Publication's star columnist fired after falsely accusing NBA player of concealing that he was once engaged to a woman
In an unusually high-profile termination in the media world, the Daily Beast Thursday fired star columnist Howard Kurtz after he bungled a story about NBA player Jason Collins coming out as gay.
Kurtz, a media reporter, published a column on Wednesday criticizing Collins' essay in Sports Illustrated in which the basketball player talked about being gay, becoming the first active male professional athlete in the United States to do so.
Kurtz accused Collins of leaving out the fact that he was once engaged to a woman. But Kurtz was wrong. Collins had written: "When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged." It was right there in paragraph eight.
"The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company," Beast editor Tina Brown said in a statement that went on to name journalists employed by the site who have not disgraced it. Kurtz, 59, a 30-year veteran of the Washington Post, joined the Beast, an online-only publication, in 2010. But he's best known for his CNN show, Reliable Sources.
The Daily Beast was slow to correct the Kurtz column, despite the monolithic ineluctability of the error. At first the Beast changed Kurtz's wink-wink assertion that Collins had "left out one little bit" to the phrase "downplayed one detail", which was still inaccurate. Then, almost a day later and apparently with the dawning awareness of the nastiness of the error, the Beast "retracted" the column, with the note: "The Daily Beast sincerely regrets Kurtz's error – and any implication that Collins attempted to hide or obscure the engagement."
Unfortunately for Kurtz, he had not kept his attack on Collins brief. In addition to the Beast column, Kurtz made a video for the media website Daily Download – on whose board he sits – in which he repeated his charges wearing a smirk that suggested derision of Collins.
The video, which also features Daily Download editor Lauren Ashburn, has been unpublished, but the internet has saved it. Barely suppressing giggles, Kurtz and Ashburn talk about how Collins' admission that he is gay (giggle) wasn't quite entirely honest (giggle) because he forgot to mention he was once engaged to a woman (giggle giggle).
"Obviously he, in basketball terms, has played both sides of the court," Kurtz said, incomprehensibly.
In the clip Kurtz introduces his "story" with a vow of professional rectitude. "As a journalist I am committed to giving you all the facts as I know them," he says.
Kurtz wrote on Twitter that the decision to part ways with the Daily Beast was unconnected with the Collins controversy: "This was in the works for some time." He added: "I've enjoyed my time at the Daily Beast but as we began to move in different directions, both sides agreed it was best to part company."
Kurtz has had a distinguished career, but in recent years has been criticised for confllicts of interest. He maintained a media column at the Washington Post while working for CNN, and he regularly plugs the Daily Download on Twitter – more often, it has been said, than the Daily Beast. Kurtz has insisted that he has no financial interest in the site.