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."

One President Who Didn't See the Press as an Enemy, ( Post, Jan. 1)

The transcript follows.

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Boston, Mass.: Hi Howard,

Greatly enjoyed your column today, but I have a non-Ford question. What did you think of post.com's decision to put the blurry photo of Saddam being fitted with the noose on the front page? It really disturbed me.

Howard Kurtz: It's a really difficult call. The photo was clearly newsworthy and should have run. But I question the decision to run it on the front page, as opposed to inside, and for this reason: The Page 1 display made it impossible to avoid, whether the paper is sitting on a kitchen counter or at a newsstand. And more than one person has said to me that they would rather not have seen it. Of course, had The Post run it on an inside page, some would have accused the paper of burying the news, but that would have been my preference.

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Vienna, Va.: One thing you probably didn't have the chance to convey in your article on Ford and the press is the changed nature of the media environment. When President Ford left office, the news cycle consisted of AM and PM newspapers and the evening news. The personality of the press corps has changed too. Do you think there are ANY reporters covering President Bush or his successor who would develop a relationship like those forged by DeFrank, Schieffer and Brokaw?

Howard Kurtz: Um, no. President Bush doesn't have the same approach to the press corps. And as you say, the media environment in those pre-cable, pre-blog days was nowhere near as polarized. Reporters got more close-up glimpses of presidential candidates and even presidents than is possible in today's stage-managed world. Tom DeFrank, then with Newsweek, told me he got to know Ford well when he was one of a half-dozen journalists traveling with him as vice president, with the knowledge that Ford could wind up in the Oval Office. So the odd circumstance of a lifelong congressman and appointed VP ascending to the office may have had something to do with it. Ford hadn't run for president and been subjected to the intense and often unpleasant media scrutiny.

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Alexandria, Va.: It is an absolute travesty that CNN, MSNBC, FOX and other major news channels decided to focus on Saddam Hussein's execution on Saturday morning. The funeral of former President Ford seemed to be the occasional footnote (ok, a little more than that but just a little). Ford was the President of the U.S.; Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator and regardless of whether he was given a fair trial, the outcome was hardly a surprise. Who deserves more respect? The news channels these days are given to countless hours of ruminating on a topic. Of the two men, President Ford is the deserving candidate. Saddam Hussein deserves nothing. Shame! Shame! Shame!

Howard Kurtz: Dude, you're off-base on this one. The passing of Gerald Ford received a lot of coverage last Wednesday and Thursday; the initial ceremonies in California got live network coverage last Friday; and all the networks have been carrying today's Cathedral service, without commercial interruption, since 9:30 am. Not that much was going on Saturday and Sunday other than Ford's body lying in state at the Capitol. The execution of Saddam, meanwhile, was absolutely an important story for the ongoing war in Iraq, and what we're learning now about the way it was rushed and mishandled could have an impact on that war.

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Detroit, Mich.: I was a little disturbed when I saw the photo of Saddam Hussein with a noose around his neck on the main page of The Washington Post Web site on Saturday. I did not want or need to see that photo, and I don't think it added anything to the coverage of Hussein's execution. Why not put photos like that behind a link, so that readers who want to see them can find them, instead of forcing the photo on everyone who logs onto the Web site?

Howard Kurtz: That's an interesting point. Of course, Web sites want to put the most eye-catching photos on their home pages, but in the case of someone who's just been hanged, you do run into the same problem as the front-page placement, which is that people who want to avoid it aren't able to do so.

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Fairfax Station, Va.: The Washington Post would do itself a favor to do an online survey to determine if just anybody cares about anything Bob Woodward writes. Based on all the doubts raised about his works in the past, I am not wasting my time reading anything he has to say about another dead man who can't rebut.

Howard Kurtz: Allow me to point out an inconvenient fact: Ford willingly sat down with Woodward for those interviews, with the understanding that they would not be published until after his death, and the interviews were tape-recorded. So there's nothing to rebut.

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Stage Managing: Seems like the rise of complete stage-managing really coincided with the rise in media outlets. Reagan's people had to control every aspect of his image because with the beginnings of cable news, they couldn't be sure that they could bury things the way, say, JFK's people could with the small, compliant press corps of the day.

Howard Kurtz: That's not quite right. CNN, which started in 1980, was an insignificant factor in Reagan's first term and the only cable news network around. No, Reagan's approach had to do his own Hollywood background, with Michael Deaver and the other PR wizards on his team, and perhaps a feeling that the mainstream media of that day were not terribly sympathetic to the former actor. But the media landscape of 1981 was pretty much the same as it had been during the Ford presidency.

