Howard Kurtz, today, on right-wing talk radio:

My view is that they control no votes, no factions, no military units, but they do have powerful microphones. Whatever influence wielded by Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh (or by liberal commentators on the other side) stems from their ideas and their talents as infotainers. If they peddle misinformation and exaggerations, that can be neutralized by others in the media marketplace. Nearly everyone dismissed Beck's charge that the president is a racist, but the ACORN videos he and Hannity trumpeted on Fox proved to be a legitimate story.

Nonsense. It is far harder to neutralize lies than it is to spread them, as pretty much everyone knows. That's where the line about a lie making it around the world before the truth gets its boots on comes from. It's where the rhetorical question “Where do I go to get my reputation back” comes from. It's not only blindly obvious, it's reinforced by studies and experiments that have been repeatedly written-up in Howard Kurtz' own Washington Post.

And Howard Kurtz knows that the “media marketplace” isn't able to effectively “neutralize” “misinformation and exaggerations.” He has to. See, back in August, he wrote a column expressing bewilderment that the media's efforts to debunk the “death panel” lies weren't successful:

For once, mainstream journalists did not retreat to the studied neutrality of quoting dueling antagonists.

They tried to perform last rites on the ludicrous claim about President Obama's death panels, telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you've got to quit making things up.

But it didn't matter. The story refused to die.

The crackling, often angry debate over health-care reform has severely tested the media's ability to untangle a story of immense complexity. In many ways, news organizations have risen to the occasion; in others they have become agents of distortion. But even when they report the facts, they have had trouble influencing public opinion.

In the 10 days after Palin warned on Facebook of an America “in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel,' ” The Washington Post mentioned the phrase 18 times, the New York Times 16 times, and network and cable news at least 154 times (many daytime news shows are not transcribed).

While there is legitimate debate about the legislation's funding for voluntary end-of-life counseling sessions, the former Alaska governor's claim that government panels would make euthanasia decisions was clearly debunked. Yet an NBC poll last week found that 45 percent of those surveyed believe the measure would allow the government to make decisions about cutting off care to the elderly -- a figure that rose to 75 percent among Fox News viewers.

Kurtz reiterated that point in an online Q&A a few weeks later:

the bogus “death panels” did seem to crowd out other coverage -- in other words, even as journalists said and wrote that there were no such panels, they kept the controversy alive in a way that may have made some people say, hmmm.

So why is Howard Kurtz now pretending that the “media marketplace” can “neutralize” the misinformation from Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity & company? Maybe because if he didn't, he'd have to take a strong stand against the right-wing liars -- and he just can't bring himself to do that?