Critiquing the Press

Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Columnist
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 12:00 PM

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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Alexandria, Va.: Yesterday morning the market dropped sharply and The Post moved the numbers to the top of the page. Today the market has shot up in the first 20 minutes of trading, but the market watch has remained in its normal spot. Is this an example of "if it bleeds it leads" decision-making?

Howard Kurtz: I just checked the home page, and the second story -- right below the Obama speech -- is about the market being up more than 250 points in advance of the Fed's expected rate cut today. Yesterday there was legitimate fear that the Bear Stearns bailout could lead to a major market meltdown, which by day's end didn't happen.

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Charleston, W.Va.: Mr. Kurtz, congratulations to your compatriots -- I'm completely burned out on the election process. Any chance The Washington Post (or other major outlet) could publish an announcement in mid-October or so and let folks like me know the actual election is getting close so I can pay attention again?

Howard Kurtz: Please address your complaints to Obama and Clinton. If they're out there battling, we don't have much choice other than to cover it.

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Boonsboro, Md.: I think you are giving The Washington Post too much of a pass on the Wright flap. Putting it in the Saturday edition is the same as burying it. Reading today's story, there is no inkling of what Wright said that would be controversial, only that he was "full of passion." Both you and The Post are doing a disservice to your readers.

washingtonpost.com: The Wright Stuff? (Post, March 18)

Howard Kurtz: Speaking for myself, I was all over this story on Friday, and again this morning. As for The Post, your point about the Saturday paper was misguided. It was a mistake, in my view, not to publish anything about Wright on Friday (though the paper had plenty of company -- nothing in the Los Angeles Times or USA Today, nothing on the CBS and NBC nightly newscasts, a brief item in the New York Times). At that point, Saturday was the next available day to come back on the story -- which The Post, unlike the New York Times, did on the front page. And today's front-page effort is a nuanced piece that attempts to explore the controversy from the point of view of this Chicago church and some of its members.

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McLean, Va.: So what do you think of Rove as a commentator? Do you think any other members of Bush's inner circle will become commentators (or are they all regarded by the media as a bunch of knuckleheads who suffer from intellectual inbreeding)?

washingtonpost.com: Rove on Fox: It's Fair to Say He's Mellowed (Post, March 17)

Howard Kurtz: Well, Tony Snow already is moving in that direction, which is hardly surprising given that that's what he used to do for a living. Matthew Dowd has signed on as an ABC commentator. Nicolle Wallace, the former communications director, is a CBS consultant. I'm not sure who else might join the punditry ranks. I don't see Dick Cheney getting his own show. Keep in mind that the Clinton administration produced such journalists and commentators as George Stephanopoulos, Paul Begala and James Carville.

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Raleigh, N.C.: Process question here. Regarding Rev. Wright, why now? I don't get it.

Howard Kurtz: One word: videotapes. Once Fox News and ABC bought videos of the reverend's sermons and television kept replaying the uglier anti-American comments -- as Obama noted in his speech this morning -- the story blew up. We did not know some of this inflammatory rhetoric before -- but more important, to see Wright's racial rants has more impact than any transcript.

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Chicago: Howard, in reading the Trib's piece on Obama this weekend, I can't get past the fact that the staff was gushing about the fact that Obama promised to answer questions they put forward, and then preceded to -- gasp-- answer questions they put forward. Were the reporters perhaps setting the bar just a little too low here? Answering questions is now so remarkable it has to be mentioned in print?

Howard Kurtz: I didn't see it as gushing. I think it's fair to note that when a presidential candidate spends three hours answering detailed questions about an indicted fundraiser (as Obama did with the Tribune and the Sun-Times), that's unusual.

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Beaufort, S.C.: Did you catch Obama's speech earlier today? I thought on a macro scale it was flat-out great (disclosure -- I'm a Democrat who will vote for whomever is nominated), but do you think it will be at all effective in quelling the political talk-show uproar re: his pastor's comments?

Howard Kurtz: I don't know. I've been sitting here thinking about it. It was a carefully reasoned and nuanced address that both condemned Wright's rhetoric and refused to disavow the man, and went on to a frank discussion of racial resentments -- on both sides -- in America today. But we live in a sound-bite culture, and most people won't have seen the speech; much depends on which excerpts the media focus on and how they are framed.

