Howard Kurtz devoted a good part of "Reliable Sources" Sunday to the attack on CBS's Lara Logan when Egypt's Hosni Mubarak resigned as President.
As he addressed some disgraceful comments made about the incident by members of the media, Kurtz made it clear to viewers that Debbie Schlussel was a conservative, better never once depicted Nir Rosen as a liberal (video follows with transcript and commentary):
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: After CBS's Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo, a journalist named Nir Rosen, who's written for "The New Yorker" and "The Nation" among others, lost his job at NYU Fellow for tweeting the following, Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson, meaning Anderson Cooper who was roughed up in Cairo. It would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too. Nir Rosen went on Cooper's 360 and here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST "ANDERSON COOPER 360": Nir, how do you explain your tweets?
NIR ROSEN, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: I don't have an explanation. I was a jerk. It was 2:00 in the morning and I was being thoughtless, forgetting that I wasn't just talking to a couple of people, that I was talking, in theory, to hundreds of thousands of people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
As that clip was playing, the chyron at the bottom of the screen said, "Nir Rosen, Freelance Journalist." Nothing about him being a liberal:
KURTZ: Mary Elizabeth Williams, what he wrote was appalling, but he apologized profusely. Was this an overreaction for him to lose his job?
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, SERVED AS CULTURE CRITIC FOR PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL'S "THE TAKEAWAY"WILLIAMS: And he also -- he apologized. He expanded upon that in salon.com this week, where he said, again, that he apologized, but then he also backhandedly started talking about how he was so outraged that this attention only comes when, as he put it, the pretty blond lady has something happen to her.
So is the outrage justified? It depends on who you're talking to. I know he's received threats. I think people have harassed him. That's never excusable. That's never the right reaction. Should he have lost his job. Yes, I think he should have because I think what he said was despicable.
KURTZ: All right. Tweeting at 2:00 in the morning in dangerous.
Now watch how Kurtz made it a point that Schlussel was conservative:
KURTZ: Donatella Lorch, a conservative blogger named Debbie Schlussel wrote the following: "So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And then this. How fitting that Lara Logan was 'liberated' by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the liberation. Hope you're enjoying the revolution, Lara." What are we to make of that?
While he was speaking, this was on the screen clearly denoting Schlussel as a "Conservative Political Commentator":
As such, two mentions of Schlussel's political leaning but nothing about Rosen's.
Why, Howie?
