Markos was very generous in characterizing Howard Kurtz's
story in the Washington Post "not terrible." I disagree. Here is the text of the letter I sent this morning to the WaPo Ombudsman.
Dear Mr. Getler,
Howard Kurtz's news story today on the resignation of Jeff Gannon from Talon News truly crosses the line between reporting and partisan advocacy. The most egregious transgression was Kurtz's choice to brand Markos Moulitsas (the "Kos" of Daily Kos) a liberal, while identifying Glenn Reynolds only as a law professor, failing to characterize Reynolds's Instapundit website as decidedly right of center. This is patently unfair and unbalanced, but it is far from the only problem with the Kurtz story.
Kurtz also demeans the efforts of the Daily Kos readers, using the word "retaliatory," prints Reynolds's observation that this kind of web-based digging is "despicable," and confines his interview with Moulitsas to the more lurid sexual details that the search revealed. I fail to see why this group exercise should be more subject to this kind of characterization than any good investigative reporting. Something in Gannon's use of a pseudonym, especially in the face of White House press corps rules expressly barring the use of pseudonyms, seemed not quite right, and the readers of Daily Kos simply went digging--as any good reporter might go digging in response to something that "smells bad." What they uncovered was evidence that this questionable member of the White House press corps may have been involved in clearly illegal activities. Demeaning these amateur reporters for uncovering evidence linking Gannon with male prostitution, and military prostitution at that, is the precise equivalent of demeaning Seymour Hersh for uncovering information about torture at Abu Ghraib. Reading Kurtz's article I was left wondering exactly who was the most culpable in attempting to ruin a reputation--Daily Kos readers reporting on Jeff Gannon, or Kurtz "reporting" on Daily Kos.
Finally, a database search of Kurtz's stories on another effort in which bloggers uncovered evidence leading to a major scandal in the world of journalism--when activists on the far right of the political spectrum raised questions about the documents used in the "60 Minutes" story about President Bush's National Guard record--revealed yet another double standard. Neither in the first story Kurtz wrote about this incident for your paper (September 11, 2004), nor in subsequent stories was there a single mention that the information leading to the discrediting of the CBS story was uncovered by politically motivated bloggers, retaliatory or otherwise.
Howard Kurtz and the Washington Post owe readers of your newspaper an apology for this instance of clearly biased reporting.