You really could see this coming: in May, Howard Kurtz and The Daily Beast parted company after Kurtz made a major error in a story and apparently raised eyebrows at The Daily Beast for an outside writing project that was taking up chunks of his time. This sparked some speculation about whether CNN and Kurtz would end their relationship once his contract had run out. The answer: yes — and Kurtz is now off to Fox News:
Longtime media reporter Howard Kurtz and CNN parted company as Kurtz and CNN confirmed the end of his 15-year run hosting CNN’s Reliable Sources program. Kurtz will become a contributor to Fox News.
Kurtz has worked for many years as a media reporter and media critic. He spent 29 years at The Washington Post, the majority of those years working as the Post’s media reporter. After leaving the Post in 2010, Kurtz became the Washington Bureau Chief for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, managing the Washington staff and writing on politics and media.
His tenure at the Daily Beast ended earlier this year after Kurtz mistakenly accused Jason Collins, an NBA player who publicly announced he is gay, of failing to disclose that he had once been engaged to a woman. Collins had, in fact, noted his engagement in a story he wrote for Sports Illustrated. Kurtz stated at the time that his departure from the Daily Beast was already in the works.
It’s clear that fairly or not, Kurtz hosting “Reliable Sources” wasn’t as pristine in terms as high concept that it had been before he made the reporting error and issued a first correction that had an almost begrudging tone (when he left The Daily Beast he made a better correction and apology). So from the standpoint of CNN, this protects the “Reliable Sources” brand.
But Fox News will now benefit as well: Kurtz is an excellent reporter, will be a countervailing viewpoint in some instances on Fox News. Hire back the demonizing, sound bite machine named Sarah Palin and in the same week hire Howard Kurtz? Not bad from Fox News’ standpoint.
And Kurtz? He’ll have a broadcast platform, although his stature will not be the same as it was before he made the errors. Leaving The Daily Beast and CNN within a month to go to Fox News isn’t really a step up.
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.