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Somerdale, N.J.: Howie, there you go again. On Sunday you spent a whole segment on Obama and Rev. Wright, with only a throwaway line about McCain and his Reverend Problem. Why not equal time? McCain Embraced Falwell, Parsley and Hagee and actively sought their endorsements; why won't the media devote even some attention to this and go get video of these guys saying outrageous, inflammatory remarks? Why the double standard in the Liberal Media? Hannity has been pushing the Wright story for more than a year, and now the mainstream media picks it up. What was the matter -- Drudge taking too long to rule your world on this story?

Howard Kurtz: Because Jeremiah Wright is not just some pastor who's endorsed Obama, he is a lifelong friend who married the Obamas, baptized their daughters and was the minister at a church that Obama has attended for 20 years. The newly released videotapes were sparking a huge controversy, one that prompted Obama's speech today. So while it's certainly fair to raise why the press has focused so little on the inflammatory remarks of some of those whose support McCain has accepted -- and I have raised that -- on Sunday morning, Rev. Wright was the story.

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Rockville, Md.: Setting aside your frequent caveat that the televised media is not a monolith, do you expect that the reporters and pundits mostly will discuss and analyze the substance of Obama's race speech today, or do you think that the coverage will be reduced to sound bites?

Howard Kurtz: Both. I'm already seeing an attempt on the cable channels to grapple in a serious way with the substance of the speech. But let's say you're preparing a network evening newscast, where the typical news story runs just under two minutes; even if you do two stories, you're only going to have time for a couple of excerpts from the speech. Even newspaper reporters will have to decide what the two or three points most worthy of being highlighted at the top of their stories are.

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Austin, Texas: When the Spitzer scandal broke, you wrote a column that mentioned Bill Clinton and Marion Barry, yet you avoided any comparison to David Vitter. Why? How are those two scandals not comparable in your mind? It certainly seems like Vitter's is more recent and relevant -- so why did you not immediately reference it instead of the scandals of a bygone era? And why was there not one mention of the name "David Vitter" on Reliable Sources last week? Maybe it truly is unintentional, but does it really surprise you that some people think you lean to the Republican side?

Howard Kurtz: Maybe if you don't pay attention to the facts. This is from the first piece I wrote on the Spitzer fiasco:

"It quickly occurred to me that a family-values Republican, Sen. David Vitter, had ridden out the scandal over his calls to the D.C. Madam's operation. Larry Craig, following his bathroom bust, is still a U.S. senator. But the Louisiana and Idaho press are not the pugilistic New York media, and because it happened in New York, the Democratic governor's vague admission of wrongdoing is by definition a big national story."

This is from a couple of days later:

"It's a reminder, in this presidential season, that running mates matter -- especially if the man at the top of the ticket is dropping $80,000 on high-class hookers and convincing himself he'll never get caught. David Vitter might have skated with the Louisiana press after calling the D.C. Madam, but not a politician in this tabloid town."

I still find it surprising that Sen. Vitter was able to get by with saying so little about his scandal.

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Kettering, Ohio: Good afternoon Howard! Keep your podcasts coming, they are a great way to catch up on what is on your plate. I agree that the Wright issue deserved greater play. As a white guy trying to find a candidate who will change the discourse and tone and who believes both sides are to blame for the pickle we find ourselves at this moment, I am troubled by the rhetoric spewed by this supposed preacher. Maybe I don't get black religion, but what is so complicated about his rant about government involvement in bringing AIDs to the black community or its alleged involvement in Sept. 11? This is more troubling to me than anything Clinton has even made up to cast doubt on Obama.

Howard Kurtz: Some of the comments are really, really disturbing -- which is why it's legitimate to ask Obama how much he knew about Wright's views and why he didn't speak out earlier.

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Princeton, N.J.: "But we live in a sound-bite culture, and most people won't have seen the speech, so much depends on which excerpts the media focus on and how they are framed." This makes me really, really sad.

Howard Kurtz: That, however, is reality. People have lives. They're out teaching kids or practicing law or working in hospitals, and so don't have the luxury of watching a half-hour speech on morning cable. I do think this will be a real test for the media -- to grapple with this debate as more than just simplistic sound bites.

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Richmond, Va.: Re: Obama's nuanced speech. Right away, just the fact that it was nuanced, tells me it is doomed to failure. The television media doesn't do nuanced very well, so I expect the coverage to be just a few select sound bites picked out by pundits to support their point of view. Thoughts?

Howard Kurtz: Well, pro- and anti-Obama pundits may well do that, but commentators are just one slice of the news business -- and I expect more from those whose job it is to report and analyze the campaign, not just sound off.

