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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Longtime Wall Street Journal Subscriber: As one who has paid for the Journal for years, I didn't have much trepidation about Murdoch's "changes" -- he spent too much money to destroy millions of paying subscriptions. The online edition, which is how I've been reading the Journal for about six years, is better than ever, and is actually much more of a resource than ever. It's my primary source of understanding -- once I see a televised or Drudge-style headline, I go to the Journal for the real information.

washingtonpost.com: The Journal Blankets the Campaign (Post, March 31)

Howard Kurtz: It's interesting: When Murdoch took over, the buzz was that he would make the Web site free to reach more readers. But after reviewing the numbers, Rupe apparently decided to stick with the pay wall. The Journal is one of the few news sites that makes money with a subscription fee, although that obviously limits its audience. (It also means I can't link most articles in my daily column.) The New York times, as you know, recently dropped its annual charge for reading the paper's columnists online.

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Huron, S.D.: Mr. Kurtz, with the political campaigns seeming to dominate the media spotlight, the Iraq War has taken second seat in reporting and analysis. With most voters tethered to a position on the war, for or against, is the press again trying to nudge the direction of the race for president? I don't want to hate Clinton, Obama or McCain anymore ... I want the war to be ended! I lament the loss of reporting because of financial constraints. When violence declines, the surge is working ... when violence escalates, the surge is working. How do I find out who is right? It is a much larger issue than what my pastor may say from the pulpit on Sunday. Thanks, and endeavor to persevere.

Howard Kurtz: The coverage of the war has dropped precipitously -- down to 3 percent of available news space and airtime this year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. (This was as of a couple of weeks ago.) War coverage made a comeback last week, first because of the 4,000th American death, reflecting the media's fixation with round numbers (was the 3,998th death any less newsworthy?) and also because of the bloody battle in Basra. My sense is that when the violence subsides, news organizations (particularly television) are happy to cut back on coverage on the theory that many viewers are sick of this five-year-old war. But when the casualty count jumps, the war makes it back onto the radar screen.

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Bluffton, S.C.: What do you think of MSNBC's latest ad featuring Andrea Mitchell telling us how important this election is going to be? When she starts reciting the reasons, I have to wonder if the Democratic National Committee wrote the script.

Howard Kurtz: I haven't seen the ad. But not sure why saying this is an important election would be seen as Democratic spin. Don't Republicans think it's an important election too?

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Fairfax, Va.: Why is the mainstream media giving McCain a pass on his acquiescence to Bush's statements last week that Maliki's failing attack shows progress? Does the MSM really believe what Bush is saying about the situation in Iraq? If not, why aren't you all commenting on McCain's siding with Bush's crooked talk instead of sticking with McCain's own professed straight talk? Is what McCain is doing somehow less newsworthy than the question of when Obama first heard Rev. Wright curse America's foreign policy? Just a thought: Is there any pundit who actually saw combat in Vietnam? If so, where do they stand on our five-year occupation of Iraq?

Howard Kurtz: The key word in your message is "commenting." As opposed to reporting, which is still being done out of Iraq at considerable risk to the journalists involved. I think there should be more media focus on and commentary about the war, even if concerns about the economy have temporarily eclipsed Iraq as a campaign issue. But most of the people who comment for a living were busy last week commenting about whether Hillary should drop out, the battle for superdelegates, Bob Casey's endorsement of Obama, etc.

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Washington: Thanks for the chats. I was wondering about the Hillary Bosnia flap. Sen. Clinton quit the claim, saying she "misspoke" after video footage and the memories of others on the trip didn't jibe with her memory. However, what she said was a misstatement was repeated fairly regularly for a couple of days and defended by Hilary's people on her staff. In short, it has the look of more than a misstatement, but a deliberate attempt to mislead. While I clearly have a bias here, I am wondering why reporters didn't ask her more about the chronology of the claim?

Howard Kurtz: The fact that Clinton repeated the sniper story several times strongly suggests it was more than a slip of the tongue brought on by fatigue. The Post did a good job here; first Sinbad (who was on the trip) told a Post blogger that there was no sniper fire or danger, and then fact-checker Michael Dobbs awarded the Clinton story four Pinocchios. It was days after that that CBS's Sharyl Attkisson played the video of the 1996 stop in Tuzla, making it a certified television story. But I wonder why she and other journalists who were on the trip didn't blow the whistle sooner; they were, after all, eyewitnesses.

