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 "Reality Show: Insider the Last Great Television News War," "Media Circus," "Hot Air," "Spin Cycle" and "The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media and Manipulation." Kurtz talks about the press and the stories of the day in "Media Backtalk."

The transcript follows.

Media Backtalk transcripts archive

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Fairfax County, Va.: Your comparison of the coverage of Kennedy's endorsements of Kerry for 2004 (a nonstory) and of Obama for 2008 (a huge story) was thought-provoking, but you left out some things that legitimately made this one by far the bigger story, by normal "news judgment" standards. First, Kennedy was from the same state as Kerry; this time, the press similarly has downplayed same-state or neighbor state endorsements for both Clinton and Obama. Second, the bigger news for most of us came when Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama first, and said that he reminded her of what others have told her about her father. Since she has been so nonpolitical, this was news -- Garbo speaks.

Third, Kennedy's usual practice is to wait until the primaries pick the nominee, so this was a departure. Fourth, as you note, it came with a leaked repudiation of the Clinton tactics and comments. And fifth, on the day of the event something seems to have happened personally with Kennedy connecting to the mostly-young Obama supporters (either your paper or the other one compared him to Tony Bennett) that made his "endorsement" sound like a convention nominating speech. It all adds up to real news, in my book, and I don't think the 2004 endorsement of a same-state senator did. Care to rethink?

Howard Kurtz: Oh, I don't doubt that Ted Kennedy endorsing Obama is a bigger event than his backing a fellow Massachusetts senator (though he certainly didn't sit out the primaries last time). Nor do I doubt that Caroline's very personal endorsement resonated with some people who revere her father. But we're comparing a nonstory (in 2003) with an absolute avalanche of coverage last week. How does an endorsement become the lead story on the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC's World News, and the focus on nonstop cable chatter? It's only because the media are buying into the notion of Obama as the new JFK. Well, maybe, but that is, in part, a media-generated narrative.

Had Ted Kennedy decided to endorse Hillary instead, would that event have drawn a twentieth of the coverage of Obama as the new prince of Camelot? The answer is obvious.

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washingtonpost.com: For Obama, a Most Congenial Spot (Post, Feb. 4)

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New York: Where was all of this "hope" and "change" and aura of "Camelot" on Nov. 21, 1963? Historians are pretty universal in assessing President Kennedy as greatly overrated. The press is greatly inflating the importance of Sen. Kennedy's endorsement (how many under 40 were influenced by this?) and the comparisons to Obama. Is it dislike of Sen. Clinton, or a desperate attempt by the media to re-create a "brief shinning moment" that is historically inaccurate in the first place?

Howard Kurtz: I do think, as I wrote this morning that there is something to journalists wanting to be in on another "brief shining moment." And as I also noted, Camelot was a retrospective label. But let's be clear: Jack Kennedy's impact was limited because his presidency tragically was cut short. But he was a young and vigorous president who excited the country and the press (vowing to put a man on the moon, launching the Peace Corps, going to Berlin) who entertained at the White House with a glamorous wife. So you have to make a distinction between the emotional connection that people feel for a martyred president and what he was able to accomplish in his thousand days.

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Santa Monica, Calif.: Is it cynical to worry that Hillary doesn't stand a chance against McCain in light of the different media treatment they receive? Don't the media's personal feelings about the two have a chance of significantly shaping the ultimate outcome?

Howard Kurtz: I never would conclude that Hillary didn't stand a chance against McCain. Her media coverage has been mixed; she certainly received plenty of positive publicity for her New Hampshire comeback that all the pundits said was impossible. And while McCain told me he'll continue to spend hours talking to reporters each day if he wins the nomination, it remains to be seen whether he actually can do that -- logistically as well as politically -- in a general election.

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Fairfax, Va.: David Broder commented the other day in his column on how the public gets little information from the debates and that that is a loss to the public discourse. Apparently it did not cross his mind that the reason for this is that his colleagues in the media do not ask the right questions. They ask the debaters "he said/she said" questions, or questions about contradictions between what the candidate said last week and just said a minute ago. In other words the media focus on trivialities or on topics aimed at getting the nominees to attack each other. That is very poor reporting and elicits no information for the voters. Is this because your corporate news managers don't want the public to be informed? What is going on?

