ignorance, but I can't bring myself to read the actual articles. Is this what some polling data is showing..??

Howard Kurtz: It's showing the race tightening -- the Democrats still leading on many measures, but by a smaller margin. Which is quite typical as many voters "come home" to their parties in the final week.

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Capitol Hill Resident...: Could you comment on the latest from Cokie Roberts? I know you said last week that she wasn't "in the tank", and I tend to agree. Is she just completely clueless?

"It's been difficult to govern, really, since 2000," says ABC News' Cokie Roberts, a long-time observer of Congress. "The country has been split down the middle and the Congress has been split down the middle. There's no reason to believe that that will really change after Tuesday unless there's a huge Democratic wave."

This is really classic stuff. 'Difficult to govern.' That is, during a period of six years of unified Republican rule in Washington and unprecedented levels of party discipline in the Republican caucuses in both houses of Congress.

Howard Kurtz: Yes, but she's right. First, Bush was a popular-vote loser in 2000 and a narrow winner in 2004. Second, he's pursued a playing-to-the-base strategy that has worked against forming coalitions with some Democrats. Plus, the level of polarization in Congress has made compromise impossible on many issues. Look at all the things the Hill has bloviated about but not acted on: Social Security. Immigration. Ethics reform. The list goes on and on. The Republicans will take the hit because they control everything, but I don't think that contradicts what Cokie is saying.

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Burke, Va.: To me the Kerry thing seems to be a love for easy talking head conflict on TV. It's cheaper than reporting.

Howard Kurtz: Well, I wouldn't deny that for a second. And it's easier for pundits to blather on about Bush vs. Kerry than to get national audiences interested in a bunch of local races that are important collectively but whose candidates (Claire McCaskill, Bob Corker, Robert Menendez, Jon Tester) would never get stopped in airports outside their state (and maybe not even in their state).

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Nashville, Tenn.: I love these chats and your fine work, Howard. Wow! I have a completely different take than the poster from NYC. I think the Kerry "botched joke" has been a case study in liberal media bias. You even agreed with the criticism from a conservative blog of the lack of front page treatment from the Post on the Kerry story. The "Old" media certainly have not been as generous at parroting the defenses of Mssrs. Allen and Lott as they have been to Mr. Kerry. Mr. Kerry by the way accused American soldiers of "terrorizing" Iraqis less than a year before. Not many "old" media stories mentioned that relevant fact.

Howard Kurtz: Well, the Post did cover the Kerry gaffe, just not on the front page the first day (it was the lead story in the paper the next day). But the Kerry flap was the lead story that first night on the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC's World News, and on the front page of the New York Times. I think sometimes people over-analyze whether these decisions are the result of conservative or liberal bias. It was, regardless of one's views, a juicy story involving a rematch of the 2004 presidential contenders.

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Alexandria, Va.: Sir: Is the media reverting to 19th century practices - where newspapers were overt cheerleaders for candidates, and routinely trashed opponents, with lies or slanted stories when the outright truth wasn't bad enough? I've wondered this for some time, and the NYT refusal to endorse anyone from the GOP reinforced my thinking. Is it perhaps that those now in power were in college in the late 60s/early 70s, and took to heart Eldridge Cleaver's "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem"? I guess a newspaper doesn't have to be balanced, but to form itself into an actual tool seems over the top. The POST is more able to let things ride and deal with the consequences than the NYT. Or is it that the folks in NYC are raging against NYT staffers to "do the right thing?"

Howard Kurtz: Well, this is the Times editorial page. It's supposed to be opinionated. I may not agree with the reasoning, but these are the only people on a newspaper who are paid to take a stand.

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Yardley, Pa.: I went to a media event yesterday where John McCain was stumping for my local Congressman. National and local press everywhere. Didn't see anyone interviewing those who came to the event, all they did was wait around for the principals to arrive.

I would have thought they might have at least been a little curious as to what some folks were thinking. BTW, it was a very disappointing turnout, about 50 to 100 vets, but very few others. I'm an independent McCain supporter who's still undecided about "sending a message" or voting for my local Republican Congressman, who's a good guy and very constituent- oriented.

Guess the press already has this figured out and doesn't need to question the common folk.