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Jacksonville, Fla.: Can we think of a new phrase other than "to spend more time with my family" for someone to use when they resign under a dark cloud?

Howard Kurtz: Especially (as in the case of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson today) it's almost always an excuse thrown out my someone who's in trouble.

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Kensington, Md.: Howard, CNN's poll today shows that Obama (10 points up on Hillary nationally) has weathered the media's latest Swift-Boat Helper (TM) manufactured controversy, the "Jeremiah Wright flap." I didn't learn till I watched the full sermons a week ago that Fox News's sensationalized sound bites were taken so badly out of context (the "chickens come home to roost" thing, for instance, was Wright quoting a white ambassador). Do you think the media will suffer a further backlash among voters for such wholly dishonest and unprofessional reporting? Has "old media" dug another shovelful of its grave with this, in favor of people getting their news from blogs?

Howard Kurtz: No. Because the controversy over Reverend Wright's surveys are real, not something whipped up by the media (although the availability of the video did boost the story into the stratosphere). Even if certain remarks were taken out of context, there were many (the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus to kill African-Americans) that were not. Obama recognized the importance of the issue by giving his speech on race (which of course amplified the coverage further), and said on "The View" late last week that he would have left the church if Wright was still the pastor and had not apologized for his offensive words. Obama implied that Wright had apologized, but I have found no news account which says that.

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Washington: What do you think about the level of coverage given to the Iraqi casualty numbers? Sure 4,000 dead American soldiers is tragic, and I'd expect major coverage, but isn't 500,000 dead Iraqis significantly more tragic? Thanks.

Howard Kurtz: I thought the coverage was important but arbitrary, pegged to a specific figure. I don't know what the accurate figure is for Iraqis, but it's hardly surprising that American deaths would get far more attention in the American media.

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Long Island, N.Y.: Howie -- on the mortgage "crisis," the press is covering John McCain as unsympathetic and out of touch, while Hillary and Obama care about homeowners. Yet every poll I have seen sides with McCain's hands-off approach. A bailout for inverted homeowners is less popular than the Iraq War. Why the disparity in reporting?

Howard Kurtz: I have not seen such polls but the wording is key. It's certainly true that Clinton and Obama are offering aid to homeowners facing foreclosure while McCain is not, but the important thing is the fine print: how you go about determining who is worthy of federal assistance and who was irresponsible and bought houses they couldn't afford with risky loans.

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Washington: Howard, a question: Has there been enough reporting on McCain's congressional record? I ask this because he is often called a "maverick" or "moderate" and "distinguished," etc. Outside of campaign reform, I never hear what he's accomplished. He was chair of the Commerce Committee, I think, but did he do anything -- hold hearings, etc. -- that anticipated the current economic debacle and urge a different tack? He was in the majority leader of the Armed Services committee ... did he hold hearings (like Truman) on military waste and abuse, torture, etc.? I know he spoke out, but what has he really done in the Senate in all these years? Am I just missing the stories, or are the stories missing?

Howard Kurtz: You are missing the stories, which is not to say there shouldn't be more of them. McCain, for example, led hearings that helped expose a corrupt Boeing tanker deal and the influence of Jack Abramoff. He's had a major impact on telecommunications policy. He was a leader on immigration reform (and got his head handed to him). There have been a spate of stories recently about his relationship with favor-seeking lobbyists. The Post has a Page 1 story today about how he clashed with Obama on an ethics reform bill. So the media are starting to bring McCain's record into sharper focus.

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Washington: What's with the need to describe Bush's reception at last night's Nationals game as "cheers mixed with boos"? Every report about the game uses some form of this same line, and yet anyone who was there can tell you that the boos far far outweighed the cheers. Is that technically a "mix"? Sure, but it just seems odd that reporters can't just call it like it is.

Howard Kurtz: I wasn't there so I have no first-hand information. On television it sounded like a mixture.

