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."

He's in the Race -- And Under The Microscope (washingtonpost.com, Sept. 10)

The transcript follows.

Media Backtalk transcripts archive

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Falls Church, Va.: It's clear from today's articles that the press feels snubbed by Fred Thompson, but do you think that will translate into actual difficulties with voters?

washingtonpost.com: Welcome to the State, Fred. What Kept You? (Post, Sept. 10)

Howard Kurtz: I don't know that the press feels "snubbed" by Thompson -- the guy's only been a candidate for a few days, officially at least. But clearly he has been following a strategy of minimizing contact with the mainstream media; we'll have to see whether that changes. Thompson told Sean Hannity (in his seventh sit-down with the Fox host) that he realizes he can't completely bypass the MSM, but you get the sense that he wouldn't mind trying.

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Arlington, Va.: So let me get this straight: Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are going to give Fox News's Brit Hume an exclusive hour-long interview about the surge and their recommendations for the future of Iraq. In other words, the guy the president himself has said will determine the U.S.'s future course in its most significant war since Vietnam is limiting what he has to share, other than in mandatory congressional testimony, to the audience of the most unabashedly partisan TV network in America.

It's like the president's "town hall meetings," invariably limited to carefully screened supporters: if you're the Bush administration, you only talk to your friends -- and if what you have to talk about concerns the future of the entire nation, and the entire nation of Iraq, well, that's just too bad. And people wonder why the vast majority of Americans are cynical and severely skeptical about this war?

Howard Kurtz: They're free to follow whatever they think is the best media strategy. Maybe they're worried about securing the base. My question is whether they grant interviews to any other news organizations after sitting down with Brit Hume.

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Centreville, Va.: Hello Howard. I totally agree that Thompson and all the candidates should have to "hit big-league pitching from established journalists." However, I can't help but wonder about the quality of the big leaguers' pitching. For example, I have yet to hear one journalist ask any of the candidates who support the Iraq war just how many casualties and billions of dollars this endeavor is worth to them. Don't you think the public, exasperated with this war and our leadership, would appreciate a few high hard ones once in a while?

Howard Kurtz: I'm all in favor of hardball pitching. I have seen journalists press the candidates about the war at a number of debates, and in print interviews, but I don't believe the question has been framed in terms of the continuing casualties. That certainly would drive home the point that we're talking about real human beings fighting and dying.

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Raleigh, N.C.: Good afternoon! This may be a hard question to answer, but in your talks with reporters, is it more difficult to cover a quasi-titillating story like the Saga of Craig, or is it more difficult to cover a story with extremely high passions like the war in Iraq? I see difficulties in both, but I'm wondering which is harder and why.

Howard Kurtz: Covering the Larry Craig story really isn't all that difficult except on taste grounds. (How much detail does America really need about his wide stance?) After all, the guy was arrested and pleaded guilty. The more difficult question, as I've written, is how you deal with rumors and allegations about sexual misconduct by a politician before there's any definitive proof, such as a police report. There were rumors about Mark Foley, Jim McGreevey and others before their behavior was exposed, but news organizations generally did not publish them. There is the question of adequate evidence, and the equally thorny question of how relevant someone's private life is. Overall, I'd say the war, in all its facets, is far more challenging to cover.

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Silver Spring, Md.: In your opinion, how should the various factors be weighed in editorial decision-making as to number of column-inches devoted to 2008 presidential candidates? Clearly national poll numbers play a role, and fundraising looms large. How about when an "underfunded" candidate like Duncan Hunter wins the GOP straw polls in Arizona and Texas, and essentially ties for first in South Carolina? We still hear next to nothing about him. I'd love to know what goes into determining these coverage questions. Thanks!

Howard Kurtz: With so many candidates on both sides, news organizations obviously have to spend far more ink and air time on, say, Hillary and Obama as opposed to Mike Gravel. We've seen an uptick in coverage for a couple of second-tier types -- Mike Huckabee, Bill Richardson -- who possibly could break into the top tier. In every cycle, I find that the press more or less ignores someone who eventually gets hot, forcing reporters to play catchup late in the game. Howard Dean, for instance, originally was treated like an asterisk.

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Austin, Texas: Howie, thanks as always for the chats. My question goes to the lack of follow-up from some of your colleagues on predictions -- especially on Iraq. It seems like there are large numbers of politicians, media pundits and academics out there who have made variations of the "we'll know whether the surge is working in six months" statement.