Howard Kurtz: The best political reporters always interview some folks in the crowd to see how the speakers did. Otherwise it's just political rhetoric.

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Jersey City: Hi Howard

A question about polls (what else, today). I realize that each network puts out its own poll and rightly is going to tout its own poll's number. However, this late in the game, when another poll comes out, that contradicts the finding of a particular network's poll, doesn't the network have an obligation to point out to the public the contradiction, even if it doesn't specify which one (or both) may be wrong?

Howard Kurtz: Yes. Absolutely. I've seen CNN and the New York Times, to take two examples that spring to mind, do this. Especially since polls are inexact and provide a blurry snapshot at best, it helps a great deal not to pretend your poll is the only one around. But let's face it, news outlets pay big bucks for these polls and love to tout their own figures as big news.

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Fairfax, Va.: How would you rate the coverage of the press and media in informing us about the candidates leading up to tomorrow's election? As a registered party member whose college background is in History and Political Science and who has always had an avid interest in politics, I have been completely turned off by this entire election process- I am trying to figure out whether the deluge of awful ads or coverage of meaningless matter after and meaningless matter did me in.

Howard Kurtz: I don't blame you for being turned off. More than in any campaign I can remember, there has been a heavy media focus on sex, sleaze and trivial personal attacks. Obviously we have some obligation to cover the dirtier side of campaigns. But my big complaint, especially (but not exclusively) with television, is when we show negative ads (Michael Arcuri called a sex hotline!) without providing any fact-checking (his aide was calling a government office whose number was one digit different). In those cases, the media act like a mindless megaphone for distorted or inaccurate attacks. Last week, in an exception to the NYT's generally fine coverage, the paper ran a piece on Republicans slamming Nancy Pelosi in their ads for favoring a radical homosexual agenda and free education and other services for illegal aliens. Not one sentence was devoted to explaining her position and whether the charges were accurate or off the wall. That's where we have fallen down on the job.

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Reston, Va.: With respect to Cokie Robert's statement and your response, I don't think it is correct to say that it has been difficult to govern since 2000. I think she should have said that the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have made it difficult to govern based on the very actions that you noted. Bush has set the tone for the country in his overtly and overly partisan actions. He and other Republican leaders can't whine about what they created in the first place.

Howard Kurtz: Duly noted.

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New York, N.Y.: Many media commentators have participated in the wondrous ambiguity reaction the RNC has been spinning about their obviously racist ads (eg Harold Ford "call me") and candidates (macaca, confederate flag in the living room etc) and I find that amazing. In New York no one would have any problem discerning the racist content of these messages. Is there really someone out there (with the exception of Ken Mehlman) who can't recognize this for what it is?

Howard Kurtz: Well, on that one, many media organizations (including NBC Nightly News) have reported on the ad's racist overtones (but not always providing the facts, such as that the Playboy party that Harold Ford attended was a crowded affair at the 2005 Super Bowl, not some debauched gathering at Hugh Hefner's mansion). I also wish more reports had noted that the GOP candidate, Bob Corker, had also denounced the ad and asked that it be pulled. But at least the media did highlight the sensational nature of that spot, which was financed by the RNC.

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Chicago, Ill.: Re: Endorsements based on party affiliation: Readers of the Chicago Tribune have for decades assumed its endorsements are based on party affiliation alone...How else to explain that in over 150 years of publication, the Tribune has never - not once -- endorsed a Democrat for president? Granted, many of those elections were during the Col. McCormick (the Citizen Kane of the Midwest) years, but it continues to this day: every four years, the Tribune ritualistically endorses the GOP candidate, sometimes in tepid language (see Dole in '96) but always reliably...

Howard Kurtz: Look, it may be that the Tribune editorialists just don't agree with the philosophy of all the Democratic candidates who have run. That's their right. I don't think the NYT has endorsed a Republican presidential candidate in my lifetime. But when you apply a party-line philosophy to every congressional race in your region -- and it's in local races where such editorials have the most impact -- well, that's an interesting decision. Voters, of course, have to make the same calculation. Do they vote for Smith or Jones depending on their assessments of the candidates and their policies, or do they vote because they want the Democrats or the Republicans to control the House next year?