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Nokesville, Va.: Were you struck with how sharp Sally Quinn was in disparaging the press for being soft on Chelsea Clinton? On CBS, Harry Smith even suggested they weren't exactly watchdogs. Didn't the press realize how lame it was for Chelsea to insist the entire sprawling Lewinsky mess was somehow a private matter, not a public issue? What real journalist would accept that piece of intimidation?

washingtonpost.com: Channel '08: Is It Fair to Ask Chelsea Clinton About Lewinsky? (washingtonpost.com, March 26)

Howard Kurtz: Whether Chelsea Clinton's explanation was lame or not is a matter of opinion, but it certainly was widely reported and I've now seen it on TV 100 times or so (including on my show). As a 28-year-old hedge fund executive taking a leading role in her mother's campaign, Chelsea is certainly fair game for media scrutiny. But since she's followed a policy of not granting interviews -- which is her right, by the way, even though it's frustrating for the press -- she has made it impossible for us to press her about anything, except to report what comes up in public forums.

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Rockville, Md.: Can you tell me what Gloria Steinem meant when she wrote that "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life..." if she didn't mean more restricting than race? Her letter in Saturday's Post was most unconvincing.

washingtonpost.com: Either Democrat Is Worthy (Post, March 29)

Howard Kurtz: My many talents don't include interpreting Gloria Steinem for the public, but the gist of her letter seems to be objecting to a Post account that she says suggested she was urging black women to consider gender over race and vote for Hillary over Obama. Steinem says she has never made such a case.

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Re: Booing Bush: It sounds like a mixture on TV because all the news coverage shows Bush actually throwing the first pitch (which received quite a few cheers) rather than his introduction, which overwhelmingly received boos.

Howard Kurtz: Thanks for clarifying that. The president did get to chat about baseball later on in the booth with the ESPN anchors.

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Phrase other than "to spend more time with my family":"To explore other opportunities" is also popular.

Howard Kurtz: To devote my energies to the private sector.

To avoid being a distraction.

On the advice of my lawyers.

In a pathetic attempt to stay out of jail.

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Washington: Re: Hillary's Bosnia trip, your response to the Bosnia poster reminded me of the journalists who were fished the story on Valerie Plame. What's your take on this? When should a reporter who knows by personal experience that a politician is lying or, say, being "not candid," speak up and report? All the reporters with Clinton in Bosnia were quiet (maybe because they too were regaling you and their colleagues with how dangerous there job was?), and we know all the reporters who reported with a straight face that that the White House said it had nothing to do with Plame -- while in fact they themselves had been contacted by White House staff with the info. What's the proper role?

Howard Kurtz: You're conflating two different matters here. The reporters who accompanied Hillary Clinton to Bosnia were covering a public trip and there was absolutely nothing to bar them from saying, "No, I was there and that's not what happened." The handful of reporters who had confidential dealings with administration officials over Valerie Plame had given their word not to reveal their sources, and it was their colleagues -- who did not know what was or wasn't said in these off-the-record conversations -- who reported on the political controversy and subsequent prosecution. We have debated endlessly whether the reporters should have made such an agreement, or violated their word, but it's hardly in the same category as being on a trip with a first lady.

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Annapolis, Md.: Howard, how much responsibility do reporters have to educate, as well as report? For instance, with the mortgage crisis, there have been stories about the positions of the presidential candidates on homeowner bailouts, and little sanctimonious quotes from random individuals about not supporting bailouts for irresponsible people. However, should the reporters point out that allowing the many irresponsible people to lose their homes directly would affect everyone else? If all my neighbors lose their homes because they took risks, I am worse off because my neighborhood suddenly is flooded with foreclosed homes, and the value of my own home plummets. Sometimes it isn't as simple as a news story would like us to believe.

Howard Kurtz: I agree that the story is complicated and that journalists need to dig deep and convey the complexity. The ripple effect of hundreds of thousands of individual foreclosures has to be considered, but so too does setting a precedent by bailing out masses of people who made risky bets on the market by buying houses they couldn't afford. The ripple effect was certainly a key factor in the Fed's unprecedented decision to bail out Bear Stearns by in effect underwriting its sale; this protected an investment bank from the consequences of its bad decisions, but also protected all the ordinary people who have money with Bear.

