Is The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz too close to the Inside-the-Beltway mentality? Has Kurtz come to embrace the value system of Powertown--such that he no longer speaks truth to power, as journalists should?
As The Cable Game observed recently--on July 5, to be exact--Kurtz is a good reporter who has a leetle beetof a bad habit of sucking up to his sources. That is, if, say, Joe Scarborough of "MSDNC" gives Kurtz good access, then Kurtz will give Scarborough good ink. It's a fair trade, in Beltway terms, but any transaction that takes care of the K Street Crowd and the Georgetown Set is likely to leave the rest of us out of the loop--and out of luck.
But here, let Ken Silverstein, who pens the "Washington Babylon" blog for Harper's, tell the story himself:
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has faithfully parroted the talking points of the two lobbying firms I embarrassed in this month’s Harper’s, but APCO and Cassidy & Associates have had less luck with other journalists. The story exposed how the firms offered to polish the image of Stalinist Turkmenistan when I approached them, claiming to represent a shady energy firm that allegedly had a stake in that country’s natural gas sector.
The lobby shops attacked my ethics and Kurtz dutifully supported them in the Post and in a commentary last Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources, saying during the latter, “When you use lying and cheating to get a story, even a really juicy story, it raises as many questions about the journalist as his target.” Encouraged by Kurtz’s parroting of the lobbyist line, APCO has been sending out a press statement denouncing me to other journalism experts.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Kurtz can not only blast his enemies in his Post column, he can only clobber them on his CNN show, "Reliable Sources," which critiques the media--except, of course, when it's too busy massaging the interests of lobbyists.
So there you have it. A journalist goes undercover to smoke out creepy sleazy behavior among lobbyists--and "media watchdog" Kurtz sides with the lobbyists!
To repeat: the Post/CNN man takes up the cause of the poor picked-on lobbyists, the Gucci Gulch crowd. So much for the public interest, so much for a vigorous free press. Say hello, instead, to the Beltway-ocracy, may it be in power forever, untroubled by snarky investigators, getting in the way of cozy deals with corrupt and even evil foreign governments. You can be darn sure that Kurtz's attack on Silverstein will scare away some would-be muckrackers, although evidently not Silverstein himself. Go Ken!
Kurtz criticizes the undercover technique. That's a hoot. Remember when "60 Minutes" did this all the time? I don't remember Howard Kurtz complaining when it was the Eye Network taking on some corporate sleazoid--or maybe an alleged corporate sleazoid who was innocent, there were plenty of those, too. And just this past week, NBC's ultra-cool, ultra-brave Middle East reporter, Richard Engel, went undercover in Syria to get footage (tastefully handled, I might add) of under-age hookers in Damascus.
But when lobbyists are caught red-handed, looking like, well, lobbyists, Kurtz rushes to their defense.
As the pundit Michael Kinsley has observed, In DC, the real scandal isn't what's illegal--it's what's legal. And yet you'd never know that from ol' Howie,that good buddy to the Beltway, continuing, as he always does, his remarkable streak of journalistic "good gets."
Of course Kurtz gets the big ones. Because those big enchiladas know that Kurtz will faithfully record their words, all the while covering up blemishes, like a loyal and discreet secretary.
Howard Kurtz, meet Rosemarie Woods.
