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." Kurtz was online Tuesday, Jan. 16, at noon ET.

Bill O'Reilly And NBC, Shouting to Make Themselves Seen? (Post, Jan. 15)

The transcript follows.

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Annapolis, Md.: I'm still trying to decide what I thought of the interview last night on 60 Minutes with President Bush. I thought there were some good questions. I thought it was sympathetic to Bush especially with the meeting with the families of the people slain in Iraq. But, I left with a feeling that it didn't go anywhere except to give a forum for Bush to restate his positions without tough follow-up. I'd appreciate your review of the interview and how you would have done it differently (if you would have done it differently).

Howard Kurtz: I thought it was a reasonably tough interview by Scott Pelley. What you have to understand is that no matter how probing the questions are -- and I've watched Bush be interviewed by everyone from Tim Russert to Oprah -- a disciplined politician can limit himself to saying exactly what he wants to say and no more. So I don't think the 60 Minutes segment broke much new ground, except perhaps to show Bush being rather dismissive toward the notion that Congress could cut off funding for the war.

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Keith: What do you understand were the ground rules for the 60 Minutes interview? Did the questions have to be cleared, a standard practice?

Howard Kurtz: No questions were cleared in advance, and that is absolutely not standard practice for news organizations.

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Lincoln, Neb.: Howard, why are you wasting print discussing Bill O'Reilly? Come one, no one takes him seriously -- he's a clown. Or, if you're going to discuss O'Reilly, you should give equal time to those nutjobs who think that planes didn't actually crash into the WTC on September 11. They are a kindred bunch.

Olbermann is full of bombast, but at least he is coherent and appeals to reasonable people. O'Reilly, by contrast, draws his shtick from the Brownshirt playbook of 1939 Germany, flailing at invisible dragons and appealing to the basest elements of fear and ignorance. For that matter, why do you even cover Fox News? No journalist I know (and I know plenty) believes that is a serious news organization. Are you simply trying to appear "balanced"?

Howard Kurtz: So all that you've told me is that you don't like O'Reilly and you don't like Fox. It so happens that O'Reilly hosts the top-rated cable news show and that Fox is the number one cable news network, so some people out there obviously have a different view. I cover everyone in the news biz without regard to whether I personally agree or disagree with what they're saying.

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New York City: O'Reilly and Olbermann are entertainers and though I would not invite either to my home for dinner,would you agree that O'Reilly, though bombastic, at least tries to have a fair assessment of the issues even though he is decidedly conservative, while Olbermann is just obnoxiously liberal with a much stronger element of crudeness and total disrespect for the Office of the Presidency of the United States of America?

Howard Kurtz: Again, you're entitled to your opinion of these guys, but it's not my job to be a theater critic. They're both talented broadcasters. I would point out that O'Reilly has some liberals on his show, though he often just uses them as foils, while Olbermann almost never has conservatives on his show, with the exception of MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan. I think programs are more interesting when the host gets to mix it up with folks of different viewpoints.

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Rockville, Md.: I like to think I have been around for a while and do know some of the tricks, but Keith Olbermann just shocks me. I also see Bill O'Reilly as a bully, even though he seems to be calming down a bit. I guess the same folks who told Chris Matthews to shut up now and then are working Bill over. But my question: Is Keith Olbermann serious? Or is that just sports talk through a political filter?

Howard Kurtz: I think Keith Olbermann is quite serious. You can't watch his Special Comment segments and not think he is passionate about these issues, even if you passionately disagree with what he's saying. I don't think being a former sportscaster disqualifies you from having intelligent opinions beyond the world of sports.

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Iowa City, Iowa: Here is an issue I'd love to have you address: an article in RADARonline.com. So why do so-called pundits who are demonstrably wrong-headed continue to appear in print, as talking heads on news channels and otherwise at-large to spout errant nonsense on issue after issue? Is there no point at which someone says person X has no credibility, so let's find someone else with more accurate insight?

Howard Kurtz: I wrote a column on this last week, when the Nation's David Corn asked why Time was giving a column to the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. The gist was that pundits who are wrong about an issue should be held accountable and pressed on whether their views have changed, but I don't think they should be run out of town. Otherwise you would badly depopulate the punditry ranks.

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Washington: Sorry, a little late. Last week in your article on the attacks on Bill Kristol you commented on whether media commentators should be held accountable for their pontifications. You seemed to indicate that because Time hired a liberal commentator that having a conservative -- one who missed widely on the Iraq situation early -- was OK. Maybe media organizations should be held to the same standard as the diet pill commercials and be required to put qualifiers at the end of the article. Maybe something along the lines of, "None of these claims have been reviewed by experts in the field. Nothing in this article is intended for readers to use in analyzing the topic covered. Use at your own risk."

