Well, I gave in and just used the headline from the actual piece linked here, since it is both so obvious and apt: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/howard-kurtz-daily-beast-90881.html
Howard Kurtz's relationship with the Daily Beast ended Thursday (not quite a firing, but one senses it was a bit more than the mutually agreed upon decision to split up in Kurtz' version), and CNN announced that his "Reliable Sources" is under review. The instant offense appears to be his report that Jason Collins had not revealed that he had been engaged when he came out as the first active athlete in a male professional team sport this week (even though Collins did reveal this, both in this original Sports Illustrated piece and in his ABC interview), and the associated and (to me at least) odd and inexplicable obsession that Kurtz seemed to have with what seemed to be his suspicion that Collins was not *really* gay. It seemed almost as if Kurtz was implying that Collins was falsely identifying himself as gay because he thought it would improve his chances of getting signed by a new NBA team next season. But several sources have reported that it was more than just this one incident - Kurtz has over the years increasingly been seen both as something of a joke (well, I guess that is my summary, perhaps more objectively it could be stated that he is no longer widely assumed to be an authoritative media reporter and critic). And probably more to the point, he has been spread very thin, as more of his energy has been devoted to a third project - “The Daily Download”, which has interfered with the attention he gives both The Beast and "Unreliable Sources". As many commentators have noted, it is unclear why Kurtz is even doing that, as it seems redundant with his other two gigs, rather than complimentary. My real interest in this story is that it illustrates a case of the media world basically getting something right (which is rare enough) - especially when contrasted with a similar case this week, that of ESPN's Chris Broussard. Broussard had made much more negative and (IMO) hateful and offensive comments this week, which led to many to call for his termination. While ESPN did issue a clarification of its own support for Collins, it did not fire or suspend Broussard - nor should it have. He is entitled to his opinion, however wrong headed and mean spirited it might be. He did not inject it into his ordinary coverage of the NBA for ESPN, but instead honestly responded to a question put to him during what was clearly an opinion section of Outside the Lines. He did not use any violent or inappropriate terms for gay men, nor did he say that Collins should not be allowed to play in the NBA. He just repeated typical fundamentalist homophobia. Kurtz on the other hand, made comments that were much more ambiguous and less directly negative or offensive, but he A) injected it into his coverage of the story and B) allowed it to bias his work, leading in one or two cases to clearly inaccurate reporting. This is just the kind of thing journalists should be fired for - and again, in Kurtz's case it is not this once incident, he has been in a long and prolonged slide to lazy and shoddy journalism for some time now (as documented in the linked article). As Josh Barro of Bloomberg put it (cited in the Politico piece: “Between Dick Morris and Howard Kurtz, we’re seeing a dangerous trend where commentators lose their jobs for being bad at them.” -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
