Too often "objectivity in journalism" is code for agreeing with the left. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz demonstrated this sentiment in his profile of Fox News Channel's Shep Smith.

Kurtz lauded Smith as an "outspoken newsman at the network defined by high-decibel conservatives, a stance that has earned him respect even from some Fox-hating liberals."

But was it really his "newsman" status that has earned him this respect, or is it the numerous instances in which Smith has agreed with the left? Kurtz documents a number of such instances, intended to demonstrate Smith's purported objectivity.

A seventeen year veteran of CNN claimed Sunday that Lou Dobbs' surprising exit from the network was because "his opinions are out of lockstep with the rest of the mainstream news media."

Discussing the issue with Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Chris Plante, a former CNN correspondent and current talk radio host, said Dobbs, as "the last conservative voice on the channel," no longer fit in.

"They had Glenn Beck, he's gone. They had [Dobbs], now he's gone," claimed Plante.

When Plante said CNN hosts Campbell Brown, Anderson Cooper, and Larry King weren't "completely neutral," Kurtz asked, "Are you suggesting that those hosts lean to the left?"

Plante marvelously responded, "Yes, I am" (oftentimes contentious video embedded below the fold with full transcript, file photo): 

John King will be replacing Lou Dobbs in the newly-vacated 7PM Eastern timeslot.

As NewsBuster Jeff Poor reported Wednesday, Dobbs announced his departure from the network during last evening's broadcast. 

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz just reported his replacement:

The Republicans may have won huge victories in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday, but Time's Joe Klein still thinks the GOP is "an extremist shard of a party that is essentially a regional southern party in the country."

I guess the 66 and 60 percent of independents who voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia and New Jersey respectively on Tuesday are also part of this extremist regional southern party.

Alas, such facts didn't enter into the discussion on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" when Klein showed how one's political biases can easily trump logic (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 4:18, file photo):

From liberal Democrat Howard Dean to top editor of the magazine which proclaims it has “The Website Washington Lives By.” The “preppy-looking 28-year-old” Garrett Graff “has eased his way up the ladder -- from presidential campaign speechwriter to media blogger, from Washingtonian freelancer to top dog -- with remarkable fluidity,” Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz marveled in a Monday “Style” section profile of Graff.

Kurtz outlined how, when his father was toiling in Montpelier for the AP, a 14-year-old Graff went to work in the summer for then-Governor Howard Dean, soon “building Dean's first Web site in 1997.” Graff got into Harvard and landed “Washington internships at ABC and the Atlantic” and “when Dean launched his presidential bid, Graff was his deputy national press secretary.” Then, “after Dean imploded, Graff moved to Washington and launched the Fishbowl DC blog for Media Bistro, showing a flair for self-promotion.”

In the midst of all the elite upset over the Fox News Channel's supposedly over-the-top opposition to President Barack Obama, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz pointed out in a Saturday story across the top of the “Style” section that the apparent two finalists to replace Diane Sawyer (who is moving to World News in January) on Good Morning America “have politics, but little else, in common.” Liberal Democratic politics, that is, since the two names in play are George Stephanopoulos and Chris Cuomo.

Kurtz began his October 24 story: “One helped elect a president, the other grew up as the son of a governor. Now George Stephanopoulos and Chris Cuomo are engaged in a very different kind of contest, for one of the most coveted prizes in network television.”

Former Fox News contributor Jane Hall said Sunday that one of the reasons she left the cable network was because she was uncomfortable with host Glenn Beck who she believes "should be called out as somebody whose language is way over the top and scary."

Fox watchers know Hall as one of the regular liberal panelists on Saturday's "Fox News Watch" as well a frequent guest on "The O'Reilly Factor" where she was typically paired opposite former CBSer Bernard Goldberg.

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," with the discussion centering on the White House's battle with Fox, Hall disclosed the decision behind her departure (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 8:20):

Three weeks after their gushing praise of President Obama's meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the media have taken a cue from the lack of action that followed.

It was a good run while it lasted.

Word from the conflict became more dire almost by the day as Obama's cabinet squabbled. The American media, having sensed Afghanistan could be lost without action, chose to cover for their favorite president and begin the process of mentally preparing the public for defeat.

The Washington Post published a perfect example of the new meme in Howard Kurtz's column on October 23. Kurtz attacked Republicans as "armchair quarterbacks" for their criticism of Obama's stalling and said it was "rich" of Dick Cheney to demand a new plan. As for what that plan might be, Kurtz's Vietnam defeat song sounded all too familiar:

On Sunday, ESPN host and sportswriter Michael Wilbon said conservative talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh is "univerally reviled by African-Americans."

As amazing as it may seem, this was at least the second time Wilbon made this statement on national television.

Unfortunately, the person he said it to Sunday -- Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources" -- didn't bother challenging him about just how absurd a thing this is to say (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

With each passing day, more and more media members are taking shots at the Obama administration's strategy of attacking Fox News.

On Sunday, one of the best observations yet came from Marisa Guthrie of Broadcasting & Cable magazine: "[Obama] can talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but he can't talk to Chris Wallace."

Such was stated on CNN's "Reliable Sources" after host Howard Kurtz played a video of Rahm Emanuel saying just a few minutes earlier that Fox isn't a news organization because it has a perspective (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

(UPDATE: Apparently there was a drowned out Republican voice in the promo. See full update below.)

The irony in this story is so delicious, as NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard would probably describe it, that one must take a bit of time to savor it.

