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Media
Backtalk
With Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, Oct. 15, 2001; Noon
EDT
Consumers used to get their news from newspapers, magazines and evening broadcasts from the three television networks. Now, with the Internet, cable TV and 24-hour news networks, the news cycle is faster and more constant, with every minute carrying a new deadline. But clearly more news and more news outlets are not necessarily better. And just because the press has the ability to cover a story doesn't always mean they should — or that they'll do it well.
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz has been The Post's
media reporter since 1990. He is also the host of CNN's "Reliable
Sources" and the author of "Media Circus," "Hot Air," "Spin Cycle" and "The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's World of Money, Media and Manipulation." Kurtz talks about the press and the stories of the day in "Media
Backtalk."
The transcript follows
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and
hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Austin, Tex.:
Are many news agencies scared of anthrax cases in their buildings? How is this effecting their coverage?
Howard Kurtz: Every newsroom, including ours, is being really careful: Mail is being screened, everyone is on alert. I've certainly done what Judith Miller of the NYT has recounted doing: opened mail absent-mindedly while talking on the phone or looking at the computer. No more. No one wants to be paranoid, but obviously extra caution is called for.
Alexandria, Va.:
How do you think Brokaw handled himself on the Friday evening newscast? Have you talked to him or other NBC Nightly News staff about how he is taking this apparent attempt on his life?
Howard Kurtz: I thought Brokaw was fine in letting his anger and outrage show. Your longtime assistant gets anthrax opening a letter from some nutjob addressed to you: who wouldn't have strong emotions about that? I don't believe anchormen should be robots. The NBC case brought the severity of the situation home for every journalist in the country.
Alexandria, Va.:
Washington Post correspondent T.R. Reid said on Live Online that perhaps only a few Palestinians had celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks.
Is Reid's suggestion an example of how even reporters can be manipulated by governments that control access to the news?
The Palestinian Authority (PA) seized journalists' videotapes showing thousands of Palestinians, including PA soldiers, celebrating the attacks.
Howard Kurtz: Reid is a smart guy and I'm sure took that into account. But the Palestinian crackdown on videotape of the celebrations, whatever their scope, was absolutely an example of government authorities trying to control the news by controlling the pictures. We've seen the same thing in the last week: The Pentagon releasing those gun-camera videos of bombing exploding to show how well the war is going; the Taliban allowing al-Jazeera TV to film injured children in a hospital to show what the Pentagon calls collateral damages. This is tremendously important in the television age, as the White House recognized by asking the networks to stop airing those Osama bin Laden propaganda videos live.
Ithaca, N.Y.:
I keep waiting for some enterprising reporter to stop worrying about the mail and head off to Manchester, New Hampshire to investigate and write about the anthrax epidemic that killed 3 people in my hometown in September, 1957. It's a fascinating and troubling story, rife with sotto voce vaccine development by the FDA, imported goat hair from Pakistan, etc. Why hasn't the press checked out this past example of government bungling and secrecy?
Howard Kurtz: I was unaware of this episode. I guess the short answer is that journalists are more consumed by what's happening in 2001 than what happened in 1957. It certainly seems like a natural story for the Boston Globe or Concord Monitor or other paper in the area.
Arlington, Va.:
Could we please have a moratorium on stories telling us that the Sun photo editor who died of Anthrax lived under the flight path of an airport where some of the hijackers practiced flying. When it first broke, this was big news, but we've known for over a week now that his exposure was at the office, not at home. It doesn't matter whether he lived under Atta's flight path or in a tent made of diseased cowhide that he picked up at Al's Second Hand Anthrax Depot, that's not where he got sick. Continuing to hammer the airport angle is just inflammatory fearmongering.
Howard Kurtz: Look, we have hordes of worldwide media covering this story. It's inevitable, in such an overheated environment, that some details are going to be repeated again and again. I get sick of some of this myself. But I can't be terribly criticial under the circumstances, as long as the information is correct. Everyone wants a piece of this story.
Arlington:
It was announced today that Brill's Content is shutting down. Is there just not the broad audience for a magazine about the media (beyond CJR and other niche periodicals) or did it collapse under the weight of Brill's ego and management?
Howard Kurtz: I never want to minimize Brill's ego, but his goal may simply have been out of reach. For Brill's Content to succeed, it had to deliver a Vanity Fair-like audience of 500,000 or 600,000, not a Columbia Journalism Review or American Journalism Review audience of one-tenth of that. He spent big bucks on a glossy format, major-league writers, etc. and tried to broaden his mission beyond the inside-baseball concerns of journalists, but in the end it didn't work. The advertising recession probably pushed it over the edge.