Howard Kurtz: I guess I thought that was implied. Does anyone seriously believe that people who pop off for a living are impeccable founts of wisdom on every possible issue?

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Bristow, Va.: Obviously the Bush people like Scott Pelley, since they never granted an interview to Rather, but must have liked the Pelley sit-down in 2002. But I thought the questions were tough, if not harsh. He pressed him with critics who think he's not honest. He asked him about going around public opinion. He asked if his terrible poll ratings were crushing him. If Pelley had asked Bill Clinton questions like this, he would have gotten a wave of rage.

Howard Kurtz: A wave of rage from who? Bush may like Pelley, but he's also given interviews over the last year to Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer and George Stephanopoulos.

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Alexandria, Va.: In your interviews with Olbermann, have you pressed him about his lack of conservative guests? Even two or three years ago, he still jousted with them. His show, isolated from the rest, looks much more one-sided and propagandistic than the Fox lineup. You certainly can't imagine Olbermann cracking quips with a conservative co-host! How can someone like Olbermann suggest Bush lives in a bubble of people who agree with him and then have a show like this?

Howard Kurtz: I did raise it, and I have raised it before. He said he had some difficulty getting conservative guests to come on the program. I don't know how hard he has tried, but surely there are conservative authors, columnists and political operatives who could be persuaded to appear on MSNBC.

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Raleigh, N.C.: I'm a liberal who think the media have been asleep at the wheel from spring 2002 until about 3 months ago on the Iraq War. It's been strange how the public, more concerned with soccer practice and maintaining their lawns and helping their children with homework, have been way ahead of BigMedia, whose full-time job it is, on the issue.

Having said that, I try to be impartial, and it seems now like BigMedia are going the other way. The number of quotes, for example, from anti-escalation Senators on the evening news seems out of proportion to their portion of the Senate.

Do you think I'm full of it? If not, is it mostly due to the difficulty of presenting the whole kaleidoscope of Iraq in a normal length newspaper article? Is it the media being lazy, or a self-reinforcing worldview?

Howard Kurtz: I think journalists are aware of the opinion polls and that it is easier to be skeptical toward the escalation plan when a majority of the country is against it. But I would quarrel with your comment about "three months ago." The media have done a lot of aggressive reporting on the war, both here and in Iraq, over the last two years. Before the war, not so much, as we all know.

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Seattle, Wash.: I can't believe you discussed William Kristol and attacks on his credibility without mentioning the Project for a New American Century. Kristol is a founding member of PNAC, a think tank with several members of the Bush Administration that was a chief architect and proponent of the Iraq war. Kristol shouldn't be a credible voice on international affairs because this terrible, unnecessary war was in part designed by him. Why you thought that wasn't worth mentioning in your write-up last week is beyond me. What exactly qualifies you for your position? The lack of context provided sometimes is mind-boggling.

Howard Kurtz: I have written about Kristol and the New American Century before. You can't shoehorn every single fact into an online column that is mostly devoted to excerpts from other publications and blogs. But the fact is, this is no secret. Kristol has never hidden the fact that he pushed for military action against Iraq early on and has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the war effort.

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Hyattsville, Md.: All the reports I've seen about Bush's surge speech -- including the Post's lead story -- focused on the wrong number. What really matters is not the increase in troop level, but the new level. After all, it's the total force that wages war, not the just the new arrivals.

In the Post's main story about the speech, that key number appears in paragraph 20! And in that 20th paragraph, one learns that the new level -- 153,000 -- is actually lower than the level two years ago! So it looks to me as if the White House successfully tricked the MSM into presenting the increase as being more significant that the real numbers warrant. How could you be fooled so easily?

Howard Kurtz: I don't think we've been tricked. Many accounts have taken note of the fact that this is a 15 percent increase in the number of troops, and that ain't much. The fact that it's smaller than the 2003 or 2004 force is also not the main point, although certainly worthy of mention. Bush is arguing that the mission is changing, to one of aggressive counterinsurgency to clear and hold Baghdad neighborhoods. I happen to think the most important question about the plan is whether the Iraqi government will do what it has supposedly promised to do in backing up these U.S. forces. If not, another 21,500 troops can't make that much of a difference.

