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."

Iraq Tour of Duty Holds Surprises, 'No Heroics' for CBS's Katie Couric (Post, Sept. 4)

The transcript follows.

Media Backtalk transcripts archive

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Kensington, Md.: In Saturday's Post coverage of Sen. Craig's resignation, the reporter referred to "the disgraced lawmaker." While I find his lawmaking over the years extremely disgraceful, I don't see his newly-discovered sexual orientation that way at all. Should such arbitrary moral judgments be inserted in straight (excuse the pun) news articles?

washingtonpost.com: Sen. Craig Bids Voters Of Idaho Farewell (Post, Sept. 2)

Howard Kurtz: The "disgrace" has nothing to do with his sexual orientation. It's a reference to Larry Craig abruptly being pressured by his own party into resigning after being charged, in effect, with soliciting sex in an airport men's room, pleading guilty to a lesser charge, and then having to insist that he did nothing inappropriate while television repeatedly played the audio of an undercover policeman calling him a liar. That is a pretty dramatic fall from grace. I also think it was odd, as I noted last week, for Craig to defend himself by attacking the Idaho Statesman, when the Boise paper decided after a lengthy investigation not to publish a source's allegation of sexual contact with the senator in a bathroom at Washington's Union Station. The Statesman ran that allegation only after Roll Call reported on Craig's arrest and guilty plea in the Minnesota bathroom case.

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Fairfax, Va.: I think the corporate news directors in their rush to join in Bush's propaganda surge on so-called progress in Iraq have made a glaring error in sending a novice like Katie Couric to stroll through a market wearing a helmet with body armor surrounded by fully armed soldiers while telling us the market has, thanks to the surge, now has returned to "normal." When is the last time you went shopping at Giant accompanied by armed guards?

Howard Kurtz: I feel compelled to tell you that virtually all correspondents for major western news organizations travel with security personnel in Iraq, and in light of what happened to Bob Woodruff, Kimberly Dozier, Jill Carroll and others, they'd be crazy not to. No anchor who goes to a place like Iraq pretends to be a geopolitical expert. Woodruff didn't; Brian Williams, who went to Iraq last spring, didn't; and Couric doesn't, as she told me in a phone call from Baghdad on Sunday.

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Riverdale, N.Y.: That darn Liberal Media strikes again! All those stories on NBC, CNN etc about one sleazy illegal contributor to Hillary's campaign, i.e. this Hsu fellow, but hardly a peep by your "fair and balanced" friends about the frickin' financial honcho for Romney, a Mr. Fabian, being indicted for fraud! Which is the bigger story, or don't they teach proportionality in journalism school anymore? I'd hate to think that the Clinton Rules are back in effect again. Are they, Howie?

washingtonpost.com: Democrats Denounce Indicted Executive's Fundraising Efforts for GOP (Post, Aug. 14)

Howard Kurtz: I don't know what Fabian's relationship with Romney was. The Post story described the indicted businessman as a player in Maryland politics and a leading fundraiser for the former lieutenant governor and Senate candidate, Michael Steele. In Hillary's case, Hsu was a high-profile fundraiser who was about to co-chair a celebrity-studded event for her. And perhaps there were echoes in the coverage of the 1996 White House fundraising scandal that dogged her husband, which included some Chinese money men such as Johnny Chung.

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Raleigh, N.C.: Good afternoon! We live in an era in which, if a reporter calls what's going to be delivered next week the "Petraeus report," the left accuses him/her of repeating Republican talking points. Meanwhile, the right attacked NBC News for calling the situation in Iraq a "civil war." What do you blame for the raging battles over the mere naming of things in reporting? Is it the partisanship? Is it that the two sides are more aggressive than ever in framing issues? Is it the rise of so many alternative voices, from blogs to Salon to Fox News?

Howard Kurtz: The political and media atmosphere surrounding the war is so utterly polarized, and passions running so high, that we do seem to be debating terminology as much as policy. The flap about NBC's use of civil war, which now is accepted pretty widely, was a sterling example of that. Of course, words matter: Whether the Iraqi conflict is called a civil war, whether the U.S. escalation is called a surge, whether the goals set for the Maliki government are called benchmarks, all of that influences the way we talk and think about the war. It also creates a lot of land mines for journalists.

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Washington: Mr. Kurtz, did Ms. Couric have any response to the disgraceful attacks on her last week? I am not a huge fan of hers, nor do I watch CBS news, but I am sickened by the comments made about her. I am wondering how she took such cutting remarks that likely hit her on a lot of levels (motherhood, sexism, being widowed, etc).