Arlington, Va.:
I heard about the goat hair incident on NPR sometime in the past week or so.
Anyway, do you think the recent events with 'snail mail' and the such will prompt people to use their email more? Why are we sending paper letters in the age of our current technology?
Howard Kurtz: For all the glories of email, there are some things -- magazines, reports, legal documents, birthday cards -- that have to go by snail mail. Maybe this spate of incidents will give email an even greater boost (though keep in mind not everyone has a computer or Internet access). Now if we can just weed out those emails carrying deadly computer viruses...
Falls Church, Va.:
Do you think, that in the name of tolerance, the press has played down neutralist or pro-bin Laden sentiment among Muslims in America? There have been scattered reports that many Muslim organizations back terrorists, that some young Muslims have declared that they won't fight for America, that many blame Israel for the attacks, etc. But these have not been widely disseminated. Is the media giving a false picture of Islam in America?
Howard Kurtz: I don't think so. I think the majority of Muslims living here support America, but I don't think the stories I've read have pretended that 100 percent of them share this view. Certainly there's been lots of reporting on Muslims in the Middle East who have strong anti-American views.
New York, N.Y.:
Re: Brokaw
Granted, journalists are human, but is a network newscast a place to express personal emotions? I think most people understand Brokaw's anger and don't begrudge him it. But isn't a rattled network anchor exactly what terrorists want us to see? I'm not suggesting he should be superhuman and not feel or express those emotions. I'm just questioning whether it was necessary for him to do it on a newscast?
Howard Kurtz: I thought Brokaw looked fairly restrained under the circumstances. The situation basically cried out for him to say something.
Orange, Va.:
I don't think I'm a partisan hack -- I actually thought the media was too hard on the President for his conduct during the immediate aftermath of September 11th -- but after reading the "reviews" of Bush's prime time press conference debut Thursday night, I am compelled to ask where can I buy a pair of those red, white, and blue glasses the media used to critique his performance? His comments and movements in the question and answer format are still so herky-jerky, unevenly paced, it's almost painful to watch. He still sounds like the coffeeless, half wake attendee at the morning meeting who's surprised to learn that he has to make a presentation. Yet the media only writes glowing reviews. What gives?
Howard Kurtz: How the president "performed" at a news conference is obviously a subjective judgment. I happen to agree with the majority of journalists who say he looks stronger, steadier and more confident. Bush is no Reagan or Clinton when it comes to being a Great Communicator, and never will be. But the comparisons are mostly with the pre-Sept. 11 Bush. Are journalists cutting him a little more slack in wartime? Probably. But the criticism will undoubtedly resume as the war wears on if the president stumbles.
Arlington, Va.:
Is Headline News deliberately de-emphasizing the personalities of its anchors? You know that there were actually people who tuned in daily just for Lynne Russell. Carol Costello, currently at WJLA7, is going to Headline News soon and I'd hate to have her natural effervesance crammed into a bland mold.
Howard Kurtz: I'm not sure that's right. They certainly made a huge deal of it when they hired former NYPD actress Andrea Thompson as a star anchor for Headline News. But the format tends to be rat-tat-tat and doesn't leave a lot of time for anchor crosstalk.
Houston, Tex.:
How much of your mail is snail mail and how much is email? Do you receive a lot of letters without return addresses? Why even waste your time on people who don't have the guts to identify themselves?
Howard Kurtz: Virtually all my mail has return addresses, though some of it is from people and groups I've never heard of. I'm much more reliant on email these days.
New York, N.Y.:
How do you feel about American journalists referring to American military and diplomatic personnel and efforts in the first person plural ("we," "us" and "ours")?
Howard Kurtz: The same way I feel about sports reporters referring to the Redskins as we.
State of Alarm:
Your take, please, on these examples: On this morning's Today show with Maria Shriver, she interviewed a flight attendant who -- with some embellishment from Maria -- asserted that there are still "gaping holes" in security at airports, and "people are still not safe," etc. We have some sort of daily/hourly update on anthrax -- without tempering it with the fact that there are three or four examples in three widely dispersed states, and ONE death, out of what -- 300 million people? And Sally Quinn espouses buying gas masks. Isn't this just fear-mongering at its worst, and NOT responsible journalism.
Howard Kurtz: I don't believe the media are deliberately fear-mongering, but they are clearly stirring anxiety. The anthrax story has been absolutely nonstop on cable, which I think is not unrelated to the fact that journalists are getting some of the potentially deadly letters. On the other hand, Bush just announced five minutes ago that Tom Daschle's office had received a letter containing anthrax. This particularly scares people because, as I wrote this morning, while most Americans don't expect to be in a skycraper or airplane under attack, everyone gets mail. Finding the right tone to report on unnerving events without frightening people is difficult, and some news outlets have clearly flunked that test.