Why is it that little seems to be done in terms of challenge or follow-up on those predictions? They seem so meaningless if they aren't followed up on or challenged as to whether they're based in reality rather than wishful thinking. Why do we continue to see these statements creep unchallenged into news stories if they merely are wishful thinking or can-kicking? It seems that only Tom Friedman is singled out for these statements (with the term "Friedman Unit" coming out of his repeated "the next six months will be the key" prognostications) but it sure looks to me that lots of public and media figures are making these predictions without challenge.

Howard Kurtz: I'm wary of predictions of all kinds, including forecasts of who's going to win a presidential nomination. Predicting the outcome of a military offensive in a complex war that involves sectarian strife, attacks on U.S. forces, terrorism, local militias and shifting alliances is beyond the ability of most pundits. So you should take such pronouncements with a grain of salt.

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Rolla, Mo.: Have you read the Vanity Fair article "Going After Gore," and if so, what is your reaction? I know this may seem like well-tread ground, but is the press going to cover the 2008 race in a similar manner or have things changed, and should they?

washingtonpost.com: Going After Gore (Vanity Fair, October 2007 issue)

Howard Kurtz: I was quoted in the piece. I thought it made some good points. The Gore "exaggerations" that the press got so hepped up about seven years ago now seem like small-bore stuff -- although Bob Shrum, who was part of that campaign, says Gore's advisers warned him to stick closely to the facts, given the image that had been created, and that the vice president sometimes was unable to do so.

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Arlington, Va.: Are questions about Social Security reform off-limits for presidential candidates? I have yet to hear any reporter ask any of the frontrunners for their detailed plan to resolve the unavoidable fact that, without significant changes, Social Security and Medicare will be running deficits before the end of the next president's first term. Maybe The Post could send Pearlstein instead of a political reporter to the next debate.

Howard Kurtz: After all the attention that Bush's Social Security plan got in 2005, you'd think reporters would raise the issue now and then, even in a political environment dominated by the war. It's not as though the problem of burgeoning retirement costs and an aging population simply vanished when the president couldn't even get a committee vote on his plan.

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Rockville, Md.: "The most unabashedly partisan TV network in America." I give this honor to MSNBC/NBC, which has gained it by being a clone of Fox -- just not so honest. Now who would ever want to do that? It is like Keith Olbermann becoming a copy of Bill O'Reilly. Why?

Howard Kurtz: I'll let you guys slug it out.

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Austin, Texas: I wanted to give you the opportunity to correct or clarify a statement you made on your broadcast yesterday: "But they also work very closely, NBC does, with this watchdog group called Perverted Justice, which has been reported to receive as much as $100,000 per episode for serving up decoys who lure these men to these places, posing obviously as teenage boys. Would you feel comfortable teaming up with such a group?"

Now, considering most sexual predators are men who target girls, wouldn't it be more obvious that Perverted Justice posed as teenage girls? Or wouldn't the more accurate and fair statement have been "posing as teenage girls and boys," leaving your supposed and inaccurate obviousness out of it?

Howard Kurtz: I should have said teenagers, as I did in today's column. A lot -- but not all -- of the stings have involved decoys posing as teenage boys, including the case in Murphy, Texas that collapsed when the local prosecutor said it had been bungled so badly he had to drop charges against the 23 suspects who had been arrested.

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Fairfax County, Va.: When "To Catch a Predator" first aired, I wrote to this online discussion, appalled at the obvious breach of journalistic ethics. From the first episode, the reporters crossed the line from being observers to being participants shaping the events. You clearly saw nothing wrong with the show. Brian Ross's piece on "Dateline" last night exposed just how dangerous and misguided this show has been, with producers even dictating arrest tactics (guns drawn outdoors in a suburban neighborhood, tackling the suspect, contrary to normal arrest methods) and essentially directing the entire police operation, introducing procedural errors that made the cases unprovable in court. Do you agree this show and others like it have stepped over the line?

Howard Kurtz: I have no idea why you say I "clearly" saw nothing wrong with the predator series. I had "Dateline's" Chris Hansen on my show early last year and pressed him about whether he was getting too close to the police and this watchdog group, Perverted Justice, in these stings. I interviewed Brian Ross on the show yesterday and wrote about the collapse of "Dateline's" Texas sting in today's column. When police orchestrate arrests for the cameras, and the first person to confront the suspects is not a cop but a "Dateline" correspondent who doesn't immediately identify himself as a journalist, that raises a host of troubling questions. We'd all like to see child predators taken off the street -- the question is whether the "Dateline" operation helps that effort.

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Seattle: I loved the question that Raleigh posed earlier. The major problem most people have with the MSM is that if they asked a candidate (or president) that question and they clearly dodged the question, there would be no follow-up to try and get an answer.