Howard Kurtz: I told her that a couple of women had questioned whether she was putting her ambition ahead of the welfare of her daughters -- for whom she is the sole surviving parent -- and whether this was a desperate attempt at boosting ratings. (Never mind that reporting from a depressing war zone is not exactly a ratings-grabber these days.) Couric basically brushed it off and said she had made the decision for professional reasons, that it was important for her to report on the war first-hand, and that she had discussed it with her family afterward. This reminds me a bit of the criticism that Elizabeth Edwards got for remaining on the campaign trail after her cancer diagnosis. It seems to me that Katie Couric is capable of weighing the family and journalistic concerns involved, as does any anchor or reporter who risks going to Iraq, and that she gets to make that decision, not the pundits and second-guessers.

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Minneapolis: The Boston Globe reported Fabian was a co-chair of Romney's national finance committee.

Howard Kurtz: In that case I would say the story was underplayed by the press, especially in light of all the attention the Clinton/Hsu controversy has received.

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Arlington, Va.: MSNBC and Salon are both reporting on The Post refusing to run the Opus cartoon strip the past two Sundays. MSNBC is also reporting that Post editors "checked" with Muslim staff members for their reaction to the strips before deciding to pull them. Why aren't you writing about this? Does The Post check with Jewish or Christian staff members before publishing cartoons that mention their religions?

Howard Kurtz: I've been on vacation, I didn't know about it, and editors make decisions all the time about whether a cartoon (or article or column, for that matter) is too offensive to publish. I don't know the details here, as you didn't cite them.

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Herndon, Va.: On the front page of today's business section there is a chart called "Who's Earning What" in Washington. The highest salary is for a chief executive who makes just under $163,000 a year, and the lowest is of a Home Health Aide who makes $20,900 annually. I'm pointing this out because I feel that Tony Snow's claim of needing more money when he makes $168,000 a year with loads of perks at the White House is emblematic of just how tone-deaf and out of touch people in the White House are. Further, didn't he make nearly seven figures a year for a decade at Fox News, and yet he now says he had to borrow money to take the job of press secretary with the administration? At the very least Snow should get a new accountant, don't ya think?

washingtonpost.com: Tony Snow Resigns as White House Spokesman (Post, Sept. 1)

Howard Kurtz: I don't think Tony Snow is arguing that $168,000 is an inadequate salary -- after all, he knew he was taking a huge pay cut from his Fox News days when he took the White House job last year. What you're missing here, although Snow has declined to draw the link, is that he's battling a very serious cancer diagnosis. He's got kids he needs to send to college. It's hard for me to believe that his desire to make more money now is not connected to questions about how long he might be around. So I think we ought to show some compassion if Tony decides that leaving an incredibly demanding job while fighting cancer is the best decision for his family.

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Anonymous: I enjoyed Anne Applebaum's commentary today on the 10th anniversary of the death of Princess Di, as I always felt the media went absolutely bonkers during the period around the funeral, and that they still overdid coverage of the 10th anniversary. Fox News commentator Fred Barnes said Princess Di got more coverage than Mother Theresa -- who died at about the same time (though with a lot less publicity) -- because Theresa was religious and the media does not like to talk about religion. I guess that was a swipe at Fox News as well, given that they covered the anniversary like everyone else. I think the difference in coverage was simply that Diana was young, pretty, rich and royalty, and lived the life of the rich and famous, whereas Theresa sacrificed and lived with the poor, and was also old and homely (on the outside).

washingtonpost.com: Like a Candle In the Wind (Post, Sept. 4)

Howard Kurtz: The contrast between the Diana avalanche and the more restrained Mother Teresa coverage was widely noted at the time, and it would be easy to build a case that Mother Teresa was the more important historical figure and touched more lives. But we live in celebrity-obsessed age and Diana was the world's princess. Her troubled marriage to Prince Charles, extramarital affairs and eventual divorce made her a tabloid staple, and we now know that Di was leaking some of this stuff to friendly journalists. Plus, her death was unexpected and took place under controversial circumstances. So the contrast hardly was surprising, and has been driven home yet again by the 10th anniversary of Di's death.

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Re: Arlington: Here are links to the Salon and MSNBC stories on the Opus strips.

Howard Kurtz: Thanks. The Salon piece says that a number of newspapers declined to publish the strip. That doesn't make it the right decision, but clearly a number of editors concluded that some Muslims would find it offensive.

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Washington: So what is Couric doing in Iraq anyway? Doesn't CBS have Lara d'Arc, I mean Logan, to cover Iraq?

