Washington Post columnist and media "reporter" Howard Kurtz continues to shock and awe with a lack of self-awareness in his latest column.
Kurtz reports on the number of black female reporters following First Lady Michelle Obama and admits that "no one raises questions when an Irish American male reporter covers a pol named Murph" but yet still writes a two-page column asking, "Obama is a black woman from the South Side of Chicago [and] are the beat reporters inadvertently invested in her success?"
Rachel Swarns of the New York Times and The Washington Post's Robin Givhan were among those herded behind the rope Monday. They and the other main beat reporters -- Newsweek's Allison Samuels, Darlene Superville of the Associated Press and Politico's Nia-Malika Henderson -- have something in common: They are all African American women.
Perhaps this gives them a richer cultural understanding of Obama as a trailblazer. Indeed, most write with enthusiasm, in some cases even admiration, about the first lady as a long-awaited role model for black women. [...] Whether racial and gender identification produces a gauzier, more favorable portrayal of Obama is perhaps too early to judge.
Washington Post reporter Robin Givhan won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, becoming the first fashion critic to do so. Kurtz, who has no Pulitzer, neglected to mention this data point.
Adam Serwer at Tapped: "You would never ever see a media critic like Kurtz questioning the ability of white men to cover other white men objectively, or for that matter the ability of white men to cover women or people of color, despite the fact that if newsroom coverage were to be affected, it would be by the prevailing cultural biases of the better represented population in the newsroom."
You will also never see media critic Howard Kurtz report on the scandal at his own newspaper after the publisher offered to sell "off-the-record" chats with reporters and Administration officials. Can rich, white, male corporate "reporters" "objectively" cover the nation's health and economic woes, Howie?