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Somerdale, N.J.: Howie, why hasn't anything been said about Fox News rearranging their schedule on the weekend before the election to run a conservative "documentary" about how the big bad terrorists are gonna get us. (multiple times no less) Why isn't Foxes obvious attempt to rile up the right wing rubes---I mean fire up the conservative base worthy of a comment by a Media Critic like yourself?

Howard Kurtz: It's worthy of comment, it was just one of a million things I didn't get to.

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Annandale, Va.: RE: The Kerry 'Gaffe'. I do find it interesting that a 'gaffe' gets wall to wall coverage, yet when Bush or Cheney talk about how voting for the Dems is a vote for the terrorists (or the terrorists are trying to influence the election), nothing happens. Like the Kerry gaffe, you can argue whether or not they mean it, but the lack of coverage is interesting

Howard Kurtz: Nothing happens? Do you know how many acres of newsprint and hours of airtime have been devoted to analyzing the Bush-Cheney claims that a Democratic victory would be good for terrorists? I think that, with Iraq included, has been treated as the single most important issue in this campaign.

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New England: Shouldn't the press have reported, and still report, more about the US soldier that was kidnapped?

Instead the press went wild with the Kerry story.

Maliki requested that a US military cordon of Sadr City, designed to find the soldier, be removed -- it was, the soldier and the story have been abandoned by the administration and the press.

Howard Kurtz: The decision by Maliki to essentially force the U.S. military to lift its siege of Sadr City got a substantial amount of coverage, as well it should have, given the troubling questions it raises about whether the Iraqi prime minister is so close to the militias running roughshod in that region that he's not a reliable ally of the United States. However, the case of the missing soldier, which had led to the U.S. checkpoints in the first place, was dropped pretty quickly after that, and I find that puzzling.

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Carlisle, Pa.: Howard, could you talk a little bit about what tomorrow night's coverage will look like? Is there going to be extensive reporting of exit polls or are we going to have to wait for substantial results. This could be a problem in TENN where I saw a report in the WaPo (I think) over the weekend that 25% of registered voters filed for absentee ballots.

Thanks

Howard Kurtz: As I wrote last week, there are no exit polls in House races, so the networks will have to make their analysis and projections based on raw vote totals as they trickle in. They will make use of exit polls for all the close Senate races. If the election is close, it could be well into the night, if then, before anyone can say who will control the House and possibly the Senate. The growing volume of absentee ballots makes the situation even trickier. However, if there's a big Democratic wave and a lot of the tossup races break one way, then we could have the issue of control settled earlier in the evening.

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Annandale, Va.: Re: Media as megaphones for negative ads.

Howie, I think many people see that as a major problem with press. Over last the couple of elections, the attack ads (especially those attacking Dems) get a lot of play/attention, but the press fails to investigate them, they just play them over and over, giving them free airtime. Ex: the Swift Boat ads from 2004

Howard Kurtz: I'm constantly on my soapbox about this, as one of the few national reporters who regularly critiques the ads, but it doesn't seem to do much good. I think many local papers do a good job of fact-checking the spots in their regional races. But on a national level, not so much. USA Today did have a good overall ad-watch piece the other day.

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Mom, Md.: I've noticed that there is at least one time in each chat session that you will use the phrase, "Look". Are you truly impatient at the questioner or is it a habit? It would be more professional and helpful for the dialogue to be more neutral in your responses.

Howard Kurtz: Look, it's not easy to sit here and type responses for an hour.

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Bremerton, Wash.: Thanks for having the chat.

When will returns start coming in on the East Coast, and do you plan to be in the same hermetically sealed room as those exit pollers?

Howard Kurtz: No, I'm not being admitted to the Quarantine Room, as it's called. The earliest polls close at 6 p.m. A very substantial number of polls with the seats most likely to change hands -- which are overwhelmingly in the Northeast and Midwest -- close by 8 p.m. So while the networks may or may not be able to make projections on who controls Congress for hours, we will be able to look at some bellwether races -- particularly involving vulnerable Republicans in Connecticut and Indiana -- and get some idea whether it's going to be a tough night for the GOP.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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