Madison, Wis.:
I was pleased that Media Notes included a dispatch from Robert Fisk of the British paper "The Independent" (although I don't recall seeing any mention of his name in your exerpt.) I've been reading his work every day since the attacks in New York and Washington, and he brings a degree of insight, clarity, and nuanced understanding of the Middle East that I find sorely lacking in much of the American press. Mr. Fisk treats his readers as informed adults, and avoids the temptation to depict any of the actors in the Middle East as merely "good guys" or "bad guys." It's a refreshing change from the American press, which seems reluctant to print anything that might challenge their readers' assumptions.
Howard Kurtz: I'm trying to spend more time looking at the British press. I didn't include his name because I couldn't find it on the Web version of the story. I'm happy to give him belated credit here.
San Francisco, Calif.:
Why do news organizations put on supposed experts who make baseless assertions, and then let these assertions repeatedly go unchallenged? I'm thinking of the repeated assertion that only a small fraction of people in the middle east disagree with US action in Afghanistan. I think the reality is that only a small fraction is throwing stones, but we are led to believe there are only two groups of people there: those who throw stones and burn flags, and those who agree with US actions. Why don't news stories dig deeper and challenge these simplifications more often?
Howard Kurtz: I think some newspapers have done a pretty good job of digging deeper, interviewing ordinary people in the Middle East, tracing the roots of anti-American sentiment, etc. Newsweek had a fabulous piece on Islam and the failure of moderate Arab governments in last week's issue. But television is heavily dependent on experts. Some, obviously, are more expert than others, or have strong points of view that may or may not be valid. I think most viewers take the comments of these experts with a grain of salt.
Falls Church, Va:
I am getting frustrated with the news channels and stations. I tune in about twice during the morning and afternoon to check in for updates and usually find the "old " news has been reformulated to make it seem like the is "new" news. They still reference "new" outbreaks of anthrax when they are referring to the ones from last week. Maybe it's time to tune in music. Any comment? Thanks
Howard Kurtz: I also get tired of seeing recycled news, especially in those "crawls" that now infest the bottom of the screen. But cable has 24 hours to fill and has to function as a headline service because people tune in at different times and may not have heard the earlier news. Right now the cable networks are all talking about Bush disclosing the anthrax-laden letter sent to Daschle, which is undoubtedly "new" news.
San Francisco, Calif.:
A follow up question: have you seen any published scientific polls of current middle eastern opinion about the war on terrorism? Is anybody doing such polls?
Howard Kurtz: If there are such polls, I haven't seen them. There aren't a zillion polling firms in places like Pakistan as there are in America. Also, I think some of these caves in Afghanistan don't have phones.
New York, N.Y.:
Have American pundits always appraised a president's press conference or speech by how well it was "performed" rather than by whatever information it conveyed? It seems to me that Bush didn't tell us anything we didn't know at his press conference, and so left us only with the question of his style.
Howard Kurtz: Sure. As long ago as the Nixon administration, Spiro Agnew demanded that the networks stop offering "instant analysis" of the president's speeches or news conferences. I don't think news conferences are critiqued solely on style -- if a president screws up an answer substantively, that gets criticized too. Presidents don't call press conferences so much to make news as to reinforce their message and appear in command while fielding reporters' questions.
London, England:
Hi Howard
While renaming the 'evil doer' Spin Laden is quite a funny response, do you think it's really merited? Is telling the world you're going to murder even more people really 'spin' - isn't that just what terrorists do? I'd guess anyone supporting this seriously disturbed individual is going to support him come hell or high explosives or TV broadcasts. Rather than restricing his TV appearances I say let's get more of this deluded little chap with the valium stare and the high pitched voice. Then instead of a load of talking heads analysing the tapes, let's have a great stand up comedian skewer him immediately.
Howard Kurtz: I hadn't heard that particular nickname. And while I agree that the networks ought to look at these propaganda videotapes before throwing them on the air, I do think there is some benefit to letting people see this man's rantings for themselves.
Richmond, Va.:
What stories should not be covered by the press and for what reasons? Should the lack of coverage be voluntary or managed by the state?
Howard Kurtz: Thanks to the First Amendment, the press gets to decide. I don't think any stories should be off limits. Details of stories - especially those that could endanger the lives of U.S. troops - should be off limits. Fortunately, The Post and other news organizations have voluntarily withheld such details, sometimes at the administration's request (as was also the case during the Gulf War). But I wouldn't want to put those decisions in the hands of some sort of government censorship board.
