Story of the Day: Howard Kurtz's Octomom Hypocrisy

He Was Against Exploiting It for Ratings Before He Was for It

(updated below)

Washington Post and CNN media critic Howard Kurtz dedicated an entire segment of this past Sunday's Reliable Sources to a gratuitous pie fight between two players involved in Nadya "Octomom" Suleman's never-ending nationally televised freak show. But a little over a month ago, Kurtz decried the media's exploitation of the octuplet mother for ratings and for doing so under the false pretense that concern for her babies' well-being drove their 24/7 coverage.

What a difference a few weeks make.

In a February 15 edition of Reliable Sources, Kurtz asked Headline News host Jane Velez-Mitchell, "Jane Velez-Mitchell, you've been talking about this constantly on cable for more than a week. All right. Let's be blunt here. Aren't the media feasting on this terrible situation?"

Addressing the former editorial director of Star magazine, Bonnie Fuller, in the same segment, Kurtz asked, "Now, surely, Bonnie, you're not suggesting that we, in the media, are doing this purely out of our own good-hearted concern for these little babies and that ratings and grabbing attention has nothing to do with it?"

Other key quotes from this February 15 Reliable Sources segment:

KURTZ: Bonnie, Jane, certainly willing to give the media some share of the blame here. So I'm wondering, you know, should "The Today Show" have put her on, because obviously, that kick-started this story into the stratosphere? And now people are saying, well -- and I think you suggested, well, she just went on TV so she can get a book deal and try to basically make some money off the situation. [...]

KURTZ: Jane Velez-Mitchell, here's what drives me crazy. We've kind of touched on it here. I wonder if we've reached a point with these cable melodramas where at some -- we cross some sort of invisible threshold, where it's no longer about Nadya Suleman. It's no longer about the 14 kids. It's about continuing an argument that we can package and sell. You know, "Coming up, should the kids be taken away?" And it just takes on a momentum of its own, whether there's any new developments or not. [...]

VELEZ-MITCHELL: So this idea that we're all doing this for some altruistic purpose is nonsense. We're doing it for ratings, and let's be real about that.

KURTZ: All right. Well, I'm glad to have you admit that right up front.

Then, in a CNN article published prior to and promoting Sunday's segment, Kurtz began by reiterating his prior issue with the media capitalizing off the octuplet saga.

While almost no one defends what Suleman did -- having eight babies after already giving birth to six children, with no financial means of supporting them -- I began to feel that the media were demonizing her. Pundits and pop psychologists analyzed her, trashed her and accused her of aping Angelina Jolie, all the while capitalizing on America's latest soap opera.

He even cited Velez-Mitchell's quote from the February 15 segment.

As HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell acknowledged on my program several weeks ago, "This idea that we're all doing this for some altruistic purpose is nonsense. We're doing it for ratings, and let's be real about that."

But then came this curiously self-serving and timely twist:

But I lost my last remaining traces of sympathy when Suleman turned down free care from a group of volunteers, which had been arranged by Phil McGraw, the syndicated talk show host. Maybe Dr. Phil was grabbing the limelight, too, but at least the overwhelmed mother got something out of it.

The volunteer nurses came from the group Angels in Waiting, and [Gloria] Allred, their lawyer, went to Suleman's California home to check on how things were going. It was there that she got into a shouting match with Suleman's lawyer, Jeff Czech.

It was a media mob scene, with a horde of cameras, wires and microphones while the Angels tried to care for the first two premature babies to be brought home from the hospital. Allred and Czech blamed each other, as they recounted in a clash this week on Dr. Phil's program. [...]

Needless to say, I've got plenty to ask Allred on CNN Sunday morning, including why one of the nannies called the police to have her thrown out of the home.

So Kurtz initially calls out the media for extreme bottom-feeding and for defending their actions with disingenuous claims of altruism. Then he announces his plans to troll the same cesspool, justifying his actions by borrowing the same bogus defense.