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Columbus, Ohio: Howie: Lots has been written about Putin and his hand-picked successor providing dual leadership. Has anyone in the media tackled the issue of a dual presidency if Hillary Clinton were elected and her husband returned to the White House?

Howard Kurtz: I've seen that written and speculated about roughly 10,000 times, and that may be a low figure. The most recent iteration is when Hillary seemed to dangle the vice presidency before Obama, and plenty of media folks noted that he would wind up as No. 3, behind Bill.

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Falls Church, Va.: The remarks by McGreevey's aide about what he may or may not have done with the governor and his wife -- now that McGreevey is out of office, why are these remarks newsworthy?

Howard Kurtz: Legally, it comes up because Jim McGreevey and his wife are locked in a divorce battle. In media terms, it's seen as newsworthy because Dina Matos McGreevey was all over TV last week during the Spitzer debacle, making the point that she just had no clue that her husband the governor was gay. So if this dude and the ex-governor are to be believed, it now appears that Dina might have had more than an inkling.

And of course, there are media people who love the idea of typing "governor" and "threesome" in the same sentence. (The story, by the way, was broken by the Newark Star-Ledger.)

Throw in David Paterson's admission to the New York Daily News that he and his wife both messed around in the past, and it has been a helluva week for sex in politics.

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Media Bias: Mr Kurtz, this weekend on his syndicated show Chris Matthews had one ... one whole question involving Rev. Wright and the controversy surrounding some of his statements, and it didn't even take one minute. But "Chris the screamer" spent nearly 15 minutes comparing the Eliot Spitzer scandal to Monica Lewinsky. Also, over at Jack Cafferty's blog on cnn.com I went back and counted the questions directed at either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- not either-either questions of "who is your choice" -- and since the first of the year there have been 26 for Hillary and 4 for Barack, and most of that time Barack was the front-runner.

And I tell you what, if you still think their is no media bias then here's a game you might enjoy ... make a list of all the network or cable shows (not counting Fox Noise) that spend every day their on tearing down Hillary vs. the ones that tear down Barack. So far I have eight on the Hillary list (4 MSNBC, 2 CNN, 1 Headline and 1 NBC) and none so far on the Barack list.

Howard Kurtz: On your point about Matthews, he tapes his Sunday show on Friday, when the Wright controversy still hadn't reached critical mass. That, as I said, is in part because of the short shrift it initially was given by the New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, NBC etc.

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San Francisco: Why is Pat Buchanan still commentating on MSNBC? Has he apologized for telling African-American commentator Keli Goff to "shut up" last week? That was really shocking to anyone watching, and I wonder if I have missed your comments on it.

Howard Kurtz: I make it a point not to tell guests to shut up, keep quiet, pipe down or anything of that nature, but if you kicked off all the pundits who use such language on these shout shows, there would be a lot of dead air. It is, however, unspeakably rude.

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Ellicott City, Md.: Hello. Did you watch the new David Gregory show on MSNBC? The four talking heads with their event of the day in the "war" room -- isn't this all an exact rip-off of Wolf Blitzer's old show on CNN? Thanks.

Howard Kurtz: I caught the second half of it. The format seemed similar to that of a lot of cable talk shows, where guests bat around a series of questions. Gregory played the role of moderator more than opinion-monger, which didn't surprise me, as he's still an NBC News correspondent.

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New York: I've heard rumblings in the media that there's absolutely no way Clinton can win the nomination, based on the delegate count as it stands now (and based on the hurdles she'd need to jump in the coming caucuses and primaries). I'm just wondering, is this true? If so, why is the media "disappearing" this news?

Howard Kurtz: It's more than rumblings -- it's written about almost every day, often on the front page. But what the reports say is that it is mathematically impossible for Hillary to win a majority of pledged delegates by the end of the season. She could, however, win the nomination if she persuaded more of the superdelegates to side with her. That has sparked an intense debate about whether such an outcome would rupture the party and be seen as unfairly hijacking the nomination from the man who came out on top in primary voting. In fact, I'd say it has become the biggest single issue in the Democratic race.

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Arlington, Va.: Okay, I'll admit being titillated by the Eliot Spitzer-Ashley Dupre story, given the yawning decade-long hypocrisy. But today, on the day after he's sworn in, the New York Times ("All the news that's fit to print") trumpets Gov. David Paterson's past affairs at a New York Day's Inn, as well as his wife's (she is not a public official. I am wondering where the line is being drawn in these morality plays. Does the press wait until after someone is inaugurated to expose these matters?

