This Week’s Kurtz Chat

Earlier today, Howard Kurtz held his weekly chat where his discussed such topics as Dana Priest’s report on the conditions at Walter Reed, the PBS Documentary “News War,” and Victoria Toensing’s less-than-full disclosure of her relation to the Libby trial. Some excerpts:

Clifton, Va.: Sorry, Dana Priest doesn’t deserve any type of award for her stories on Walter Reed. Imus came out with the it first a year and half ago. Dana Priest should have acknowledged this. Just another case of Priest’s and the WP’s anti-military bias. And come on, this info isn’t new, military health care has been awful for years. My girlfriend is an E7 in the Army and they botched her shoulder surgery almost two years ago in Korea. This nothing new. Priest needs to get over herself!

Howard Kurtz: The details of the Post series were apparently new enough that the secretary of Defense has ordered an investigation and thanked the paper for its reporting. To cite this as an example of The Post’s supposed anti-military bias is ludicrous. Doesn’t it help the brave men and women who were wounded in war if reporters spend months to document the poor conditions they live in and the less than ideal care they are receiving in the Army’s premier medical facility? That’s why these stories have drawn praise from both the left and the right. Regardless of what you think about the war, everyone can agree that our veterans deserve better.

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Chicago, IL: Did you see the Frontline special “News War”? Any thoughts? I’d like to see more in-depth reporting like this from the Media beat at The Post.

Howard Kurtz: I saw the first two, and Frontline did a fine job. I have also written about every issue raised in those programs, from the failure of prewar reporting to the Libby trial to criticism of the New York Times over the domestic surveillance story and other journalists who report on national security matters.

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New Hampshire: Hi Mr. Kurtz and thanks for taking my question. I was more than a little suprised to read Victoria Toensing’s lengthy and highly partisan op-ed in The Post (not to mention its suspect “timing”) and then horrified to read that she actually had filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of news organizations with regard to the leak case! I found Ms. Howell’s explanation rather lame (to say the least):

“While Toensing is a partisan, she also filed a friend-of-the-court brief during the leak investigation with media lawyer Bruce W. Sanford on behalf of 36 news organizations, including The Post. She and Sanford, who also worked on the 1982 law, argued that journalists shouldn’t have to testify because no crime was committed if Plame wasn’t a covert operative. Editors should have mentioned the court filing in the Outlook piece.” Your thoughts?

Howard Kurtz: I agree that the piece should have mentioned her filing. Beyond that, though, Outlook is an opinion section and Toensing was making an argument about the Libby case as someone with very strong opinions, which readers are obviously free to dismiss.

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