Howard Kurtz: I disagree. While reporters were disappointed in last week's Hillary/Obama debate in Los Angeles, it was nothing if not relentlessly substantive. The Romney-McCain-Huckabee face-off, while much more hostile, also dealt in depth with important issues such as Iraq and the economy. In both cases, the CNN moderators threw out the questions and basically let the candidates argue, rather than trying to control the process. (It was the same approach when Hillary and Obama kept ripping each other in the Myrtle Beach debate.) Some debates have seemed more about the moderators' questions and strict time limits -- and clearly, things were harder when you had eight or 10 candidates on the stage -- but the recent ones, in my view, have been pretty good.

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Arlington, Va.: Yesterday, while most of the Sunday shows had various candidates, "Meet The Press" had two Republican and two Democratic strategists for what seemed to be the umpteenth time this election cycle. Is it possible that candidates make their obligatory one-day-as-a-target visit to Russert and refuse to come on again? The "gotcha" method of pointing out what someone said five or more years ago may wear people out.

Howard Kurtz: Seems to me Russert has had the presidential candidates as often as the other shows -- including, a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton.

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Baltimore: Re: The dueling Kennedy endorsements -- as a Marylander, I had to laugh when the Clinton camp tried to offset the Ted and Caroline endorsements by trumpeting that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend had endorsed Hillary. KKT was a two-term lieutenant governor of Maryland and was arguably the worst politician ever to hold statewide office. I don't disparage her morals, just her otherworldliness.

A friend of mine high up in the state's permanent bureaucracy once took KKT on an outing of the most blighted residential areas of East Baltimore. Her eyes growing wider by the minute, Ms. Townsend finally asked: "But ... but ... where are the gardens?!" Then she managed to lose the gubernatorial race in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one!

Howard Kurtz: Okay, so she lost the governor's race. But she and Robert Kennedy Jr. are both the children of another famous Kennedy. I just think their endorsement got far less coverage because it didn't fit into the Camelot storyline the media have adopted for Obama.

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Boston: Why the silence over the Justice Department's attack on James Risen? It's a pretty transparent attempt to scare good investigative journalists,; shouldn't you, The Post, the Times and the networks fight back a little harder?

washingtonpost.com: Grand Jury Subpoenas Times Reporter Over Book Sources (Post, Feb. 2)

Howard Kurtz: Fight back? As a reporter it's not my job to "fight" when the Justice Department goes after a reporter's sources -- it's my job to cover it fairly. Certainly editorial pages and columnists can raise hell if they so choose. One reason this hasn't touched a nerve, at least not yet, is that the subpoena has to do with Risen's book and not anything he wrote for the Times. Also, we've been through so many of these battles in the Judith Miller era that it may take a more advanced stage of the battle -- that is, a government threat to hit a journalist with a contempt charge that could mean jail time -- to generate lots of attention.

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Washington: So do you think Rich Lowry is right, and that Obama gets glowing coverage in part because reporters like him a lot more than they like Clinton?

Howard Kurtz: I think it's fair to say that some journalists have gotten swept up in the excitement that Obama has created -- and if you've been to his events, as I have, he really can raise the roof -- and he undoubtedly has benefited from that. But I wouldn't make the case that reporters like Obama personally, because the truth is most barely know him, especially given the way he keeps the press at arm's length. By the same token, while Hillary has clashed with the press since her days in the White House, I don't think most reporters personally dislike her, and they're a little happier with her campaign now that she's become more accessible.

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Stewartstown, Pa.: I strongly disagree with you that JFK's accomplishments were limited simply because his presidency was cut short by his assassination. Most presidents achieve most of what they accomplish early in their administrations -- two examples of this were FDR and LBJ, JFK's successor. By the time Lyndon Johnson was as far into his presidency as Kennedy was into his when he died, Johnson had pushed through most of the civil rights and other Great Society legislation for which he is justly applauded. While it's tragic that JFK's presidency and life were cut short, it's a copout to blame his relatively undistinguished domestic record on this.

Howard Kurtz: But who knows what Kennedy might have accomplished in a second term, which he was certain to win? Who knows if he would have pulled out of Vietnam? JFK had difficulties with a Congress whose key committees were controlled by conservative southern Democrats, and LBJ was able to get his big civil rights and Great Society legislation not just because he was a master tactician, but because he won a huge Democratic majority in 1964 -- spurred in part by Kennedy's death.

