Finally — if you’re going to hold yourself out as a media watchdog, it makes sense to be on the one TV network that doesn’t toe the DNC’s party line. According to a press release from Fox, he’ll be starting next month:
Kurtz will anchor a version of what is now called Fox News Watch, which focuses on the media, with a new format during the weekends. Additionally, he will serve as an on-air analyst for a variety of programs throughout the week, while also writing a regular column on FoxNews.com, commenting on social media news, industry trends and breakthroughs, in addition to looking at how media are used in politics.Meanwhile, Jon Scott, current anchor of FOX News Watch, who won an Emmy for his writing at NBC’s Dateline, will move to the specials unit where he will serve as anchor.
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Since 1998, Kurtz has been the host of CNN’s weekly media criticism program, Reliable Sources, where he has scrutinized the performance and biases of the media. Until recently, he served as the Washington, D.C. bureau chief writing on the intersection of politics and media for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. Prior to that role, Kurtz spent 29 years at The Washington Post in various capacities. He became the media reporter for the paper in 1990 and wrote the weekly Media Notes column, which was widely read throughout the industry. Kurtz joined The Washington Post in 1981, after being hired by Bob Woodward, and went on to serve as a justice department and congressional reporter, New York bureau chief and deputy national editor before covering the media beat as a reporter, columnist and blogger.
I’m not sure if Kurtz actually did scrutinize the “biases of the media” when he was with CNN and Newsweek. When he was promoting his 2007 book Reality Show on the legacy media’s transition from Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings to their successors — wait, what are their names again…? — and I interviewed him for an early edition of PJM’s old Sirius-XM radio show, if I recall correctly, Kurtz went into seriously Rather-esque “see no bias” dissembling when I asked him about the center-left slant of the hosts he was writing about. I wonder if that will change now that he’s no longer drawing twin paychecks for “covering the media” by the Washington Post (which owned Newsweek at the time) and CNN?
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