Yesterday, Sheppard posted a story about White House communications director Anita Dunn whining at length on Howard Kurtz's "Reliable Sources" about how supposedly unfair Fox News is. Her appearance on that show was instigated by Dunn's complaints about White House coverage by Fox News in a Time magazine story by Michael Scherer. Among her attacks upon Fox News was the assertion that it wasn't a real news network "the way CNN is." Well, Michael Scherer himself wrote a followup blog post and pointed out the supreme irony of attacking Fox News as biased while CNN was running "Anderson Cooper 360" promos pitching that show as appealing to liberals. First Scherer quotes Anita Dunn from her "Reliable Sources" appearance:

But let's be realistic here, Howie.  You know, they are widely viewed as, you know, part of the Republican Party.  Take their talking points, put them on the air.  Take their opposition research, put them on the air and that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is.

In 2006, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz found that NBC correspondent Richard Engel had strong political feelings: "I think war should be illegal...I'm basically a pacifist." That pacifist opinion is still surfacing, Kurtz reported Monday, although he didn’t recall the sentence from 2006:

Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent, has kicked up a fuss with some decidedly pessimistic comments on the war in Afghanistan.

"I honestly think it's probably time to start leaving the country. I really don't see how this is going to end in anything but tears," Engel said last week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." He added: "The idea of going in to nation-build and win hearts and minds, I think, over the long term is kind of a loser."

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Fox officials agree that all this attention is helping ratings.

Three days before Howard Kurtz talked with White House communications director Anita Dunn about the Obama administration's attacks on the Fox News Channel, a number of CNN contributors pointed out how this strategy is helping FNC's ratings while hurting Democrats.

Such was discussed on Thursday's "Situation Room" by a panel consisting of CNN's Gloria Berger, David Gergen, and John King, as well as Politico's Nia-Malika Henderson and Republican strategist Tony Blankley.

Makes you wonder why Kurtz on Sunday didn't ask Dunn about the following tremendously relevant conversation that happened on his own network a few days earlier (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Mediaite): 

"I think what is fair to say about FOX and certainly the way we view it is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party...[When President Obama] goes on FOX, he understands that he is not going on -- it really is not a news network at this point. He's going to debate the opposition."

So said White House communications director Anita Dunn on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" in what appeared to be an extension of her shameful attack on Fox reported by NewsBusters' Lachlan Markay Thursday.

Three days later, Dunn was almost seething with contempt as she discussed America's leading cable news network with host Howard Kurtz (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript mixed with commentary):

This isn't something you see every day: a member of the media scolding colleagues for criticizing conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin.

Yet, that's exactly what Howard Kurtz did on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday as he took on all the recent carping and whining about the message being relayed over the airwaves by the Right's strongest voices.

Kurtz even went after the so-called conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 36:50):

"She is fearless. There's an intelligence there as well as the humor," insists Barbara Walters about none other than, wait for it, "The View" co-host Joy Behar.

Washington Post's Howard Kurtz relayed that gem in his Style section front-pager, "Oh, Joy! Gift of Gab Gives Host New Gig," about Behar's new primetime gig on HLN (formerly known as CNN Headline News).

Yes, this is the same Joy Behar who:

On Sunday, Howard Kurtz accidentally exposed how poorly the media report on issues of race, and how they not only use implications of prejudice to "[pump] steroids into an ordinary story," they also either ignore important events or badly misreport them due to their own biases.

In the first segment on the most recent installment of CNN's "Reliable Sources," Kurtz and his panel discussed comments made by various press members last week that opposition to Barack Obama's agenda is being fueled by racism.

Kurtz as he normally does had the last word (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 8:00): 

When Glenn Beck reports that a top-level White House advisor has endorsed communism, accused 'white polluters' of poisoning minority communities, called his political opponents a**holes, and believes an American president was complicit in the slaughter of innocent civilians, Beck must have a hidden agenda. When the mainstream media fails to report these facts, it's all an honest mistake.

Or so one might gather from listening to CNN contributor and Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz. Kurtz continues to waffle between a cynical take on Glenn Beck's outing of Van Jones as a truther conspiracy theorist, and an apologetic approach to the mainstream media's virtual silence on the story until after Jones's resignation.

The Times's Managing Editor Jill Abramson offered a number of excuses for the lack of Van Jones coverage last weekend, chiefly that the paper's Washington Bureau was short-staffed. This did not stop the Times from sending two reporters to Boston for the weekend to cover the non-story of Joseph Kennedy II's Senate run (which he later said would not happen).

What a difference two weeks make.

On August 30, CNN's Howard Kurtz accused Glenn Beck of attacking former green jobs czar Van Jones in retaliation for the advertising boycott the Jones-founded group Color of Change had organized against the Fox News host.

Now that Jones has been forced to resign as a result of numerous allegations uncovered and/or reported by Beck, Kurtz is wondering why most other news outlets totally ignored this story.

To refresh your memory, here's what Kurtz said about Beck on "Reliable Sources" two weeks ago (video embedded below the fold):

Howard Kurtz opened Sunday's "Reliable Sources" with a lovefest for the promotion of ABC's Diane Sawyer to replace Charles Gibson on "World News Tonight."

Mysteriously, there was absolutely no discussion about how Sawyer's "Good Morning America" is constantly second in the ratings to NBC's "Today" show, nor was there mention of how Katie Couric regularly bested Sawyer in the morning but has been a ratings disaster since taking over the "CBS Evening News."

That didn't stop Kurtz and his guests from talking about Sawyer's promotion as if it was sheer genius (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 11:30):