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Endorsements: I'm an Obama supporter, but I would have expected to see a little more coverage of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s endorsement of Clinton amid the Kennedy blitz, because his opinion might matter for environmentalists.

Howard Kurtz: A perfectly fair point. But the media pretty much blew it off. In fact, the most exposure the RFK Jr. endorsement has gotten has been in a TV ad for the Hillary campaign.

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St. Paul, Minn.: Hi Howard -- thanks for taking my question and for your insights. Do you see reporters doing more with the "age" and "temper" issues as they relate to McCain? While his sometimes-short temper is well-known, my sense is that talking about the fact that he would be the oldest sitting president if elected is not getting much play. Or am I wrong about that?

Howard Kurtz: Well, it's a fact that the man in 71. The reason I don't think it has been a major issue (though voters may choose to focus on it, I don't know) is that reporters who cover him see the long days that he puts in, and watched him do the 100 town hall meetings in New Hampshire that other candidates were unwilling to do. As for the temper issue, it was a major question in 2000, but less so now, I think, in part because McCain has been keeping it in check. The counterargument is that McCain uses his outrage about things like pork-barrel spending to get things done.

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New York: As someone who is a longtime fan of Teddy Kennedy and on the fence about Obama, last week was a strange moment. My first reaction was "that's it for Clinton," and then I saw the speech at American University and noticed that it wasn't a Teddy Kennedy speech but rather a get-out-the-troops speech with plenty of Obama's marketing lines. Where was the eloquence I've come to expect from Kennedy? The more I watched it the more I thought about his recent book contract and how difficult it must be for him not to succumb to the reflected glory of Obama's speeches ,which are largely chunks of JFK and MLK strung together. As the week progressed, more mentions of Kennedy's pique at the Clintons left this whole endorsement thing sounding very hollow to me.

Howard Kurtz: Well, it's in the eye of the beholder. I thought Kennedy gave a pretty good speech. And of course he would echo Obama's campaign themes (and mock one of Hillary's key talking points by saying Obama would be ready on day one). That's what you do in endorsing a presidential candidate.

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Washington: Why aren't the debates aired on network television? This is the most frustrating part of the primaries for me. People who don't have the time to figure out whether the debates are on CNN this week, or MSNBC or MTV or wherever, (or who simply don't get any channel beyond the local networks) have to rely on often less-than-informative next-day reports to find out what happened.

Howard Kurtz: ABC aired its debates in New Hampshire and got huge numbers, close to 10 million as I recall. NBC has opted to put its debates on its cable channel, MSNBC. CBS's only shot at a debate was killed when union members refused to promise not to strike after the Hollywood writers' union walked out.

The larger answer: The broadcast networks make more money on their entertainment programming, some of which would have to be sacrificed to carry a two-hour debate.

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Re: New York: He's been posting this "overrated" thing far and wide, but what New York fails to realize is that in the greatest challenge his administration (and maybe America) faced, Kennedy was up to the task. Add the Apollo program, the support for civil rights, etc., etc., and it seems like the Kennedy was able to do a lot of good in less than three years.

Howard Kurtz: It depends on whether you rate a president solely on bills passed or wars fought, or on broader measures such as inspiring the country. JFK also screwed up with the Bay of Pigs (an invasion plan he inherited from Eisenhower) but deserves credit for finding a peaceful solution in the Cuban missile crisis.

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Richmond, Va.: Thanks for the great insider info on how the press seems to work (most of the time). What determines if a politician gets to be on a TV show most of the time? Do they ask to be on, or are they asked? Can a candidate time their appearances to be on the key shows? I ask only because John McCain seemed to get a lot of air time on "Meet the Press" just before the primaries. Thanks.

Howard Kurtz: The networks certainly request the guests they want, and McCain probably has been on "Meet the Press" dozens of times through the years. In election season, the campaigns will signal the availability of their candidates (as when Hillary did all five Sunday shows). The shows also like to have an exclusive sit-down with a candidate on any given Sunday as opposed to being just one stop on a tour of two, three or more programs.

But availability has a lot to do with it. Mike Huckabee has been on Scarborough about a zillion times because he seems to be endlessly available.