Howard Kurtz: There has been little follow-up in the debates because of the large candidate fields and restricted formats, but I've certainly seen plenty of follow-ups in TV interviews. Also, don't fall into the trap of thinking that television represents all of journalism -- to take just one example, the writer of yesterday's New York Times Magazine cover story on Rudy pressed him repeatedly about his views on the war on terror during a 45-minute interview.

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Houston: Howie: Having spent a little time in a green suit in the late 1960s, I remember the five o'clock follies for the press very well. Seems like the military is doing it all over again by cooking the books. I don't seem to hear the media boys in Iraq questioning like they did in Saigon, and stuff like "the Iranians did it, violence is down" seem to be accepted just because some "in the rear with the gear" colonel says it. Do you have a different take?

Howard Kurtz: First of all, they're no longer just boys, as was true during Vietnam. Second, there has been all kinds of nuanced and skeptical reporting from Iraq by the correspondents who have done tours there. John Burns, Richard Engel, Lara Logan, Martha Raddatz and many others not only have raised the right questions, they have risked their lives in the process.

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Anonymous: Sir: Regarding the question from Austin is more about the teaming of of media and law enforcement to entrap guys who can't get dates in a normal way. How comfortable should we be with these odd bedfellows in search of ratings and dollars ?

Howard Kurtz: Reporters work with law enforcement all the time, but you should certainly be skeptical whenever arrests seem to be staged for the cameras. Also, we're not talking here about men who can't get "dates": we're talking about men who commit the horrifying crime of sexually preying on children.

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Ogden, Utah: Glad to see you, at least, acknowledge that the Petraeus/Crocker thing is a "media strategy," and not some sort of official pronouncement by government officials. This entire presidency has been a media strategy and we can see the results.

Howard Kurtz: Perhaps. But every administration settles on a media strategy -- from which networks or correspondents to favor with interviews, to which organizations to leak to, to how to bury or preempt bad news. In that sense, the Bush administration is following a long tradition.

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Re: "Predator": Other than the obvious entertainment value in watching some would-be pedophile break down sobbing, there has to be a certain amount of preventive value too, right? Hopefully the next would-be perv thinks twice about acting on his urges.

Howard Kurtz: Well, that would be the argument, that "Dateline" is providing a deterrent with the weapon of public exposure. But there have been nearly a dozen of these "Dateline" stings; does it add to the deterrent to do it again and again, or does it just create a franchise for NBC?

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Baltimore: Re: FOX and MSNBC as partisans: The equivalency is absurd. While MSNBC has Olbermann, it also has Joe Scarborough, Dan Abrams, Tucker Carlson and others who are either to the right or in the middle. Fox has O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume (who I know has an illustrious reporting career, but is pretty much in the tank fro the administration).

Howard Kurtz: What about Alan Colmes?!

Actually, I'd feel better about that if Sean ever let Alan ask Fred Thompson a question.

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Reading, Pa.: Howard: More a media indictment than question but why does the press find it easier to go in depth on stories that are less than meaningless in the end (Larry Craig for one) while maintaining a virtual broadcast blackout on the gruesome realities of the wars we are fighting? Who is imposing this? Surely not the reporters, so it must be a collusive effort by broadcasters -- do you agree ?

Howard Kurtz: I don't know why you say a virtual blackout. Has there been any subject as intensively covered in the past four years? If you mean that we don't get to see dead bodies on television, I would agree that the networks can be excessively squeamish about that. But even though war coverage declined in the second quarter of this year compared to the first, there literally have been thousands and thousands of stories about bombings, IEDs, attacks, massacres and casualties, both American and Iraqi.

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Alexandria, Va.: Howie, just curious but why do reporters, when referring to themselves in their stories, use the third person (i.e. "this reporter" or "this writer")?

Howard Kurtz: It's an encrusted old tradition that we probably should break. I've been trying to get away from it.

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Fairfax, Va.: Recently The Post's pages have been filled with articles explaining the intra-Iraqi conflicts between Sunnis and al-Qaeda in Iraq, between Shiites and Sunnis, between Shiites and Shiites, etc. Why is this revelatory reporting only happening now? For years the MSM limited its coverage to the U. S. and the "insurgents" without saying who they were.

Howard Kurtz: I think such reports are hardly of recent vintage but there has been a lot more focus on the subject lately because of the U.S. strategy of working with Sunni tribes in Anbar, which have been alienated by the murderous tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And as the civil war has dragged on, cracks in the various alliances -- Sadr's Shiite militias versus other Shiites, for example -- have become more apparent, and more newsworthy.

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Arlington, Va.: Last week Brit Hume ran a story in his Grapevine segment reporting Kathleen Willey's allegations that "Clinton operatives" burglarized her house to prevent the publication of a "very damaging" book about Senator Clinton. How can Mr. Hume run such a story, without any critical or explanatory comment, and be considered a "fair and balanced" newscast?

