Charles Kaiser on Howard Kurtz's conflicting interests (and the CNN pundit's love affair with the right)

Howard Kurtz is the self-styled prince of American media reporters, a writing, blogging, book-writing machine who has covered the press for the Washington Post since 1990, and pontificated about it for CNN—as host of Reliable Sources—since 1998.

Last week was typical for Kurtz: nine articles in the Post, including a big profile of Chris Matthews, three blogs, and one online discussion, all capped off with his Sunday show on CNN. This never-ending blizzard of activity has sometimes obscured the basic fact about Kurtz's career: His dual roles as salaried press critic for the Post and salaried host on CNN put Howie at the heart of the most blatant and longest-lasting conflict of interests I know of in big-time, mainstream journalism.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, when I was the press critic for Newsweek, the rules about this sort of thing were simple: If you were a full-time staff critic of the media, you were not allowed to be paid by any of the people you were writing about. Detroit correspondents couldn't moonlight for General Motors, and I couldn't freelance for the New York Times. So, for example, the nonfiction-in-brief column I had been writing for the Times Book Review ended as soon as Newsweek hired me.

There was a time when even Kurtz realized that accepting salaried employment from another media conglomerate was inappropriate for the press reporter of the Washington Post. Back in 1998—just before he became the host of CNN's Reliable Sources—Kurtz moonlighted (once) for ABC's
Nightline, to do a profile of Matt Drudge. When veteran journalist Doug Ireland called Kurtz to challenge him about this apparent conflict—working for ABC when he also had to write about the network—Kurtz conceded it was a "legitimate question."

"In his defense," Ireland wrote, "Kurtz told me that his Nightline gig had been approved by Post managing editor Robert Kaiser and that, since it was 'not a continuing relationship' with ABC but a 'one-time assignment,' conflict of interest was 'not a problem.'"

That seems fairly reasonable (full disclosure: Robert Kaiser is also my brother), but later that same year the Post approved exactly the kind of continuing relationship that Kurtz had told Ireland should have been out of bounds—when Kurtz became the host of Reliable Sources.

Of course, Kurtz was not only being paid by CNN—he was being paid by CNN's parent, Time Warner, which also publishes Time, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated, among many other magazines, all of which are also part of Kurtz's beat.

Over the years, Post executive editor Len Downie has offered a variety of flimsy excuses for this odd arrangement. When Kurtz first embarked on his dual employment, the Post's defense was "transparency"—whenever Kurtz wrote about CNN, his editors promised, a tagline would identify him as the host of Reliable Sources. But then Mickey Kaus did a Nexis search of Kurtz's stories and quickly turned up five examples of Kurtz's articles about CNN under which no such disclaimer appeared. And no warning ever appears when Kurtz writes about any other Time Warner properties.

A few years later, Downie explained to Washingtonian magazine that since Kurtz already had a conflict of interest, because his beat included writing about his own newspaper, there was no reason not to expand that conflict exponentially by making it include the whole Time Warner empire. "You're going to have to cover someone who pays you," Downie explained. "Howie has demonstrated in the way that he covers this newspaper that he has no conflict covering an employer. ... When we agreed to let him go work for CNN, I expected that he'd be able to treat that employer as a reporter in the same way that he treats the Washington Post—and he has."

This, of course, is ridiculous. After William Serrin, the former head of New York University's journalism department, told the Los Angeles Times that Kurtz's competing loyalties were "dangerous" and "outrageous," Kurtz tried to demonstrate his objectivity by pointing to an article he had just written about "dumb comments" that had been made by CNN founder Ted Turner.

The trouble with that was that Turner had been detached from CNN for years, and he had long since become one of its fiercest critics. As Eric Alterman pointed out, "It's hard to imagine that anything would please the current [CNN] brass more than beating up on Crazy Old Ted."

Last week I asked who paid Kurtz the most: the Post or CNN? Downie told me he "didn't discuss people's compensation," and Howie replied, "I'm well compensated at both places." I also asked Downie if it was okay for Kurtz to be paid by one of the companies he wrote about—as long as his connection with CNN was well known, why couldn't the Post's Detroit correspondent freelance for General Motors on the same basis?

"In most cases, we only allow freelance work for other media entities (and, in some cases, academic institutions)," Downie said. "So no one here could work for GM."

The most important discretion a reporter has is not the slant he may try to put on a particular story; it's his ability to choose what to write about and what to ignore. Recently, Kurtz's solution to his dual-loyalty problem has been to ignore one of his employers almost completely. According to Nexis and the Washington Post's own website, during the past 12 months, the one subject the media reporter for the Post has almost never written about is ... CNN.

This sort of benign neglect couldn't come at a better time for CNN, since many of Kurtz's own colleagues believe the news network has gotten so tabloidy and superficial that it's no longer worth watching at all. Or, in the words of one senior Washington Post editor, "The people running CNN today aren't fit to clean your shoes."

All of this might be forgivable—or at least understandable—if Kurtz did a great job of covering the rest of his beat. But while he may well be the most energetic reporter in Washington, he also has unbelievably bad judgment.

The latter quality was on full display last week in the 2,800-word love letter Kurtz wrote to MSNBC host Chris Matthews, just in time for Valentine's Day, on the front page of the Post's Style section. Among the gems of Kurtzian analysis:

• "Matthews is the childlike genius with an uncanny command of political arcana who is sometimes oblivious to his own erratic behavior. In a world of scripted anchors, he fuses passionate punditry with a self-absorption so intense he likes being mocked on Saturday Night Live. Love him or hate him, it's hard to avert your eyes."

