MICKEY KAUS comments on my MSNBC Kurtz piece. I agree that the Gallagher and Kurtz cases aren’t the same — my point in mentioning Kurtz, and Kaus’s critique of him, was simply that lots of people in the pundit class have conflicts, and don’t disclose them every time. And, as I said, I don’t share Kaus’s criticisms of Kurtz.
Still, Kaus makes a good point when he observes that Kurtz’s position is somewhat unique, and there may be something to this point:
The issue with Kurtz isn’t whether he discloses his conflict with CNN (he usually does, though not always). The issue is whether even disclosure of the conflict cures his problem, or whether the conflict is so great Kurtz can’t be trusted on his beat even with disclosure. … Clearly, by the conventional MSM standards, Kurtz should be taken off the beat. The Post wouldn’t let a reporter who had a lucrative gig with General Motors cover General Motors, as Charles Kaiser has noted. … The issue was settled, in my mind, when Kurtz went soft on CNN in the Eason Jordan/Saddam atrocity scandal. He’s a great reporter, but you can’t trust anything he writes about CNN anymore. They have him by the balls. (That’s especially true now, when CNN’s whole programming approach is under review. Does Kurtz want to offend Jon Klein, the man who’ll decide whether to cancel his show? He sure didn’t when he interviewed his paymaster in this January 6 WaPo story.) …
The big question, I guess, is what do you do? Kurtz is a one-man media empire. You could, I guess, say that such things shouldn’t exist. Or you could rely on a system that’s big, and diverse, enough that they don’t matter so much when they do. I tend to favor the latter approach. Diversity, and markets, are better than regulations.
UPDATE: Reader Richard Samuelson emails:
I realize that this point is easing into satire, but I am making a serious point. In principle wouldn’t true full disclosure, if we were really to get serious about it, require that reporters disclose who is paying their spouses, and perhaps children? If it were Kurtz’s wife who worked for CNN, rather than Kurtz himself would the conflict of interest be any less real.
Incidentally, Jonah Goldberg was very good about that when his wife was working for Attorney General Ashcroft. But he’s an opinion journalist, so it is easier for him. How many others have been similarly good? The age of the two-earner family makes things difficult in this regard, but that does not mean that we should have no standards.
Yeah, there’s a huge array of things you might disclose. The problem is that it gets unwieldy. And I think that although Kurtz’s Gallagher story makes clear (sort of) that the case isn’t an Armstrong Williams pay-for-play story, it’s being spun that way. One ethical consideration for journalists, beyond conflict of interest, involves covering stories in ways that contribute to that sort of spin. I don’t know how you could make a rule for that, but it’s certainly a consideration. This is especially true when the herd instinct strikes, and “me-too” journalism leads latecomers to try to make their stories sound more like others that were big news than they really are.
One also wonders why people like Bill Moyers don’t get more attention. Or — to pick a somewhat less significant example — CNN commentators James Carville and Paul Begala, who joined the Kerry campaign while staying on the air for CNN. In Carville and Begala’s case, I guess the viewer expects them to be shilling for whoever the Democratic nominee is.
Then again, that’s probably true for Moyers, too. Nonetheless, his case seems rather significant.