Howard Kurtz: Here is what Hume reported. He certainly might have shown more skepticism toward a charge that Willey was making without evidence -- does anyone really believe the Clintons orchestrated a break-in at her home? -- and noted that the source of the information, WorldNetDaily, is a partner of the company publishing Willey's book:

"Kathleen Willey, who, you may recall, accused President Clinton of groping her in the Oval Office back in 1993 is now blaming what she calls 'Clinton operatives' for the theft of a manuscript for her upcoming book about her experiences with the Clintons.

"Willey says someone broke into her rural home outside Richmond, Virginia Friday and took a copy of the book, then tried to make it look like a botched burglary.

"Willey has accused the Clinton camp of intimidation tactics in the past, and now tells World Net Daily 'It is the same thing that happened before. They want you to know they were there. They pretty much managed to terrorize me again.'

"Willey says she does have another copy of the manuscript, which is entitled 'Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton.' It is due out in November."

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The Golden Triangle: Rockville, Md.: "The most unabashedly partisan TV network in America." I give this honor to MSNBC/NBC, which has gained it by being a clone of Fox -- just not so honest. Now who would ever want to do that?

Fox News has some left-of-center types on (Juan Williams, Colmes), but they are never on the set by themselves. There's always a conservative shouter to drown them out. MSNBC, in contrast, has conservatives with their own shows: Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough.

Howard Kurtz: That much is true. Some say Greta Van Susteren is more sympathetic to the left, but I don't see her as very political.

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Rolla, Mo.: Thanks for the tip last week on CNN International, it's great. My question -- why only one hour a day in the middle of the day? Can't that 8 p.m. ET hole be filled by this? Can the Glen Beck show, with miserable ratings, get better ratings?

Howard Kurtz: Is America ready for a serious hour of foreign news in prime time, including reports from Africa and Asia and other places that rarely land on the domestic radar screen? That's an interesting question. The BBC (which is about to launch a new broadcast aimed at a U.S. audience) has done well with a show that airs at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., but that's an earlier hour and it's not on an American network.

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Re: Predictions: Going back to the earlier question -- the question isn't about predicting the outcome of the war, it's about accountability for promises unkept. When various Congressmen and Senators from both parties, as well as assorted pundits, repeatedly kick the can down the road by saying "we'll be in a better position six months down the road to assess whether we should change strategy" and "September will be critical -- that's when Republicans will start to jump ship" and then six months come and go and all we hear is "not now, too soon," why don't we hear more questions along the lines of "what about what you said six months ago, and why should we believe you this time?"

Howard Kurtz: Well, Petraeus is sitting at the witness table and about to testify (if the congressmen on the committee ever get done with their droning opening statements). So those who have been waiting -- or stalling -- until the general offers his account have lost that excuse, as of today.

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Little Rock, Ark.: On your Sunday show, you made a comment that you "Couldn't disagree more" with Whoopi Goldberg's statement about Michael Vick growing up in a culture where dogfighting was not considered abnormal. In the clips that I have seen, Ms. Goldberg was not endorsing dogfighting or Vick's actions. Whoopi was trying to explain her feeling that Vick did not realize that what he did was wrong.

Since the Vick conviction, I have heard one woman state that "good old boy" friends of hers who participated in dogfighting were more upset about the method used to kill the dogs (electrocution and drowning rather than a bullet to the head) than about the practice of dogfighting itself. Terrell Owens in a Sunday ESPN interview said that he watched dogfights as a child. Owens's uncle raised dogs that were used in fights.

Ms. Goldberg's statement may have reflected an unpleasant truth. Because she was not supporting dog fighting, what part of her statement led to your disagreement?

Howard Kurtz: I just thought Whoopi was way too sympathetic to a guy who's admitted being involved in illegal dogfighting -- and who, as a multimillionaire athlete, didn't need to be involved in any of this.

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Rochester, N.Y.: You write "They're free to follow whatever they think is the best media strategy." Perhaps that's true legally, but doesn't the press have a duty to call the White House out when is turns the Pentagon into a PR arm of the White House? What did you make, for example, of the news that the Pentagon was handing out opposition research sheets on the lawmakers who visited Iraq? Is this really an acceptable media strategy, even if it is legal (which I don't think is clear, by the way)?

Howard Kurtz: The press absolutely has a duty to call the White House on its media strategy. (Remember the uproar when Dick Cheney spoke only to Fox after the hunting accident?) But the Secretary of Defense works for the president, so anyone who thinks the Pentagon doesn't follow White House media strategy doesn't understand how Washington works.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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