What's more, Kurtz then manages to end this article with a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness, returning to his original criticism.

Everyone involved claims to be primarily concerned about the babies. But media outlets also seem to be feasting on the tragedy as it drags on through yet another ratings period.

Got that?

With his latest Reliable Sources Octomom segment this past Sunday -- a Crossfire-like vapid shouting match between Angels in Waiting lawyer Allred and Ray Richmond, television writer for The Hollywood Reporter -- Kurtz purports to examine questionable media coverage in which he, the media critic, jumps into the shallow end of the cesspool to also feast "on the tragedy as it drags on through yet another ratings period."

Kurtz confirmed his concern for the children and the media circus surrounding the Suleman story in a Twitter message he posted on Sunday at 9:21 a.m. after his article became the "Most Popular on CNN." Less than an hour before the Allred/Richmond spectacle aired on Reliable Sources, Kurtz wrote:

My Octomom story on CNN.com got 550,000 hits in one day. Wowza. Now I know what people are *really* interested in.

Kurtz seems to signal that he's in on the joke. So, you know, it's okay. The problem is, he's not just in on the joke, he's part of the joke of which he's supposed to be critiquing. 

How might Kurtz have better spent a segment critiquing the media?

Obviously scores of worthy topics were open for a substantive media discussion, as they are weekly. But to mention just one glaring example, he might have covered the fact that, according to LexisNexis, not one broadcast or cable network news program -- including CNN -- reported last week's revelations that Bush administration prosecutors tried to pressure former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, after years of being brutally tortured and having never been charged with a crime, to sign a statement saying he was never tortured and that he committed terrorist acts he didn't commit in return for his release.

Sure, it's no Octomom. It's merely the kind of story that, consciously or not, affects every single American when millions of them are deprived of its coverage.     

It's "wowza" that really matters.

UPDATE: Two related must-reads on Kurtz today: Eric Boehlert's "Howard Kurtz plays dumb about...Howard Kurtz" over at Media Matters and David Ehrenstein's "How to Succeed in Journalism Without Really Trying," which ends with this hilariously apt film clip:

Comments

[Brad Jacobson]

Howard Kurtz's Octomom Hypocrisy

[Batocchio]

Well, that's one more. Good detail. I've written several posts on Kurtz, who I used to read regularly. I think he actually believes he's even-handed, but he leans conservative and consistently adopts right-wing framing and parrots their charges. He sucks up to media figures – Bob Somerby's series on Kurtz covering Brian Williams is especially good at demonstrating this. Occasionally he gets something right, and in some older pieces he's actually quite good. but he constantly traffics in false equivalencies. He'll run with some right-wing smear days after it's already been debunked on leading liberal sites. He refuses to acknowledge how many of the right-wingers he features are inaccurate (and nasty). He still pretends violent rhetoric isn't common on the right, as it is not on the left – and has actually scolded liberal sites for being mean instead. Basically, if Malkin runs it, it'll appear in Kurtz' column. He took a long time and pulled all his punches responding to Malkin and her the rightwing crusade against Graeme Frost, his profile on her ignored her inaccurate "scholarship" on Japanese-American internment camps, he's claimed we're "winning" in Iraq, he parroted charges Obama was presumptuous and that Obama created the flag pin "controversy" himself (months after that was debunked), and has repeated Karl Rove charges days or weeks after they've been debunked. He's an establishment guy first and foremost, but conservative on top of that. (BTW, David Ehrenstein's piece, linked along with yours at MBR, is also a good read.)

[Brad Jacobson]

As usual, you're dead-on, Batocchio: "Occasionally he gets something right, and in some older pieces he's actually quite good. but he constantly traffics in false equivalencies."

I was actually right in the middle of posting an update to this post, pointing to David's and also Eric Bohlert's over at Media Matter's County Fair, who has a post on Kurtz today too. Appreciate the tip all the same and thanks for your thoughts above.

[russische frauen]

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