News You Can (Re) Use: Kurtz Scoop First Broken By Blum

Nice get from newest Gawker ed Maggie Shnayerson: A much-touted passage in Howie Kurtz's new book, Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War, posted Sunday night on Drudge as "developing" actually "developed" over two years ago in David Blum's "60 Minutes" tome, Tick... Tick... Tick..: The Long Life and Turbulent Times of 60 Minutes. Turns out that Blum recounted the exact same story about Dan Rather trying to force CBS's hand on the Bush National Guard story, pushing then-producer Josh Howard about getting the story on air and threatening to drop documents on that NYT so CBS could at least be fingered as the source. Howard dug in and refused; good thing CBS totally remembered that in the aftermath.

Gawker has it thoroughly laid out, complete with old-school page scan of Blum's book with the relevant material. Here is Kurtz's comment on the matter:

I'm told that the Rather leak threat was in the paperback edition of David Blum's book, which I never saw," Howie Kurtz told us by email. "(I did look at the hardcover.) Good for him for getting there first. I never saw it picked up anywhere, so when I got the information in an interview with former 60 Minutes II producer Josh Howard, it was the first I'd heard of it. I'm a fanatic about giving credit, which is why my book is filled with footnotes, but you can't do that if you've never seen the information.

Hey, that's what second editions are for! We're going to spin this on the sunny side, since that's what we do here: Good on Kurtz for readily acknowledging Blum's plum (if he hadn't that would have been dumb), and good on Blum for being so Drudge-worthy two years in advance — now that credit has been restored to where it was rightfully due, Blum's book is getting some airtime two years after publication, and now no one will ever write about TV news without checking it again. And now Blum can go on Reliable Sources to talk about it since they're both such experts! Maggie Shnayerson got a great scoop for Gawker and got to write something nice about Dave Blum, her former boss at the Village Voice, which must feel nice after that whole having-to-spin-his-firing-in-favor-of-the-New-Times thing. And Josh Howard got it once again highlighted for the record that publishing a faulty piece wasn't HIS goddamned idea, so eat it, Moonves. Meanwhile it all goes back to PR for Kurtz's book — scandal! Drama! Scoops! — which we're totally going to rip off in two years and pretend we've never read. So, everbody wins! Everybody except Dan Rather. Ouch.

Update: That is, apparently, not what second editions for, as Kurtz told the NYO's Michael Calderone that he won't be adding the attribution in future editions because he got the information directly from Josh Howard. The second edition of the book's press release might have to be edited, though.

Howard Kurtz's Dan Rather Scoop? Published Two Years Ago [Gawker]
If You've Got News, Howard Kurtz Will Break It For You [NYO]

Comments

[TheShoveler]

01:33 PM on 10/10/2007

I am simply amazed that the media mavens at HuffPo, Gawker, the NYO, and Poynter have been jumping all over Howie Kurtz for an understandable oversight (show me who buys all available editions of the same book), while refusing to pounce on the juicier underlying story: 15 days ago, Dan Rather filed suit against CBS, Les Moonves, Sumner Redstone and Andrew Heyward, claiming that he did little more than read from a teleprompter for the ill-fated 60 MINUTES II story on Bush and his TANG service. CBS's internal investigation of that fiasco left open the question who had pushed that story to air before it was ready.

(see here: http://slate.com/id/2112154/ )

Josh Howard, the executive producer of the piece, has given both Blum and Kurtz consistent and detailed answers to that question, and it should be emphasized that, since CBS asked Howard for his involuntary resignation after the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel report, he has no motive to take CBS's side in this matter. Were it not for Kurtz bringing this story to the forefront again, it might easily have been forgotten, and the very recent gushing by the blogosphere over Rather's lawsuit strongly suggests that was indeed the case.

[stevieforte]

11:45 AM on 10/10/2007

Howard Kurtz is such a fraud. If he never saw Blum's book then maybe he should hire some better help.