When Brian Stelter lost his media-criticism show on CNN, the Media Research Center gleefully danced on his grave. But when right-wing ally Howard Kurtz lost his media-criticism show on Fox News in September, the MRC was eerily silent.
No, really. The last mention of Kurtz at the MRC was three months earlier, in a June 3 post by then-intern Shannon Sauders hyping how Kurtz lashed out at former CBS anchor Scott Pelley’s commencement speech because he said things that deviated from right-wing media narratives. Even the fact that Kurtz’s show was replaced with a politics show co-hosted by Curtis Houck’s mancrush, Peter Doocy, didn’t warrant mention.
Perhaps that’s because Kurtz was starting to deviate from those right-wing media narratives (which may have also cost him his show). The second most recent MRC post referencing Kurtz is a March 3 item complaining that Kurtz argued with current White House press secretary-slash-North Korean newslady Karoline Leavitt about the White House’s petty banning of the Associated Press for its failure to deviate from AP style and not follow President Trump’s whims in renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Houck seemed upset that Kurtz was defending the White HOuse press pool:
Kurtz made clear his feelings about the pool from the top of the show, explaining the press and White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) were right to be “up in arms about a major change to the White House pool” because “White House officials will grant this privilege mainly to friendly reporters who have sympathetic questions.”
He also argued the WHCA should remain in power of who gets access to the President because “the big media companies pay most of the charges for flying on Air Force One[.]”
[…]Kurtz then defended the WHCA against claims of being “an elite group” because “its members are elected by the press corps at large to represent their interests and also there’s the question of who pays for flights on Air Force One as “a lot of people don’t know that the reporters are charged for that.”
There were other examples in which Kurtz deviated from the assigned narrative, according to Mediaite:
- Fox’s Howie Kurtz Criticizes ‘Misleading’ Coverage Of Biden Cheapfake Video — Including Fox News
- Fox’s Howard Kurtz Delivers Numerous Fact Checks During His Interview With Trump
- Fox News Host Fillets Trump Adviser Over Shocking Comments Trump ‘Has Gotten Absolutely Hammered’ Over
- Fox News Host Says CBS Parent Company’s Capitulation to Trump Is ‘Tarnishing the Network’
- Fox News Host Howard Kurtz Calls Out Charlie Kirk’s Rhetoric: He ‘Was Not a Saint’
The MRC wouldn’t even recognize Kurtz’s final-episode farewell, in which he stayed on message and praised Fox News for giving him independence. Perhaps this cold shoulder is a new type of Heathering, designed to punish those who stray too far from right-wing talking points.