I love how Afghanistan is referred to as a model of victory, like it's some haven of peace and progress. Like we've actually followed through on promises of aid for rebuilding the country. Like we've caught or killed bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Like that war's over just because it's not on the front pages.

Way to reinforce the erroneous conventional wisdom, there, Washington Post.
Joe Mariani | Email | Homepage | 04.08.03 - 6:09 pm | #

Joe Mariani has it exactly right: "Way to reinforce the erroneous conventional wisdom, there, Washington Post."

But he missed one detail that Chris didn't mention: that excerpt was written by the Post's Howard Kurtz.

For anyone who lives in Washington and/or is a regular reader of the Post, that's tantamount to "'nuff said".

Those who aren't familiar with Kurtz' work should know that he writes an online column for the Post called "Media Notes" in which he essentially rehashes coverage of a popular news item from newspapers, magazines and, increasingly, blogs from around the country.

His columns are usually more than half cut-and-paste in this manner, with a few excruciating attempts at humor by Kurtz. Predictably, this structure for his column means that he winds up -- and perhaps he even takes pride in -- reinforcing the conventional wisdom.

Long and short of it: his column sucks.
joe rospars | Email | Homepage | 04.09.03 - 5:27 am | #

A bigger problem for Howard Kurtz is that is has a HUGE conflict of interest because he's also employed by CNN to do a "media roundup" discussion.

Eric Alterman, the fiery critic of right-leaning media and author of "What Liberal Media?", has been particularly concerned with Howard Kurtz who presents himself as a kind of referee of the pundit and media wars. He's right - Kurtz will regularly quote sources such as Rush Limbaugh, despite repeated and well documented instances of Rush's exaggerations and sometimes out-and-out lies. Why continue to give him a proverbial seat at the grown-up's table when he has certainly not earned it by any measure of journalistic integrity. I would also object to giving a seat to left-wing idealogues who have consistently lied or stretched the truth, like Noam Chomsky.

The problem, as I see it, isn't so much that Howard Kurtz' sense of humor sometimes isn't so great, as much as that his column tends to give equal weight to respectable voices and those of cranks. Unfortunately, he tends to include right-wing cranks.
SZ | Email | Homepage | 04.09.03 - 10:24 am | #

Agree 100% Christopher.
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