Plano, Tex.:
Most papers seem to have stopped covering almost any real news other than the War on Terrorism. Shouldn't responsible News Agencies make sure there is at least some coverage of other important stories, and that it gets reported before page 20?
Howard Kurtz: The short answer is yes. There are only so many column inches and so much airtime, but it's too bad that other stuff has gotten short shrift. I've noticed, though, that so many other realms of life are deeply affected by the aftermath of Sept. 11, so naturally journalists are covering that. Airlines. Insurance. Charities. Sports. Postal Service. Crop-dusting. Tourism. The economy. The stock market. It's hard to think of a beat that isn't influenced by this crisis, while action has virtually halted on the education bill and other initiatives that are now lesser priorities.
Harrisburg, Pa.:
How on earth do you do what you do?
Ever since Watergate, I've probably been classified a NewsJunkie. I keep news on the radio, scan online papers several times a day, subscribe to Newsweek, and used to read a daily paper when I lived where there was a decent one. At home I flip between msnbc and cnn and watch the NY news at 10. But I do all that by choice, and sometimes just feel like watching 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'
How do you avoid OD-ing on all this stuff?
Howard Kurtz: Every once in awhile I turn it off and read a good novel.
Washington, D.C.:
Speaking of Mid-East polls. Birzeit University in the West Bank just released the results of a poll of West Bank and Gaza residents that shows that only 7 percent feel that the US is justified in attacking Afghanistan, 90 percent feel that US bias toward Israel is one of the main factors leading to ill will toward the US in the Arab World. On the other hand, 64 percent feel the WTC attacks are inconsistent with Islamic Sharia and 48 percent feel that the attacks are against Arab interests.
Howard Kurtz: Only 64 percent? Pretty sobering. Thanks for the info.
Bonita Springs, Fla.:
Why has the media not asked if bin Laden could have left Afghanistan before 9-11-01? What evidence is there that he is still in Afghanistan?
Howard Kurtz: I think there's been little speculation about that because there's no evidence. Indeed, the Taliban, in refusing to turn him over, have said bin Laden remains in the country. But his whereabouts obviously remain elusive.
Richmond, Va.:
Follow-up question:
What about those that reported information that was leaked by a congressman's office, who claims he had permission to do it? Someone is deciding what gets reported, whether it is the government or the press. What makes one better than the other?
Howard Kurtz: Well, there's a little thing called the First Amendment that doesn't allow the government to make that decision.
In the case you're talking about, it was The Post's Bob Woodward and Susan Schmidt who reported that administration had told Congress in a classified briefing that there was a strong probability of further attacks - something the White House later repeated publicly. But The Post held back some other details of that briefing - not at the administration's request, by the way - for national security reasons.
Philadelphia, Pa.:
To what extent do you think the media are responsible for frightening people? I had trouble getting to sleep last night over all this, for the first time in weeks. Speculation about how cyanide gas could be gotten into a building through its ventilation system, Leslie Stahl asking Condoleeza Rice "what about this report that the terrorists have a nuclear bomb?" -- a question that alarmed me, but I couldn't find anything about "this report" on the web, including cbs.com. The Philadelphia Daily News, a tabloid I used to have some respect for, has been running scare headlines every day; other press outlets here are starting to criticize them for it. Your thoughts?
Howard Kurtz: There have been some scare headlines, no question. But how do you report what's essentially scary stuff without causing widespread anxiety? The alternative would be to ignore it or play it down, for which we'd be roundly criticized. Every anthrax story I've seen or read includes the caution by authorities that we don't know whether these attacks are related or are linked to the bin Laden organization. But the growing frequency of the attacks, now including Daschle's office as a target, is clearly unsettling.
San Francisco, Calif.:
Any thoughts on Rush Limbaugh? I don't see how he will be able to go ahead with his show the way it is currently run.
Howard Kurtz: Something tells me Rush will be able to continue his show. For one thing, doctors now say they may be able to save some of his hearing. And I don't know how complete deafness would affect his voice. But he could either have callers' questions transcribed on a computer screen or do the show without callers. Almost no one else on radio could get away with that, but most people tune in to hear Limbaugh.
Virginia:
Has the Post taken precautions regarding anthrax scares? Is there a precedent for this sort of thing (news outlets being targeted en mass)?
Howard Kurtz: We're all being very careful, as you might imagine. If there's a precedent for this sort of thing, I confess I'm not aware of it. The worst mail I've gotten has simply used naughty words.
Thanks for the chat, folks.
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