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Reston, Va.: With respect to the media coverage surrounding Ted's endorsement of Obama: I couldn't get over how badly Brian Williams was fawning over the Kennedys. "America's fascination with the Kennedys"? People still have pictures of JFK hanging on their walls"? Seriously? I rolled my eyes after those comments -- what is with the media's fascination with the Kennedy clan?

Howard Kurtz: Well, the media's fascination may be greater, but Williams is right: We're talking about JFK, RFK, Jackie O, Ted, the death of JFK Jr., the problems of Patrick Kennedy and William Kennedy Smith, and on and on. Can anyone seriously deny that this long has been one of America's royal families?

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Bristow, Va.: Do you think CNN will match B-word with B-word? They went aggressively after McCain when a lady asked about Hillary as a B-word, and he didn't protest. Now, a Hillary supporter stands up and calls the president a "bastard," and she didn't protest. Aren't these roughly equivalent? Or is one B-word much worse than the other?

Howard Kurtz: I'm not familiar with this latest incident. But how exactly did CNN go "aggressively after McCain" over the B-word incident? I remember one host, Rick Sanchez, making a big deal out of it, but not the entire network, and other cable hosts and columnists debated the incident as well.

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Centreville, Va.: Do you agree with some of the media pundits who assume that each McCain victory is a defeat for Rush/Laura Ingraham, etc.? Have we overintepreted how much influence talk radio has on the regular establishment Republican? They seem to play a game of Now His Turn.

Howard Kurtz: It's silly to cast each McCain victory as a defeat for radio commentators who oppose him. Talk radio is influential with conservatives, no question about it, but is it reasonable to expect any single host or group of hosts to "stop" a presidential candidate? What radio talkers do is make an argument to their audience, and give that audience a chance to be heard (what originally was revolutionary about talk radio, in the years before blogs, was that ordinary people briefly could have access to the microphone). And sometimes, when they touch a nerve, they can galvanize their audience. But they're not political leaders.

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Independent-ville: I can't believe it -- Democrats defending JFK here, and Republicans defending Reagan there. We get that you worship them, but they're both dead, people. Let's look forward for a change, okay? That's the trouble with you partisans -- always fighting the old wars!

Howard Kurtz: Nothing wrong with a little historical debate. It was interesting, though, the way both Clintons tried to demonize Obama for saying that Reagan was a transformative figure -- in a way the 42nd president was not -- by accusing him of embracing Ronald Reagan's ideas, which Obama definitely did not.

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Re: Royal families: Howard, the media are only putting on Donkey Ears when they start talking Camelot and "royal families." Republicans see a family full or amorality and excess and, in the second generation, a nearly complete lack of political success (witness Kathleen Townsend and Mark Shriver -- in Maryland, for Pete's sake). Only Democrats have a use for that mythology.

Howard Kurtz: I don't think that's fair. Some Kennedy family members have had a lot of problems, and some have not had political success. Some have had both political success and personal problems (Chappaquiddick, Patrick Kennedy's alcoholism). But when we talk about the Kennedy legacy, we're really talking about Jack's presidency; RFK's time as attorney general, senator and presidential candidate, and Ted's 40-year Senate record.

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University Park, Md.: I think that reporters like a compelling story, and the Obama campaign provides that big time. Unfortunately for Clinton, the most compelling story so far has been about her husband's role.

Howard Kurtz: Good point. Never underestimate the role of narrative in political journalism. There's a reason that most of today's Newsweek cover story on John McCain is about his years as a prisoner of war.

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Arlington, Va.: I'm trying to decide on whether Bill Kristol's writing a column for the Times is a good idea or not. He strikes me more as an advocate than a commentator, which Gerson and Brooks don't seem to be. And what is this with sons of famous conservatives becoming columnists? Kristol, Podhoretz and Jonah Goldberg: "Son, I'm bequeathing you my opinions, so go forth and write them up"?

Howard Kurtz: I don't think we ought to belittle people who go into the family business. Maybe Chris Wallace learned a few things from his dad, as Peter Jennings did from his dad (who was a top Canadian broadcaster). As for Bill Kristol, he's very different from the usual Times columnist: a former Republican operative who runs a conservative magazine and is doing this only as a part-time gig. On the other hand, Karl Rove is writing columns for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, so maybe advocacy is in.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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