Earlier this week, The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz “parted” ways in the wake of his erroneous report about NBA star Jason Collins and a correction that some felt fell short of the mark. Today on his “Reliable Sources” CNN show he formally apologized and definitively retraced the erroneous part of his on CNN, hoping his viewers and readers will give him a second chance:
On Monday, I read the Sports Illustrated article by Jason Collins, the first pro-male team athlete to come out as publicly gay. I read it too fast and carelesly missed that Jason Collins said he was engaged previously to a woman and then wrote and commented that he was wrong to keep that from readers, when I was in fact the one who was wrong. My logic about what happened between Jason Collins and his former fiancee and what was and wasn’t disclosed, in hindsight, well I was wrong to even raise that issue. Also, I didn’t give him a chance to respond to my account before I wrote it and in addition my first correction was not as complete and as full as it should have been. In a video where I discussed the issue, I wrongly jokingly referred to something I shouldn’t have joked about. I apologize to readers and viewers and most importantly to Jason Collins and to his ex-fiancee. I hope this very candid response will earn your trust back over time. It is something that I am committed to doing.
I’m sure Kurtz will, although those who don’t like him ideologically (on the left and right) will never let him forget it because that is the way our politics works. But the totality of his reporting over the years will bolster the credibility damaged by this recent episode. The up-and-coming The Daily Beast was an excellent platform for him and is not easily replaced.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.