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Dunn Loring, Va.: Happy Tuesday! Is this a first? I've always been under the impression that the morning new/talk TV shows go by a pecking order according to the size of their audience. For instance, if a Dan Bartlett or a Condi Rice has a program to sell, then Today gets the first interview, then GMA, then CBS, and then the cable news channels. So I was a little surprised that our Secretary of State ("my Fox guys, I love every one of them.") went on Fox News at 6:50 a.m. last Thursday for a soft interview with Fox and Friends to extol the President's speech before going on the Today show and then followed up by giving two more "exclusive" chats with Fox on the same day. Of course, one usually goes where your friends are but how can Fox continue to call itself a "fair and balanced" independent news source rather than a tool of the Republican Party at this point?

p.s. Very brave of the Vice President to go one-on-one with Chris Wallace Sunday.

Howard Kurtz: I don't quite see how it's Fox's fault that administration officials choose to come on. Whether these officials feel more comfortable because they see Fox News as sympathetic to the administration is another question. Cheney has certainly favored Fox, but he's also given interviews to Bob Schieffer and Tim Russert over the last year. Size of audience is not the only factor, or no one would ever beat out "Today" or "Meet the Press" for a hot guest. Sometimes it's about relationships. Nancy Pelosi, for instance, went on "Face the Nation" for her first Sunday interview after becoming Speaker, even though Schieffer trails Russert in the ratings.

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Charlotte, N.C.: In your most recent column, you provided a link to Pajamas Media. Pajamas Media recently suffered a major embarrassment when they pushed the story that Khamenei had died, when clearly they had been duped. They never issued a correction or an apology; Pajamas Media simply pretended the event never happened. It seems somewhat often that you support right-wing blogs (or similar Internet media) that shouldn't have any credibility remaining. Why is this?

Howard Kurtz: I'm not familiar with the incident, but for those who are not familiar with Pajamas Media, it is a compilation of mostly conservative bloggers (though founder Roger L. Simon told me he wants to get more liberals), and some of those bloggers are going to make mistakes. This comment that I "support" these blogs sounds a bit like the "why do you cover Fox News?" line. My goal in the online column is to give you a good sampling of the most interesting and provocative material out there, not to pick and choose what I personally agree with. Readers are smart and can make their own judgments about credibility.

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Fairfax, Va.: The media is wrong a lot of the time. Ford was a klutz and didn't know Poland was dominated by the Soviets. Reagan's policies would lead to world war. In fact they are usually wrong. Why aren't they more modest and hedge a bit?

Howard Kurtz: More modest? You've got the wrong profession.

The media were not wrong about President Ford arguing there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. He said it in a 1976 debate and refused to back off for several days. It was a gaffe, obviously, but a self-inflicted one. Nor did news organizations contend at the time that Ford, despite a couple of stumbles caught on camera, was a klutz. That was an image created almost entirely by Chevy Chase.

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Minneapolis: I think the problem that people like Corn (and myself) continue to have with folks like Kristol (and McCain and Lieberman, etc.) who continue to be relied on is that the people who were right and who continue to be right aren't getting the air time or print space. Just look at Meet the Press immediately following the midterm elections -- who were the guests? McCain and Lieberman. Not Pelosi or Hoyer or Reid or Emanuel. Even folks like Feingold and Kennedy are hard to find on the Sunday morning shows.

Howard Kurtz: Well, you're lumping commentators and politicians together here. Besides, can you argue that "Meet the Press" has not on plenty of senators and others who strongly disagree with the Iraq war? Last Sunday, for example, Russert's guests included Chris Dodd and Chuck Hagel, as well as Steve Hadley and the aforementioned Mr. Lieberman.

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Brooklyn, N.Y.: On the pundits being wrong issue, I have a simple question: What purpose do pundits serve?

Howard Kurtz: To analyze the news, stir debate and make you think. To fill air time and column inches. And, I guess, to serve as pinatas for those who disagree with them.

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Arlington, Va.: I contend newspapers are committing suicide by boring their readers. For example, how many people do you think are going to pay 35 cents to buy a copy of today's Washington Post with the headline: "Burden Set To Shift on Balanced Budget"? Is there no one in the industry today studying what readers really read, or am I just off-base?

Howard Kurtz: Well, that's a pretty boring headline. But the story is rather interesting: an analysis of how Bush, after years of presiding over red ink, is rhetorically shifting his support for a balanced budget but wants the Democrats to do the political dirty work of cutting spending. Hey, it's your kids' money that the government is spending by driving us deeper into debt.

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Washington: Have to say I'm a little disappointed by your answer. Your the "media critic" for one of the top newspapers in the world. A legitimate point is raised about whether O'Reilly is a news show, or entertainment of the Limbaugh beet-faced variety. And your response is "It so happens that O'Reilly hosts the top-rated cable news show and that Fox is the number one cable news network, so some people out there obviously have a different view." Surely there's got to be more than "got good ratings." Is Al Franken's show "news"?

