Calling it "something of a breakthrough" that, at his most recent press conference, Barack Obama took a question from Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, Steve Benen (Political Animal, 1/10/09) explains that Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz isn't quite correct in saying "Obama made a bit of history by calling on the first blogger at such a session": "In January 2005, then-President Bush called on right-wing blogger Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, who asked for the president's thoughts on Democrats who are 'divorced from reality.'" So, more accurately, Stein is just "the first credible and legitimate blogger to be called on at a White House press conference."

Indeed, the differences are important. When the conservative Gannon/Guckert got to ask the president a question, he threw a rather pathetic softball, intended to help the president look good. When the Huffington Post's Stein stood up last night, he asked an excellent question that the president didn't want to answer, on an issue most news outlets prefer to ignore: "Today, Senator Patrick Leahy announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that before you turn the page, you have to read the page first. Do you agree with such a proposal? And are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?"

See how truly pathetic traditional media looked by comparison when, given his own opportunity, "the Washington Post's reporter asked, 'What's your reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?'"

On Monday (1/19/09), Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz took a look at the health of Time and Newsweek, and almost immediately rendered a political judgment:

The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal. They are pursuing a more elite audience, in print and on the Web, abandoning the old Henry Luce notion of catering to the masses. It is nothing less than a survival strategy.

Hmm. Maybe those magazine editors are "loath to admit" they publish liberal magazines because, well, they don't? Kurtz sure doesn't offer much evidence to that effect. Here is how he makes his case:

One answer is to jettison the old straddle-the-center formula in which the newsweeklies spoke with an institutional voice rather than publish bylines. Each magazine's lead columnist -- Time's Joe Klein, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter -- is liberal. Newsweek has been running columns by Jacob Weisberg, the liberal editor of Slate, another Post Co. property. Newsweek also ran a controversial cover last month headlined "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage" -- "one of the last great civil rights issues," Meacham says. And its top writers appear regularly on liberal talkshows on MSNBC, with which it has a news partnership.

Time's Joe Klein is not what one would consider a liberal. Alter might be, though he's clearly of the torture-approving, bash-the-teachers-unions, move-the-Democrats-to-the-right model. Newsweek also publishes regular pieces from the likes of Fareed Zakaria, George Will and Robert Samuelson--none of whom could be called liberal.

Kurtz played up the recent pro-gay marriage cover story, but later recalled that the magazine also turned in cover stories about Obama's supposed elitism and the (misguided) notion that the United States remained a center-right nation even after Obama's victory. Kurtz could have also mentioned the magazine's recent attempt to rehabilitate Dick Cheney and torture.

About Time, Kurtz wrote:

Time ran a column last week by liberal academic Jeffrey Sachs titled "The Case for Bigger Government." This week's issue features Obama, Time's Person of the Year, yet again, and the cover headline "Great Expectations," plus a piece on his wife as "America's Next Top Model."

Wait--Time put Obama on its cover? This week? Well, that is curious news judgment.

Kurtz adds:

Stengel's ideal staffer is Mark Halperin, whom he hired from ABC. Halperin created the political tip sheet the Page for Time.com and the magazine, and often appears on television. Both newsweeklies now realize they are competing on the Web as much as on the newsstand.

Halperin is well-known for attacking supposed liberal bias in the media, denounced the supposed pro-Obama media bias as "disgusting,"  and even advocated getting liberals out of newsrooms. This guy is the "ideal staffer" at a magazine Kurtz sees as moving left? Please explain.

One of the facets of the Gaza crisis not getting enough media attention is the fact that Israel has barred reporters from entering the Gaza Strip to report on the war--despite an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that stated that foreign journalists should be allowed into the territory.

It was good, then, to see the issue raised on CNN's media program Reliable Sources on January 5. Not so good, though, were host Howard Kurtz's comments:

And when we do see video of the attacks in Gaza or the aftereffects, much of that video, as my understanding, is supplied by Arab media outlets, so it may be very selective.

Yes, the Arab channels tend to not show the buildings that haven't been destroyed in airstrikes--a clever propaganda trick indeed. Kurtz followed up on that by saying to his guest:

Your point about civilian casualties, Paula Hancocks--I heard interviews yesterday with Palestinian officials on CNN, MSNBC and elsewhere; they were using words like "massacre" and "bloodbath." Obviously, it's in their interest to portray the Israeli incursion in the harshest light. And as you just noted, you have no independent way to check that, or do you have at least limited ways to try to check that?

It's hard to miss the point that Kurtz is trying to make about how media should cover the Gaza conflict: Journalists should be allowed into Gaza to show that Palestinians (and Arab TV stations) are exaggerating the level of suffering.

Washington Post and CNN media critic Howard Kurtz has been sounding the alarm over pro-Obama bias in the media. On his Reliable Sources program on Sunday, he put this question about coverage of Obama's transition to one guest:

Isn't there a bit of a free ride to Obama right now, since he gets to seize the spotlight and talk about his appointees, to talk about his policies, but he can't really be blamed for any of the problems right now?