Adlai Stevenson openly maintained a mistress, but it wasn't reported at the when he ran for president, and neither was LBJ's womanizing. Is it just that the media today is scrambling for sensationalism to combat declining circulation and revenues with gotcha stories on Paterson's decade-old affair on the same day he is sworn in, or is it a reflection that our society's standards are changing?

Also, we already know all about Sen. McCain's first marriage wanderings, and there are horrible rumors about Hillary. Why the soft gloves with Barack Obama's apparently saintly and faultless personal life? As one of our unappointed morality cops, tell us, Howie, what are the new rules of the road your "profession" is drafting. Does the press expose everything now, or wait until inauguration day?

washingtonpost.com: Patersons Acknowledge Extramarital Affairs (New York Times, March 18)

Howard Kurtz: The story actually was broken by the New York Daily News. I predicted in this morning's column that it would blow over in a day or two, because it doesn't involve paying for sex or having an affair with someone on the public payroll (as far as we know), and because it happened several years ago during a difficult time in his marriage, because Paterson's wife also strayed, and because they seem to have reconciled. As for why it came out now, no one in the media cared much about Paterson when he was a state senator or lieutenant governor (a New York Times piece Sunday that raised questions about conflicts of interest and some of his more radical views could have been written -- and should have been written -- years ago). In the wake of the Spitzer revelations, rumors swirled about Paterson having had an affair, and the incoming governor and his wife chose to acknowledge it in an interview with the News's Juan Gonzalez.

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Boston: Comment: David Gregory show on MSNBC? I did and thought it wasn't bad (which is pretty good for cable news).

Howard Kurtz: Well, at least give him a week. Hosting a cable show is harder than it looks. Trust me.

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Anonymous: CNN: Obama: "Obama: We can move beyond racial wounds."; ABC: Obama: Pastor Has Distorted View, But He Is Family to Me; FOX: Obama Condemns Pastor, But Won't 'Disown Him'; MSNBC: Obama: Racial anger is 'real'; CBS: Obama Urges End To "Racial Stalemate."

What do you think of the headlines above regarding Obama's speech? Isn't it amazing how some are so different from The Washington Post's headlines? UPDATE: CNN changes to "Obama: We can move beyond racial wounds."

Howard Kurtz: I think all the headlines are accurate, and focus on different parts of Obama's argument. That's hardly surprising with a long speech that dealt not just with Jeremiah Wright but with the landscape of race relations in America. The Post, by the way, is going with "Sen. Obama Confronts Racial Division in U.S." Hard to argue with that.

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Anonymous: I see the use of the term "nuanced" as too euphemistic. I think to say "clever" would be more accurate. The overall final impact of the speech, in my opinion, was a reinforcement of the "victim" mentality as opposed to the "taking responsibility" mentality. For example, when Obama couples his white grandmother's occasional fear about some of the black men she would pass on the street with the incendiary racist rantings of Jeremiah Wright, he is, I think, attempting to leave an impression that the two are equal. Or when Obama talks about the failure of the schools, he conveniently leaves out that doing well in school is many times considered in the black community as "acting white." What school system possibly can counteract that?

Howard Kurtz: You're entitled to like the speech or not like the speech. By calling it nuanced I simply am saying that it covered a lot of ground and made complicated, sometimes subtle observations and arguments about the challenge of race in America.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Most of the articles about the current economic crisis (or "challenging times") I have read so far have been pretty obtuse, and/or focused primarily on the effects on large investors, banks, those who invest in hedge funds (whatever those are), etc. What I would like to see more of is "what does it mean to the average American"?

Should we care about Bear Stearns if we aren't big investors? If an interest rate cut makes loans easier to get, are there also downsides, such as less investment in the U.S.? If so, should I care? Does a sinking dollar mean more than imports and foreign traveling getting more expensive and exports becoming less expensive? I have read that foreigners may investment less in U.S. Treasury bonds now. So what? Is any of this more important than Obama's pastor or Spitzer's hookers?

Howard Kurtz: You should care a great deal. This goes well beyond Bear Stearns, to the questions of how many more big companies may go belly up, whether the Fed will keep cutting interest rates and whether the housing downturn caused by the subprime mortgage mess is spreading to other parts of the economy. Beyond that, who do you think is going to pay for bailing out the likes of Wall Street investment houses? The American taxpayer. In today's Business section, The Post has a piece titled "End of Cheap Credit Hits Homes, Businesses." That is one of many articles that have attempted to gauge the impact on the average Joe.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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