Mistah Kurtz Rolls Out The Party Line

Howard Kurtz has always been made a fine living as a turd-polishing "media critic" for whoever would pay for the service (from the late Steve Gilliard, more than 10 years ago):

Egg on his Face: Kurtz Burned by Powerline

by Armando

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Wed Apr 6th, 2005 at 22:35:14 PDT

(From the diaries -- kos)

Crossposted at Unbossed.

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving shill. Howie the Shill decided that he trusted Powerline MORE than fucking Mike Allen of his own newspaper, and ran with the ridiculous "fake GOP Schiavo Talking Points" 'story' - which turned out to be as bogus as a 3 dollar bill. A sample of Howie's Shilling Shame

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And Fox News has always been more than willing to pack the g-strings of its stable with plenty of cash:

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But what Obama said at a Georgetown conference on poverty was this:

“And so if we're going to change how John Boehner and Mitch McConnell think, we're going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we're going to have to change how the media reports on these issues and how people's impressions of what it -- what it's like to struggle in this economy looks like and how budgets connect to that. And that's a hard process because of -- that requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the nightly news.”

All presidents want broader conversations on issues close to their heart. But should this one be telling journalists he wants to change the way they report so as “to change how John Boehner and Mitch McConnell think”? That, sir, is not our job.

It's important to note that the media have done important and substantive reporting on such matters as ObamaCare, the Pacific trade deal, bogus VA waiting lists and Secret Service failures--much of which hasn't been to the administration's liking.

And the White House doesn’t make our task easier by limiting press access to certain events, posting its own videos and rarely granting presidential interviews to beat reporters—while Obama chats up either BuzzFeed and YouTube personalities or liberal commentators such as Chris Matthews, Vox’s Ezra Klein and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

White House officials yesterday declined to provide examples of what the president had in mind when he slapped Fox for portraying the poor as lazy folks who just want free Obamaphones (under a federally subsidized phone access program). But there was a strong rebuttal from the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

 “Saying that Roger Ailes and Roger Ailes' network calls people leeches, sponges, and lazy, at a summit that’s supposed to bring both sides together on poverty, is stunning to me,” Joe Scarborough said, adding: “Is he really the sole arbiter of what is right and just? Is he the only one who cares about the poor?”

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