Until this week the former Washington Post media reporter, CNN “Reliable Sources” host and The Daily Beast’s Washington Bureau Chief Howard Kurtz had an almost pristine reputation, except for people on the left and right who’d blast them if he said something critical to their political sports team (and of course praise him if he criticized the other side) But this wasn’t a good week for Kurtz, who 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. And so, they’ve “parted ways” — which wouldn’t happen if The Daily Beast felt Kurtz was indispensable.
The Politico report needs to be looked at in full here:
The Daily Beast is dropping Howard Kurtz, the veteran media critic who made headlines this week for his erroneous report about NBA star Jason Collins.
“The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company,” Tina Brown, the site’s editor in chief, said in a statement sent to POLITICO.
This is a definite career blemish for Kurtz, who is one of the one-time print media types who made the switch over to TV, and then to cyberspace. His persona has been one of a reporter who calls the media to task in terms of accuracy and ethics.
blockquote>The decision comes after Kurtz published a blog post that falsely asserted that Collins, who announced he was gay in an article for Sports Illustrated, had neglected to mention his previous engagement to a woman. In fact, Collins mentioned that engagement in the article and in a subsequent interview with ABC News. The Daily Beast retracted that post on Thursday morning.
The best of reporters make mistakes (I have long been a huge fan of Kurtz’s writing), but this was a major boo-boo which a)suggested he had not checked his facts OR b)suggested he was over-worked AND c)is not an error you’d expect from someone at the level of journalism that Kurtz is at (the top level). MORE:
But sources at The Daily Beast also tell POLITICO that Kurtz was dropped in part because he had been dedicating much of his time to other ventures, including The Daily Download, a media criticism site. Kurtz also hosts a weekend media criticism show on CNN called “Reliable Sources.”
The Politico carries Brown’s statement which also touts the quality of the other The Daily Beast columnist and has one bit of great news for centrists, moderates and independents: John Avlon, who’s columns we often excerpt here, is now The Daily Beast’s political director.
The Politico also has a Kurtz tweet basically saying they mutually decided to part ways.
But, really, anyone who follows these kinds of stories knows that it just does not happen. There is a trigger that makes it happen — and the trigger was NOT The Daily Beast just deciding to say buh-bye to Kurtz out of the blue.
And there is a bitter irony about the host of “Reliable Sources” leaving after it turned out he wrote something that either had source material that was wrong, or he didn’t check with sources and that he had apparently not totally cleared or filled in his bosses about his high-profile writing on the other site. (FYI even yours truly has not written on or for other sites due to agreements with other sites over the years.)
Still, Kurtz is talented, an infomedia celebrity and he’ll still make the big bucks, get the audience and get the readership on his new site.
The Daily Beast is one of those sites that keeps getting better and better. It’s worth running its entire retraction here:
The Daily Beast has retracted a May 2, 2013, blog post by Howard Kurtz titled “Jason Collins’ Other Secret.” The piece contained several errors, resulting in a misleading characterization of NBA player Collins and the story he co-wrote in Sports Illustrated in which he came out as gay.
In that piece, Collins wrote, “When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue.”
In his original blog post, Kurtz incorrectly stated that Collins “didn’t come clean” about the engagement. In an amended version, Kurtz added that Collins “downplayed” the engagement and “didn’t dwell on it.”
The Daily Beast sincerely regrets Kurtz’s error—and any implication that Collins attempted to hide or obscure the engagement.
In other words: Kurtz’s retraction didn’t completely live up to the journalistic standards the site has.
I need to add this note: over the years I wrote overseas from India and Madrid for papers such as The Chicago Daily News and The Christian Science Monitor. I also worked on the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper and then The San Diego Union. All publications made it clear to everyone that if there was an error they definitively corrected it with no hedges. I remember one instance in Wichita where there was a bit of a hedge in a correction on someone’s story and there was a lawsuit threat.
But, despite what partisans of the left and right might think, major magazines and newspapers (unlike many blogs and websites) have major, longstanding policies to immediately and definitively correct all errors. They correct it, then move on.
In this case, yes, you could say The Daily Beast and Kurtz moved on…
Be sure to read THE WEEK’S take on this development. And Matt Lewis on why people should stop taking shots at Kurtz.
UPDATE: Some other media reaction:
—Little Green Footballs:
This move came after Kurtz posted an embarrassingly slipshod and defamatory piece on NBA player Jason Collins.
On Wednesday, Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone wrote about Kurtz’s relationship with the site Daily Download, where “he increasingly posts his takes on the state of media affairs,” Calderone wrote. Kurtz is on the site’s advisory board.
“I’m a contributor at Daily Download and receive some freelance compensation, but the advisory board is an unpaid honorary position with no oversight,” Kurtz told Calderone. “I work a zillion hours a week” he said when asked about colleagues who questioned his involvement with the other site.
The move comes just a day after Kurtz wrote an embarrassing story based on the idea that NBA player Jason Collins never mentioned that he was previously engaged to a women in his Sports Illustrated article. He did mention it. The corrected article didn’t make much sense without that hook, and was subsequently retracted by The Daily Beast.
A source at CNN tells TVNewser that Kurtz’s current deal with the cable channel will likely be his last. New CNN president Jeff Zucker has made no secret of his desire to rid the channel of long-time contributors that are more closely tied to the channel’s past than its future. It is not clear exactly when his current deal with CNN expires.
Kurtz joined The Daily Beast in October, 2010, after leaving The Washington Post. His tenure at The Daily Beast includes some big interviews with the likes of Roger Ailes and Matt Lauer, but was also filled with controversy. We wrote about a ridiculous item he filed about TV coverage of the primaries, and he emailed a Daily Beast colleague to discourage her from writing about Anderson Cooper’s sexuality. He also was reluctant to give credit when other’s broke stories, and was loathe to correct errors, a number of which were in his big interview with Lauer. Then of course there was always the inherent conflict between his CNN program and his media criticism work, though it sounds like that conflict will not be an issue much longer.
The “Daily Download” video of Kurtz joking about Collins is probably more embarrassing than the Daily Beast column — the phrase “playing both sides of the court” is used — which is likely why it was taken down. You can see it at BuzzFeed or Gawker still.
This is, easily, Kurtz’s worst error since the time he accidentally invented a conversation with a member of Congress. But while that one seemed like a truly weird circumstance, involving a massive misunderstanding, this one seems like the natural result of a lazy hack thoughtlessly weighing in on the news without actually thinking (or reading the article he was weighing in on). (Also does the Daily Beast not have editors anymore? They still have Photoshoppers!)
……..Howard Kurtz is a media reporter, though he is often mistakenly referred to — and hired to act as — a media critic. As a media reporter, he is well-sourced. He is also an experiment in how many potential conflicts of interest one highly successful journalism professional can walk around with without ever having to change a single thing. For years he was supposed to cover the media — including, say, CNN — for the Washington Post, while also hosting a show on CNN. (He was also covering the media — including, say, the Washington Post — for CNN.) His wife is a professional flack who once worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kurtz has interviewed his wife’s clients on his show.
There’s a lot more so read it in full.
TWEETS:
“Howie’s been quite distracted with other ventures… it was interfering with the quality of The Daily Beast.” wapo.st/12t04qb
— Jay Rosen(@jayrosen_nyu) May 2, 2013
AND:
I should add that when the story is told more fully we will probably find other factors involved in Kurtz and Daily Beast parting company.
— Jay Rosen(@jayrosen_nyu) May 2, 2013
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.