Howard Kurtz: Did you ask that question when Brian Williams went to Iraq last spring? After all, NBC has a terrific Middle East correspondent in Richard Engel. No visiting anchor is going to understand the story and the culture as well as a correspondent who's logged months or years there, but the anchor also brings a certain level of attention. Walter Cronkite, you may recall, went to Vietnam and came back with a downbeat assessment of that war, famously prompting LBJ to say that if he had lost Cronkite, he'd lost America.

Here's what I wrote last week on the question of why Couric went:

"I don't like frivolous anchor trips of any kind," Rick Kaplan, the broadcast's executive producer, said in an interview. "I wouldn't do this if it wasn't a timely and important thing. We didn't spend two seconds pushing her or coercing her." He said the goal was to provide greater context before mid-September, when President Bush makes public the recommendations of the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.

There is always a debate about how much anchors contribute with such high-profile trips that could not have been obtained by correspondents more familiar with the region. Kaplan said Couric would report as many as a dozen stories and that veteran Iraq reporter Lara Logan would do several more.

"We've gained access to some people and places we wouldn't have were it not at this kind of level," Kaplan said. "A number of doors opened up because it was Katie."

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Pittsburgh: I heard on NPR that when Katie Couric reported the recent death of Richard Jewell on the CBS Evening News, she mentioned only that he'd been a suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, but not that Eric Robert Rudolph later was arrested and convicted of the crime, and that Richard Jewell had been exonerated (and was in fact a hero that night). Do you agree with me that Couric was being irresponsible as a journalist for omitting these salient facts? Do you think her motive for such incomplete reporting has to do with the defamation lawsuit Jewell filed against a number of mainstream media outlets, including Couric's employer at the time, NBC? Would a news report in 2007 by Couric that Jewell had been innocent have helped his lawsuit? Will the lawsuit be continued by his estate?

Howard Kurtz: Here's what Couric actually said:

"Back in 1996, the FBI investigated Richard Jewell, an Atlanta security guard, in connection with the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. Richard Jewell died today of complications from diabetes. He was 44. Jewell was never charged with any crime."

That's accurate. I do think CBS should have noted that Jewell became a symbol of the media's rush to judgment after he was wrongly implicated in the crime by unnamed law-enforcement sources -- who, as it turned out, had no case. After all, that's why his death warranted even a few sentences on the evening news.

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Re: Edwards/Cancer: Of course people were being sexist when they sat around judging Mrs. Edwards decisions. No one has asked or second-guessed Tony Snow's decision to stay on in his role while battling cancer. Now of course, he's made another decision, but when these two people were going through very similar circumstances, all people wanted to question was Edwards's decision.

Howard Kurtz: It does seem that women -- Elizabeth Edwards and Katie Couric, in these two cases -- are subjected to far more second-guessing about their life choices. People who have never met either woman, who have no idea what their relationship is with their kids (Edwards's accompany the them on the campaign trail), feel perfectly qualified to sit on the sidelines and take potshots.

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Columbia, Mo.: Just a comment today. Living here in the "flyover country" I tire of hearing the "talking heads" comment about how various D.C. scandals "don't matter outside the beltway" -- as if we in the hinterlands don't concern ourselves with these issues. I've heard this said about the Valerie Plame case and the Justice Department scandals, and am tired of it. We are paying attention. We do care about what our elected and appointed officials are doing. Please pass along the word that we are not so involved in our own lives that we are ignorant of these scandals. Believe it or not, we are following them very closely. Nothing is only "inside the beltway" anymore...

Howard Kurtz: Well, some people are paying attention. Clearly the average person didn't follow all the complicated twists and turns of the Valerie Plame case, which received such heavy coverage here in the nation's capital. That's not necessarily a bad thing. People are busy, they have lives, and they take what they think they need to know from these ongoing political melodramas. Certainly the information is readily available for anyone who wants to digest all the details.

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Rolla, Mo.: Watched a session on C-SPAN2 (yes, I'm a geek) on American journalism's coverage of foreign affairs. One Brazilian broadcaster brought up the fact that American news organizations know how to cover other nations well, they just don't offer it for consumption here. She cited specifically the CNN they get in Brazil versus that in the U.S., which she termed "garbage." Is it purely ratings-driven here?

Howard Kurtz: You want me to comment on what some unnamed Brazilian broadcaster thinks of CNN?

All television networks have to produce ratings or they will be out of business. The CNN seen in this country is certainly different than CNN International, which is seen around the world and features a far heavier diet of foreign news. It's more serious and sober, and has to satisfy viewers from London to Tokyo. You can compare them yourself because CNN International is simulcast here weekdays from noon to 1 eastern.