Howard Kurtz: But that wasn't the question. O'Reilly's show is part news commentary, part entertainment. So is Olbermann's and Tucker Carlson's and Larry King's and Hannity & Colmes's and just about every other program of that type on television (and radio). If they don't get people to watch, they don't stay on the air. The questioner I was responding to was more in the mode of "I think O'Reilly is an idiot, so why do you write about him?" And I was trying to make the point that he has plenty of fans as well as plenty of detractors. In fact, I think some liberals watch him just so they can yell at the set.

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Re: depopulate the pundit ranks: And the problem with that would be?

Howard Kurtz: Widespread unemployment in Washington.

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But wouldn't you concede...: that Condi's "My Fox News guys -- I love every one of them" line was a bit...um...telling?

Howard Kurtz: Absolutely. Dangers of an open mike.

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Impossible to please: Hi Howie. I get so tired of all the accusations leveled at the MSM from the left and the right. People seem unwilling (or too stupid) to make a distinction between talk shows hosted by pundits (i.e. Olbermann)and news shows hosted by serious journalists (i.e. Tim Russert, et al). Please everybody, take a deep breath and pay attention!

Howard Kurtz: I'm in favor of deep breaths.

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Chicago: I was watching a replay of the ABC coverage of the day Reagan was shot. There was one scene when Sam Donaldson was at the hospital and the doctors were giving a "private" interview to a few reporters. The other reporters couldn't hear the doctors and started hooting and yelling to drown them out so they could also be included. Does stuff like that still happen? It was the craziest, and since we know the President survived, one of the funnier things I have seen on news TV.

Howard Kurtz: Rude reporters demanding to be heard? I'd say it happens every day or so.

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San Bruno, Calif.: On a different bent, what happened to those crinkly old editors in print media who would not let a spelling error or incorrect fact see the light of ink? Every paper I read -- sorry, especially The New York Times -- have so many corrections to so many errors that it appears they simply do a spell check and ship it on to publication. It is truly "sloppy professionalism." I am generous and kind that they use spell check.

Howard Kurtz: I would argue that in the old days a lot of errors never got corrected, just got swept under the rug in the age before bloggers and others could blow the whistle so easily. News organizations running corrections is a good thing -- it shows that they care enough to set the record straight and own up to their missteps. Given the sheer number of words the average paper publishes every day, some factual errors are inevitable.

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Alexandria, Va.: What do you think of the practice of some papers labeling columns on the front page "analysis" when it seems like op-ed material?

Howard Kurtz: I haven't seen any recent examples of that. There's plenty of running room in "analysis," but the idea is that facts and background are used to illuminate the issue at hand, not that the reporter gets on a soapbox. You could write that Bush was mistaken last week when he said X and here's why, but not that Bush is a terrible president who doesn't care about the truth.

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Pundit Ranks: Your answers so far are jokes. Doesn't public discourse deserve commentary by the best available commentators rather than by people whose seriously flawed records deprive them of that stature? Come on, be serious. This country needs the media to take their responsibility seriously.

Howard Kurtz: But how do you define "best available commentators"? The subtext here seems to be the war. If you were for the war, you were wrong, and therefore an idiot who should be banished from polite company. But plenty of liberal commentators also supported the war, based on what they knew at the time. There is also an intellectually coherent argument that the invasion itself was not a bad idea, but the subsequent botching of it, and failure to devise a credible plan to establish order and rebuild Iraq, is what produced the mess we're in now. My point is that those who say so-and-so should have to give up his word processor almost always is from the opposite side of the political spectrum.

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Boston: I think pundits are great - more than anything they contextualize the news and write analysis. My mother told me when I was young that I could learn everything I needed from the news by only reading the op/ed page.

Anyway, the problem with pundits is that they're so rarely humble, and seem to be highly partisan. I think a commentator who could argue both sides of the fence and fess up when wrong would be most successful (though not in readership, which is the only number that counts).

Howard Kurtz: Well, there are a few such people around. It's cable that gives the impression that they're all shouting heads.

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Winter Park, Fla.: Would you say that collectively the press suffers from ADHD? They never follow through, are easily distracted, flit from one thing to the next, rarely stay focused, and don't know how to prioritize?

Howard Kurtz: What was that again?

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Bozeman, Mont.: "widespread unemployment in Washington".

At 6% unemployed back in November, I would say Washington already has this problem. Here's an idea -- take the jobs of the pundits who were wrong on Iraq and give them to some of the currently unemployed. I doubt they could do much worse and some might even do better. See, in most professions, if you are completely wrong, you'll lose your job; however, in punditry, you get rewarded.

Howard Kurtz: Tough crowd this morning.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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