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New York, N.Y.: For the SECOND time in the last few weeks, CNN has put a graphic on screen that says "Where's Obama?" when they are doing a story on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. Now, if the letters "s" and "b" were next to each other on the keyboard, I might give them some slack. I'm afraid CNN, whom I once watched and respected, is heading to the scrapheap of news channels.

Howard Kurtz: It was an embarrassing mistake, but obviously an inadvertent mistake made by some staffer in the control room. CNN has apologized, as the Web site Raw Story recounts:

Blitzer apologized during this morning's coverage of the Gerald Ford funeral.

"I just want to make a correction, an apology, Soledad, for what we did yesterday. In 'The Situation Room,' we had a bad graphic," Blitzer said in a transcript delivered to RAW STORY by CNN's public relations staff. "We were doing a piece on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in this new year 2007. Unfortunately, instead of saying "where is Osama," it said "where is Obama." I'm going to be calling Senator Barack Obama to make a personal apology."

A CNN employee also told RAW STORY an additional apology was offered by Soledad O'Brien earlier in the morning.

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Oakton, Va.: Maybe I missed a beat about Gov. Romney but I thought he was going to announce his actual candidacy not just his exploratory committee in Jan. It appears he is now just the last of the Big Three to do the latter, not the first to announce he is officially running. Perhaps this was imprecise reporting but did he change his game plan? Also do you think his "flip flop" problem on gay marriage, abortion, and even fidelity to Ronald Reagan is going to be a serious problem?

Howard Kurtz: I also thought Romney was going to be making the real announcement and not just the exploratory committee announcement, but it's crystal clear that he's running and running hard. I guess some candidates stretch these things out so they can persuade the press to cover their multiple announcements. Romney's "evolution" on social issues since 1994, when he said he would be more of a champion of gay rights than Ted Kennedy, has certainly caused some wariness and consternation on the religious right, which is a force in GOP primaries. As for the rest of the country, we'll have to see, because it's early in the process and I doubt most people know very much about Mitt Romney.

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New York, N.Y.: I don't agree with Fairfax Station's post, but don't you sometimes wonder what other bombshells Woodward must be keeping under his hat?

Howard Kurtz: Well, Woodward wasn't the only one having off-the-record chats with Jerry Ford. Tom DeFrank, now with the New York Daily News, did as well, along with Michael Beschloss, who has a piece in Newsweek about Ford's embargoed comments on the Republican Party moving too far to the right. If a journalist agrees not to publish an interview until after someone's death -- and clearly, those were the only ground rules that Ford, in his 80s and 90s, were comfortable with -- I don't think it's fair to accuse him of "sitting on" the story. You either play by the rules you've agreed to or you don't play.

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Alexandria, Va.: Can it be said that Ford has been reworking his legacy with the media for some time now?

Howard Kurtz: Yes, I tried to make that point in yesterday's Media Notes column. A bolder politician would have spoken out publicly about the Iraq war, his reservations about the Republican Party, and so on. Ford chose to share his observations with journalists on the basis that this would all come out after his death. It's impossible not to conclude that he wanted the influence history's verdict.

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Savage, Md.: Didn't the NY Daily News once run a front page photo of a woman being executed in the electric chair?

Howard Kurtz: Yes. It was sometime in the 1920s and the picture was taken with a camera that had been smuggled into the execution. Kind of an early YouTube moment.

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Boston, Mass.: Re: Obama. You bring up an interesting point. I saw the graphic and was not pleased. But had you not told me about the apology, I never would have known (as opposed to a correction in a newspaper that is there all day to see). I guess that's the curse of the 24/7 news channel.

Howard Kurtz: I just noticed it online myself this morning.

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Washington, D.C.: The Post Web site has an article titled "Democrats to Push GOP Aside" about the new House of Representatives. The article is good but the headline -- given that the HoR has been run as a single party body for the past decade or so (with the "majority of the majority rule") and that the Democrats have made noises about relaxing that tendency -- seems to misplace the emphasis, don't you think?

Howard Kurtz: The headline says "Democrats to START Without GOP Input/ Quick Passage of First Bills Sought," and that's absolutely accurate. Headline writers, as you know, have to capture a story's complexity in a very short space. The story made absolutely clear that the Republicans had ruled the House with an iron fist for 12 years, but also that the Dems had vowed to change that approach and allow more minority participation -- but not during the first few days, when Nancy Pelosi will be pushing ethics reform and other bills.

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Helena, Mont.: Michael Abramowitz said of Senator Obama on his chat today, " I suppose his exponential rise could potentially create a backlash, with journalists fly-specking his statements and record for inconsistencies and problems." In response to your comment that a lot of people don't know who Mitt Romney is, maybe the journalists can "fly-speck" his statements and record for inconsistencies and problems, as well.