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Mortgages again: Howard, it's all fine to segregate people in foreclosure into "hard-luck" and "irresponsible." The problem is that there was a no-kidding mortgage loan scam going on for the major part of this adventure, so my guess is that people who were suckered into things considerably are going to outnumber people with no judgment, and then how do you classify that? How would the aid being suggested deal with that? How do you draw those lines?

Howard Kurtz: I don't know what the basis is for your sweeping statement about mortgage scams. Certainly there was some fraud, and certainly some people were enticed into risky loans by greedy lenders. But many people who bought expensive houses they couldn't afford with no-money-down loans and adjustable-rate mortgages had to know they were taking a big risk; they simply gambled that the market would keep going up. Should my tax dollars, and yours, be used to bail all of them out?

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Rochester, N.Y.: Journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote that: "Maybe 'Iran is training al-Qaeda' is a 'last throes'-type statement, McCain's way of signaling that he intends to pick up where Bush and Cheney left off in discarding the whole reality-based approach to policy-making. You plant dubious associations in the public mind, and then don't care if you get called out on them because an image is left on the retina, so to speak. By demonstrating to the press that you can say false things, refuse to correct them, and pay no big price for it, you dishearten reporters and make their efforts appear futile to themselves." Do you think that's accurate -- that the Bush administration succeeded in disheartening reporters by making false statements and refusing to correct them? What should the press do about this sort of thing?

Howard Kurtz: I don't know if that's what McCain intended. I do know that McCain made the assertion at least once before, so it wasn't a mere slip of the tongue. That raises the question of whether he was trying to get dubious information out there, or didn't know what he was talking about.

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Rhode Island: With all due respect to Sen. McCain's military service and years as a POW, is there a danger that he trots this out a bit too often? Nobody doubts his patriotism, but it seems in every news snippet I see, he's managing to work in a reference to his Vietnam-era service in a pseudo-humble way (along the lines of "we need to stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances -- I know a little something about that").

Howard Kurtz: Unlike in 2000, he's now used it in some of his TV advertising, and obviously it comes up again in his biography tour this week. It doesn't hurt McCain to remind people of his military service or his 5-1/2-year captivity in Hanoi, but as John Kerry learned four years ago, past heroism in a war does not necessarily help you get elected. Voters ultimately will make a judgment on what McCain can do over the next four years as opposed to what he did in Vietnam.

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Houston: Re: Boos, I really wish that had not happened last night -- it really was not necessary to boo the President. From the TV, the boos certainly stood out. I was very proud of my two children, 17 and 19 years old; neither are fans of the president, but they immediately said that the booing was wrong.

Howard Kurtz: At the same time, it's an old tradition when politicians show up at ballparks.

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Mortgage crisis: Thursday, March 27, 2008: 53 percent of Americans say that the federal government should not help out homeowners who borrowed more than they could afford. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 29 percent disagreed and believed that federal action is appropriate. Seventeen percent (17 percent) are not sure. There is even stronger opposition to federal help for banks that made bad loans. By a four-to-one margin (61 percent to 15 percent) Americans reject that approach to resolving the current mortgage crisis.

Howard Kurtz: That sounds right. But look at the wording: "help out homeowners who borrowed more than they could afford." Who wants to do that? (I'm surprised 29 percent said yes.) If the poll had said, "help out borrowers who because of an unexpected crisis are in danger of being evicted from their homes," the numbers would have been different.

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Falls Church, Va.: Howie you just said "the ripple effect was certainly a key factor in the Fed's unprecedented decision to bail out Bear Stearns by in effect underwriting its sale; this protected an investment bank from the consequences of its bad decisions, but also protected all the ordinary people who have money with Bear."

Are there really ordinary people with money in Bear Stearns? How much of their clientele has a household income of less than, say, $120,000 a year? For the record, I am fine with that bailout, so long as the same amount of money can be used to help individuals who also took a risk and now are in trouble -- just like Bear Stearns.

Howard Kurtz: I don't know that you have to be rich to invest in Bear Stearns. It's not a hedge fund.

