Kurtz’ apology for his most recent journalistic transgression – his “inexcusable” erroneous report last week about openly-gay NBA player Jason Collins — extended from his personal statement of contrition to a bracing interrogation by two excellent media reporters.

NPR’s David Folkenflik and Politico’s Dylan Byers grilled Kurtz about Collins as well as other mistakes from the past that Kurtz admitted he had sometimes waited too long to correct. It was riveting, powerful, and frequently uncomfortable to watch.

The backstory: In a Sports Illustrated piece that broke April 29, Collins became the first active male pro athlete from a major U.S. sport to come out. Kurtz wrote in his Daily Beast blog that Collins had not disclosed he had been engaged to a woman, and chastised him for it. He repeated the assertions in a video on The Daily Download, where he is a paid contributor.

In fact, Collins had written of the engagement. Kurtz had missed it, he said yesterday, because he had read the piece “too fast” and “carelessly.” On May 2, Kurtz left the Daily Beast. He said it was by mutual agreement; HuffingtonPost, among others, said he was fired.

The live interrogation on CNN was not Kurtz’ idea. He made that clear in his opening statement when he said the network had invited the questioners.

Folkenflik confirmed this in an interview with TVNewser. (Byers declined an interview because he said he was writing his own blog about the show). Folkenflik was pitched by a CNN executive “who doesn’t directly oversee the show,” he said, not naming names. “He’s a respected figure within CNN.”

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Do Americans trust the press?

NPR’s David Folkenflik looks into that very subject. “Trust in the media,” he says, “isn’t very high”. Folkenflik cites a Pew Research Center study last year that “found a historic low level of trust in the media…bias is virtually assumed.”

CNN VP and Senior Editorial Director Richard Griffiths weighs in. “Trust is the number one thing we’re thinking about…We’re not going to throw that away simply for higher ratings or more viewers on the web.”

Griffith says he routinely asks his staff, “Have we done right by the viewers to dig down and ask the right questions? Have we got the various different nuances to this story?”

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Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of the left-of-center magazine The Nation, isn’t surprised. “It’s a rallying point for people who feel that they’re not represented at the highest levels of power,” he says.

Says Folkenflik: “If some of Fox’s most famous figures feel as though they’re on the outside looking in, there are a lot of viewers keeping them company.”

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Bartiromo has been accused at times of being too cozy with the financial giants she interviews – a charge that has also been leveled more generally at CNBC and at TV financial news shows. A column in the New York Post, a corporate sibling of the rival Fox Business Network, insinuates that Bartiromo only got the interview because she shares a publicity agent with Thain. If so, Thain was mistaken if he thought this appearance would buff his image.

But, Folkenflik figures, in this interview, “She strips him bare.” He does a line-by-line through the transcript and concludes: “This wasn’t great investigative journalism. But it was a nice example of a television journalist simply doing her job.”

> On the flipside, HuffPo’s Adam Green writes about NBC’s “Erin Burnett problem.” Green says Burnett “serves as an apologist for Wall Street’s worst practices.”

> Update: Jim Cramer comes to Erin Burnett’s defense: “The bozo who attacked you clearly didn’t understand or didn’t watch or I don’t know what he did. But the attack was unwarranted.” More after the jump…

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In addition to talking with Hume, Folkenflik also interviewed Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. Both men left ABC News to join Fox News; Hume in 1996, Wallace in 2003. About Hume leaving ABC for FNC, Wallace says, “I’ll be honest: I thought he was crazy.”

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David Folkenflik profiles anchor Shepard Smith, or as Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert calls him, “The fairest anchor on FOX.”

“There are a lot of people on our channel who want you to think like they do,” says Smith. “We just want to give you some information to help you think. I don’t much care for ideologues within my newscast. There is plenty of it out there, you don’t need anymore.”

Smith says the FOX Report provides a place for the audience to “news snack.” “If I’m about to give you a bite of something you don’t like, it’s not going to last long and there will be more in a minute. We would like for you to stay,” he says.

Smith highlights the difference on FNC between news and opinion. “Who is better at toeing the Republican line than Sean Hannity? I can’t even think of anybody right off the top of my head,” says Smith. “Sean Hannity doesn’t host our news; he has never hosted our news. When we have news, I come on.”

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TVNewser has learned that after the announcement of the new bureaus and soon to be added “all-platform journalists,” nine CNN staffers were told their jobs were going to be redefined. We’re told the staffers are not being laid off, but being offered positions in the new structure.

The staffers work in cities including Chicago, San Francisco and Miami. As NPR’s David Folkenflik reported this morning, “let’s be clear [CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein] is only really talking about adding a handful of new staffers. Others will be redeployed in less-covered places like Columbus, Ohio, Orlando and Seattle.”

A CNN spokesperson tells TVNewser, “CNN is in the enviable position of expanding its newsgathering efforts and as a result of yesterday’s move, headcount will actually increase. There will likely be some repositioning of a handful of staff as we broaden our coverage and as we work towards the next generation of newsgathering.”

• Related: TV Networks Rewrite the Definition of a News Bureau…

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