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"But we live in celebrity-obsessed age and Diana was the world's princess.": Actually, that type of overstatement was the point of Anne's column. For every person in deep mourning over Diana's death, there were three or four who didn't care that much. And Anne points out that attendance at the Diana's grave site/museum is down and that more people turned out for the Queen Mother's funeral than for Diana's. Certainly there was interest in Diana, but the media kept milking it for their own gain beyond all logic and fact.

Howard Kurtz: I would be the last person on the planet to deny that the media milked Diana for every magazine cover and ratings point she was worth, both during her life and after her death. We know from subsequent books that she was not an unwilling participant in this process, but it's an undeniable fact.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Man, people should go easy on Tony Snow. I don't even like the guy, as far as that type of stuff goes, but jeez -- the guy looks like he has been through hell and I don't blame him one bit for doing what he has to do. And let's be realistic: If you have a big house and a couple of kids in private school (easy $20,000 a year around here) and medical bills from cancer, $168,000 after taxes is not really a ton of money.

Howard Kurtz: Duly noted.

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Claverack, N.Y.: Tucker Carlson recently was commenting on the Larry Craig unfortunateness, and off-handedly revealed that he had could speak from experience, because he'd been "hit on" in a men's room. When asked by the moderator what he had done, he said, paraphrasing "I came back with a friend and beat the crap out of him." The panelists laughed, because it's funny to beat up gay people.

Subsequently Carlson released a defensive statement that portrayed his actions in a more virtuous light: he wasn't hit on, he was the target of a "rape attempt"; they didn't beat up the guy so much as hold him until the police got there. Kind of a massive difference from his original on-camera version; no apologies were offered. I think even if you buy Carslon's revisions, which I don't, the "talent" who laughed at this story need a time-out. MSNBC won't comment. What do you think?

Howard Kurtz: I don't know what to think. I don't think Carlson was engaging in gay-bashing, but he certainly could have chosen his words more carefully the first time around.

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Cary, N.C.: Howard, I haven't seen any MSM reaction to John Edwards decreeing that FOX News is ideologically biased, therefore he won't appear on it or in any FOX-sponsored events. I can't help but wonder what the reaction would be if a Republican candidate accused MSNBC or CNN of being biased and boycotted them. Edwards has a right to appear where he wishes and obviously is playing to his perceived base, but what are your thoughts on major candidates declaring specific news outlets -- legitimate news outlets -- as not ideologically pure enough?

Howard Kurtz: I've written and talked about it, but you're right that it hasn't gotten much attention beyond the blogs, especially the liberal blogs that are cheering Edwards's stance. It came up again a few weeks back when word leaked that the former senator, while slamming Rupert Murdoch's network, had accepted $500,000 (plus $300,000 in expenses for staffers) from Murdoch's HarperCollins for a book. Also, all the major Democratic candidates largely have boycotted Fox News in recent months, and particularly Fox's plan for a debate cosponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. It's an interesting question, whether the Dems play to their liberal base by blowing off Fox or whether they are bypassing the chance to reach a sizable audience with a Democratic message.

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Mr. Kurtz, You Said...: "People who have never met either woman, who have no idea what their relationship is with their kids (who accompany the Edwardses on the campaign trail), feel perfectly qualified to sit on the sidelines and take potshots."

Actually, not only regarding women, but on any issue, I think that is the major problem with many people today. Many people form the "facts" from their opinions, rather than form their opinions based on the facts. Would you agree?

Howard Kurtz: Well, we all form judgments about public figures we haven't met. (How many people have met a presidential candidate, for instance?) And you can make those judgments based on the available facts. It's just striking that some folks are more willing to sit in judgment of women when it comes to questions involving their own families.

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New York: I'll bet Brian Williams wished he were in Iraq when Bush showed up unexpectedly. Good for Couric being in the right place at the right time.

Howard Kurtz: No one could have planned for that. But there's more to Iraq reporting than a presidential interview, obviously.

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Alexandria, Va.: It looks like the media is beating itself up over ignoring the blogger's "outing" of Foley and Craig. So, what's the hesitation now regarding publishing the names of the other politicians that are apparently on the blogger's site? Do you need to wait for another bathroom incident?

Howard Kurtz: You need to wait for proof. A blogger, or anyone else, saying that some politician has engaged in gay sexual conduct, or any sexual conduct, is not enough to publish an unsubstantiated allegation, especially by someone who refuses to be named. An arrest -- and certainly a guilty plea -- makes it a slam dunk, but that doesn't happen too often.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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