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Rockville, Md.: About all those politicians leaving under a cloud to spend more time with their families ... it would be great to follow up a year later and see who's really driving the van to soccer practice and who's eating steaks on K Street. It's funny how no one cares about quality family time when their careers are going well.

Howard Kurtz: One test is whether they go back where they came from or stay in town and become Washington lobbyists.

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Raleigh, N.C.: Good afternoon! You often get questions with the following construct: "Why isn't the media paying more attention to X? I think it's bias." Usually, you respond by wondering where the questioner found out about the issue. Nine times out of 10, it's something I've heard of. Anyway, I wonder if the real complaint might be that the cable news networks' shows, like "Hannity and Colmes," "Hardball" or "Anderson Cooper 360" aren't talking about it, and because most of your chatters are news junkies, they watch those low-rated shows, and they have a skewed view of what's "in the media." Thoughts?

Howard Kurtz: That's possible. Sometimes they're right and an issue has gotten very little coverage. But I'm struck by how often someone says XYZ is being ignored and there were three stories about it in The Post over the last week, including one on the front page. It makes me wonder what kind of media consumers they are. Even within the cable TV universe, shows like O'Reilly/Olbermann/Larry King present a different slice of the universe than the news coverage during the day. And the network newscasts and major newspapers tend to be more substantive.

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Boston: In 1959 my Dad was arrested while on his honeymoon. He was a newspaperman who had written some critical pieces on Fidel. He went to a jail, and my mother's father -- who was Fidel's law professor and a Cuban Supreme Court magistrate -- had him released. Every detail in that story is true, but the story as a whole has holes in it, because it happened 50 years ago to my dad, not me (I wasn't born). This is a long way of saying: what the heck was that inane story about Barack Obama's deceased father and the Kennedy family doing on my front page yesterday? As kids, we sorta know the story, but my dad won't talk about his trauma, and Barack's dad is dead. So he got details wrong ... what a waste of valuable space!

washingtonpost.com: Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father (Post, March 30)

Howard Kurtz: I wouldn't describe it as inane. Shouldn't all the presidential candidates be held accountable for their misstatements, not just Hillary? In Obama's case, it follows his story that his parents decided to get married and have a baby (him) because of the civil rights march on Selma--except that the demonstrations happened in 1965 and he was born in 1961. People are free to decide that these details are important or totally irrelevant, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't report them.

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San Francisco: Re: Boos and Houston's comments, that crowd at the baseball game was probably the first time in a very long time that Bush was in front of an audience that was not made up of only hand-screened and selected loyal supporters. I really wish the media would call attention to this ongoing stagecraft and how cowardly it really is. The man deserves to be booed -- the bubble needs to be broken somehow.

Howard Kurtz: You wouldn't have strong feelings about the president, would you?

You know, whether presidents put themselves in front of unscreened crowds or not, we in the media get to cheer or boo every day -- one of the undisputed benefits of a free press.

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Minneapolis:"The fact that Clinton repeated the sniper story several times strongly suggests it was more than a slip of the tongue brought on by fatigue." Why didn't we hear "the fact that McCain repeated the Iran-al-Qaeda story several times strongly suggests it was more than a slip of the tongue brought on by fatigue" last week?

Howard Kurtz: Some people pointed it out. I pointed it out on my show. But the whole dispute was overshadowed by the Democratic race. The downside for McCain is that he's getting far less coverage, but the upside is that his mistakes are drawing less media scrutiny.

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Cleveland: Howard: What's your opinion on the impact the cable shows have on the pressure to get Hillary to drop out of the race? I'd be willing to bet that if the media people stopped calling for her to drop out of the race, there would be virtually no discussion of cutting short the primary season, and people would just report on the news of the day instead of trying to create the news.

Howard Kurtz: Let's see -- I woke up this morning to an MSNBC banner, "Hillary: Should She Stay or Should She Go?" Cable TV has been driving this conversation, but it got a big boost from that Politico article that said the race is over and journalists are just pretending Hillary has a chance. Network news has been on the case as well. Saturday's Washington Post front page: "Clinton Resists Calls to Drop Out." Sunday's Washington Post front page: "Clinton Pledges to Take Campaign All the Way to the Convention." Still, I agree that the loudest drumbeat is coming from cable.

Thanks for the chat, folks.

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