So Obama's press conferences are being covered--by the, umm, press--AND reporters aren't blaming him for the problems of the current administration? That is bias.

And last week Kurtz added this snappy item to his column, under the heading, "Obama Adulation Watch:"

Associated Press: "Many women recoil at the thought of baring their arms in sleeveless dresses or blouses, but not Michelle Obama--half of the fabulously fit new first couple."

Someone's suggesting that the Obamas are physically fit? When will it all end!?!?

On CNN's Reliable Sources (10/19/08), host Howard Kurtz and Time magazine's Mark Halperin had the following exchange:

KURTZ: Mark Halperin, we learned this morning that Barack Obama in the month of September raised $150 million.... If a Republican had not taken public financing and had raised all that money, and the Democrat was struggling financially, wouldn't we see a lot of stories about one candidate essentially trying to buy the election?

HALPERIN: We would. We'd also see a lot of stories about his going back on his word saying that he would accept the public money and would reach out to Senator McCain to try to work out a deal. So I think this is a case of a clear, unambiguous double standard, and any reporter who doesn't ask themselves, why is that, why would it be different if it's a Republican, I think is doing themselves and our profession and our democracy a disservice.

KURTZ: I think that's an excellent point, and that's the point we're going to end on.

A bigger "disservice" to democracy and journalism would be misrepresenting reality, which Halperin and Kurtz are doing here. McCain is not "struggling financially." He has raised millions of dollars for hybrid "victory" funds that funnel large donations to the RNC and various state parties. Factoring in those donations, it is not at all clear that McCain is significantly behind in the fundraising race. What's more, had Obama accepted public financing, it would seem likely that the GOP would have a major financial advantage.

Even more bizarre is Halperin's contention that if a Republican had raised money the way Obama has, he would be pilloried by the media. The double standard argument makes little sense, because we did see a lot of misleading stories about Obama "going back on his word" when he declined to take public financing, and he was severely criticized by the pundits and editorialists; a "flip-flop of epic proportions," according to PBS liberal Mark Shields, and Washington Post columnist David Broder (6/26/08) wrote that Obama "was rightly criticized for rigging the system in his favor." Such criticisms continue to this day.

As for all the stories we would see about a Republican candidate trying to buy the election: In New York City in 2005, the billionaire Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg outspent his opponent 8-to-1 in order to win re-election.  Did we see a lot of stories about Bloomberg buying the election?  No, we see the city's media moguls pushing to change the election rules so he can do it again.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz wrote in his column today:

McCain is never going to draw the kind of attention for his mortgage bailout plan that he did for telling David Letterman he "screwed up" by canceling an earlier appearance, or that Palin did in appearing with Tina Fey on Saturday night.

Really? I had my intern, Daniel Ward, look up some numbers.  A search on Nexis for "McCain and Letterman and screwed up" turned up one story apiece on the news ABC and NBC, and three stories on CBS--which airs the Letterman show.  Meanwhile, the Washington Post, L.A. Times and USA Today all seem to have covered the "screwed up" story twice, and the New York Times once.  (These figures have all been checked to eliminate false positives, though it's harder to be certain that relevant stories weren't missed.)

How does that compare with coverage of McCain's bailout plan? A search for "McCain and mortgage and $300 billion"--the announced size of his plan--turned up seven stories on ABC and six stories on NBC--so these networks, sensibly enough, seem to have considered the mortgage plan to be substantially more newsworthy than McCain screwing up with Letterman.  (We found only two CBS stories on the mortgage plan, so that network may have considered McCain's appearance on its own late-night show to be of greater import.)

The newspapers likewise seem to have given much more play to the mortgage plan, with nine stories turning up in the Post and L.A. Times, seven in USA Today and six in the New York Times--between 3.5 and 6 times as many stories as were found on the Letterman "screw up."

The comparison to Palin's SNL appearance is a little more mixed--we found only two stories on ABC about Palin and the show after her appearance was announced on October 9, far fewer than that network aired on the mortgage plan, but NBC found the vice presidential candidate's cameo on its comedy program to be worth a startling 15 mentions.  CBS, which didn't do much with the mortgage plan, found time for five stories about Palin on SNL.

The newspapers, though, all printed fewer stories about the Palin cameo, except for  the New York Times, in which we found six on each.  (It's "live from New York," I guess.) With the L.A. Times, we found four Palin-on-SNL stories and three for both the Washington Post and USA Today.

Obviously, you could argue that McCain's proposal to solve the mortgage crisis merited many times more coverage than his Letterman apology or Palin's SNL stunt. But to say that his bailout plan was "is never going to draw the kind of attention" as those fluffier stories is inaccurate--and sloppy.

I've been in the media criticism business long enough to remember when Howard Kurtz had a well-deserved reputation for going the extra distance to check what he printed. What happened to that reporter?

Fed up with "economic reporting [that] relies almost exclusively on experts who managed to overlook both the stock market bubble and the housing bubble," Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker (10/6/08) writes that the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz "still misses some very fundamental points on the media's reporting on the economy":

First, reporters should recognize that people employed by an industry lobby have an ax to grind. They are not neutral observers. (more...)