Howard Kurtz: You can't run for president without going through a massive media fly-specking. It doesn't matter whether you've been a senator or governor for decades or someone who just exploded on the scene; everyone gets the full media audit. Obviously, if you've seemingly emerged from nowhere, like Obama, there's more virgin territory to be plowed, while we already know a huge amount about Hillary Clinton because of her tenure as first lady.

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Atlanta, Ga.: The media is too connected to the power and monied elite in this nation than to us regular citizens. With the income paid to the media elites their children go to the best private schools and they rub elbows with the elected officials at the same country clubs and cocktail parties. Therefore, they are hesitant to call a spade a spade in fear of their children missing out on the best educ. and themselves missing out on the best parties. Read Bill Grieders 'Who Will Tell the People.'

Howard Kurtz: For the record, I belong to no country club and my children have attended public schools, as I did. I do agree, though, that the more journalists are firmly embedded in the upper middle class -- not that I oppose their being well compensated, mind you -- the more there is a gap with less affluent readers, both economically and culturally.

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Arlington, Va.: Ironically, John Edwards had hoped last week would be a quiet news week for his presidential announcement. Little did he know that James Brown, President Ford AND Saddam Hussein would all die in one week, that we'd lose a huge chuck of ice into the ocean and that Denver would get more snow in a week than we've gotten over the past three years combined.

That said, I think Edwards' announcement strategy was pretty compelling. He hit the major TV outlets, and got great play where it really counts at this moment - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Stories were reporting that he had crowds in the thousands at each event. Is he going to be the guy who gets largely ignored by the media (with Obama and Clinton garnering the press) who sneaks in there and surprises people?

Howard Kurtz: He could be. That happened to some degree last time, when a lot of journalists were surprised by Edwards' second-place showing in Iowa. It's a bit harder to make an off-Broadway debut when you were the vice-presidential nominee last time.

You're certainly right that Edwards wound up getting upstaged by all those deaths during the traditionally slow week after Christmas, and it definitely hurt his national coverage. But it's also true that drawing attention in places like Iowa and New Hampshire may matter more at this early stage of the game.

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Baltimore, Md.: Re Romney's candidacy: His changing stance on issues such as gay rights and abortion will only cause both left and right to look at him as a pol who will say anything to get nominated and elected. Frankly, this is why someone like Jim Webb had such enormous appeal in Virginia.

I remember that he went somewhere in a southern corner of the state early in the general election campaign and told an audience that he was for gun rights -and- gay rights. The was a popular stand for the audience he was talking to, the latter decidedly not. But Webb had the courage to say what he really believed.

Howard Kurtz: I don't think there should be an absolute ban on politicians changing their minds on some issues over the years. But if you are seen as contorting your positions for political reasons -- say, suddenly discovering a long-dormant passion for ethanol -- voters are understandably suspicious.

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El Segundo, Calif.: Howard,

I've read an article or two that make brief comments that President Bush feels his time in office will eventually be seen in a respected light in much the same manner that Presidents Ford and Truman are looked at now. I realize none of us can predict the future, but the circumstances of the various crises and the forthrightness of the three presidents seem to be deciding factors that lead me to think that Bush may be erring here. Your comments?

Howard Kurtz: Who knows? It's certainly true that Truman, Eisenhower and Ford are now seen by historians as much more successful presidents than they were at the time. In Bush's case, much will depend on what happens in Iraq. If there is ultimately a political settlement and the evolution of a real democracy, Bush's legacy will look very different in 20 years. If the place completely falls apart and becomes a dangerous power in the region, that will require a different judgment by history.

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Claverack, N.Y.: On the whole, I appreciate the coverage the media had conducted of the Ford presidency- it's brought to my attention a panoply of facts about Watergate and its aftermath I was ignorant of.

However, I am disappointed in the coverage about the pardon. Seems to me it's been universal in saying, "In retrospect it was the right thing". Well, excuse me, not to disrespect the dead, but that's an opinion, not fact. Plenty still believe the pardon was wrong, inappropriate, and set a terrible precedent.

Howard Kurtz: Sure. And many still believe that. It's just that individual journalists and politicians -- most notably Ted Kennedy -- are saying they have changed their minds over the ensuing three decades and now believe the Nixon pardon helped heal the wounds of Watergate. No one is suggesting that is a universally held view.

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Kensington, Md.: As for the noose photo, I took one look and dumped the whole A section into the recycling bin unread so I wouldn't have to inadvertently glance at it again as I read the paper. I'm a journalist and found the placement to be very poor news judgment.