• "He enjoys the towel-snapping banter of the locker room, praising women's looks on camera and off. For that matter, he also jokes about people's ethnicity, saying that the Irish hold grudges and teasing pals about being Jewish."

• "His mind wanders the cultural landscape, often leaving guests speechless, as he compares Obama to Lawrence of Arabia one day and Mozart the next."

• "In the end, Matthews wants to keep swinging away with his racket, aiming for that chalk line."

This is typical of Kurtz's warm embrace of fellow members of the permanent Washington press club. But as Eric Alterman documented in his fine book What Liberal Media?, there is another love that Kurtz dares to speak all the time.

Kurtz recently described himself to Media Matters as a "down-the-middle reporter who doesn't consider ideology," even though his second wife is a Republican campaign consultant. But careful students of the Kurtz oeuvre know how often, and how easily, he falls hopelessly in love with Washington conservatives—especially if they happen to be youngish, boyish, or good-looking.

Here are some of Alterman's examples of Kurtz's serial love affairs:

• "Ari Fleischer Likes to Serve Up His Spin With a Smile" was the headline on Kurtz's profile of Bush's first press secretary in the White House. Fleischer was loathed by the presidential press corps, and began his tenure by wildly exaggerating the vandalism supposedly committed by departing Clinton staffers. But Kurtz opined that he had "nearly played error-free ball as Bush's spokesman," and the reporter marveled that Fleischer was "a star accustomed to the pressure-cooker life of White House flackery."

• Rich Lowry of the National Review "oozes niceness" and boasts an "aw-shucks charm and boyish grin" while offering a "sting [that] is usually softened by a soothing wit."

• "Right Face, Right Time: Conservative Bill Kristol Carves a Niche for Himself as the Friendly Contrarian." Part of Kurtz's evidence for that "contrarian" nature: Kristol was "that rarity in Manhattan, a Mets fan." That enraged Alterman so much that he pointed out that in 1970 (when he and Kristol were both growing up in New York), the "Mets outdrew the Yankees in home attendance by nearly 250 percent ...The Yankees, beginning in 1965, were a lousy team with no personality, while the Mets were the city's beloved bums who rose to greatness in one of the most inspiring sports stories of the century [after they won the World Series in 1969]. ...There was nothing remotely contrarian ever about being a Mets fan, save for Kurtz's desire to paint Kristol as a hero on such flimsy ground."

• Tucker Carlson "exudes an unmistakable sense of California cool ... He is by all accounts devoted to his wife ... He goes to church every Sunday."

• Sean Hannity: "What's the 40-year-old conservative talker's secret? Hannity says he's still the same blue-collar guy who grew up as the son of a Long Island probation officer, delivered newspapers at age eight, later tended bar and flipped hamburgers, dropped out of college and became a building contractor and father of four children." Alterman suggested this possible alternative to that sentence: "Hannity says he has become a total jerk, whose millionaire lifestyle has allowed him to live a life of endless champagne, caviar, and call girls."

Finally, there is Kurtz's purest love of all, for the incomparable Andrew Sullivan, whom Kurtz has managed to quote more than 75 times in 10 years.

That's because Sullivan is "a pugnacious writer with a superhero's capacity for multiple identities ... a brainy Brit immersed in lowbrow American culture ... a caustic conservative in the liberal magazine universe. ... [Possessing] a college debater's tenacity and a showman's flair, the Adams-Morgan resident has a grand old time surprising and infuriating his friends, his enemies, and for added spice, his employers."

On the other hand, after David Brock turned his back on the conservative movement, this is how Kurtz started his profile of him: "David Brock is a liar. And a character assassin. And a turncoat. And a partisan hatchet man. And a lonely, tortured soul. And a practitioner of malicious journalism. And a bizarre guy. That, at least, is how he describes himself."

Alterman's bottom line: "...Howard Kurtz loves conservatives but has little time for liberals ... Given the power and influence of his position, [this is] not unlike having the police chief in the hands of one faction of the mob."

Over at Media Matters last December, Eric Boehlert reached exactly the same conclusion: Kurtz "remains chronically oblivious to breaking stories that have a strong progressive media angle" while simultaneously displaying "a chronic overeagerness to amplify any minor media story being advanced by conservatives."

There are two lessons from Kurtz's career. First of all, there is never any penalty for a Washington reporter who relentlessly sucks up to the right. Secondly, his extraordinary productivity is vastly more important to his editors than his blatant conflicts of interest—and his dreadful judgement.

The Kurtz brand has gotten so large that he's routinely allowed to violate some of journalism's most basic principles—and his superiors don't even seem to notice anymore.

	Meet the Press (NBC–Russert)	Face the Nation (CBS–Schieffer)	This Week (ABC–Stephanopoulos)
White Men	7	5	16
White Women	3	1	2
Black Men	1	1	2
Black Women	0	0	0
Gay People	0	0	0
Beagles	0	1	0

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. He has also written for Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, New York, The Washington Post, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, Details, Interview, The Advocate, Vogue, and Salon. He has taught journalism at Columbia and Princeton. To find out more, visit charleskaiser.com.
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