Howard Kurtz: I see your point. I don't think newspapers should shy away from publishing such photos, but I do think the Page 1 display inflicted that disturbing image on a whole lot of people who had no desire to see it.

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Silver Spring, Md.: When the press compares Obama to John Kennedy, why don't they also state that JFK was a second term senator when he ran in 1960, and his attempt for the vice presidency in 1956 as a first term Senator ended in failure?

Howard Kurtz: I think the comparison has to do with the excitement that Obama is generating and the fact that he is close to the age that Jack Kennedy was in 1960. Obviously Kennedy had more experience, although the truth is that he accomplished little in Congress and that was not the secret to his appeal as a young presidential candidate.

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Pacific Northwest: Howard -

Is there any news on the current condition of Sen. Tim Johnson of S.D.? I assume he won't make it to the swearing-in ceremony.

Thanks

Howard Kurtz: I think that's a safe assumption. There has been very little information released about Senator Johnson's condition. I have to assume he is still unable to speak, since if he was able to communicate with his family I'm sure that would have been made public. I hope there is better news to come, but it looks like Tim Johnson faces a long road to recovery.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Do you think Romney's LDS religious background will hurt him in middle America? Many people look on Mormonism as a cult - something which clearly cannot help him win the election. Of course, who would've thought a Mormon would lead such a heavily Irish-Catholic state as Massachusetts.

Howard Kurtz: I really have no idea. My knee-jerk instinct is to say that a presidential candidate shouldn't be judged on his religion, but it's impossible to say that it won't be a factor for at least some voters. The New Republic has a cover story about Romney's Mormonism. As you say, he did overcome that obstacle, if it is an obstacle, in Massachusetts, but a presidential race is very different. I guess it was also conventional wisdom before JFK that it would be very difficult for a Catholic to win the presidency.

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Finksburg, Md.: I'm late with this, hope it makes it in. Regarding photo of Saddam in a noose being "disturbing" - well, isn't that really the point? It's a mean nasty world out there, and sanitizing this fact so that some people won't feel uncomfortable is not the purpose of The Washington Post. It's news, and sometimes news is very very troubling. People should be troubled by it; that's the purpose The Post is bringing it to their attention.

Howard Kurtz: I agree with that, but since everyone doesn't have the same view, there is still the question of whether the picture should be splashed on the front page or the home page.

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San Anselmo, Calif.: Don't you think that we exaggerate 'the kindness of history' as something our politicians care a great deal about? I'm sure they are more into the 'now'. Obviously, they want to make a difference but "history" is not what they care about as Bush so eloquently said 'history' is in the future.

Howard Kurtz: I think all presidents worry about their legacy. Nixon tried hard to rehabilitate his reputation in meetings with selected journalists in the years between his resignation and his death. Clinton openly talked about it in the White House. That is part of the reason they write autobiographies and raise money for presidential libraries. And if you've been out of office for 30 years and in failing health, it is entirely natural to think about how you will be remembered.

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Charlottesville, Va.: Howard,

Please read your own Web site before correcting your readers. The Washington D.C. reader who stated that "The Post Web site has an article titled 'Democrats to Push GOP Aside'" is absolutely correct--I'm looking at it on the washingtonpost.com homepage at this very moment--and your "correction" was not. And that reader's point is valid as well--I think that headline is an embarrassment to The Post.

Howard Kurtz: I was telling you what was in the print edition. The Web site has different headline writers. And I agree, that formulation is too strong and too pejorative.

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Arlington, Va.: The NYT Public editor seems to have found his paper to have published inaccuracies in an article on foreign abortion laws. The response of the NYT magazine so far seems to be "we were wrong, but not false enough to deserve a correction." How does a paper determine when corrections will be published, particularly for articles that are several months old?

Howard Kurtz: It's ultimately up to the editor, like all other editorial decisions. Newspapers are not democracies.

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New York, N.Y.: Why, do you think, do the media so quickly adapt the language of the administration, who have clearly chosen their words for maximum political effect--for example: "surge" for "troop expansion?"

This question occurred to me as I learned that Tuscaloosa News in Alabama, of all places, went against the trend in an article they published yesterday, using the more familiar term "escalation" in place of "surge," which they labeled "Bush-speak."

Bush still searching for well-defined mission in Iraq, ( Tuscaloosa News, Jan. 1)

Howard Kurtz: I do think we've fallen into the trap of using "surge," which assumes a troop increase will be fleeing and temporary, which may turn out not to be the case. Journalists should be more careful about such things. I did a taped piece on Reliable Sources about how all these anchors and correspondents were talking about Bush's search for a New Way Forward in Iraq, which just happens to be the administration's preferred buzz-phrase at the moment.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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