During the September 12 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Washington Post media critic and CNN Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz said that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has described Fox News as a channel that “poses as a news organization and puts out dangerous misinformation [and] is a cheerleader for the Bush administration, that it is misinforming our society.” Kurtz added: “But you know what? They're entitled to do that.”

Kurtz has a history of ignoring Fox falsehoods and ignoring criticism of the cable network. In his April 19, 2006, profile of Fox News host Brit Hume, Kurtz presented Hume as the “Low-Key Voice of Conservatism on Fox News” but largely ignored the numerous false and misleading statements Hume has made during his tenure. Media Matters also documented Kurtz's response to a September 19, 2004, column by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, in which he referred to Fox News Channel as “G.O.P. TV.” On the September 26, 2004, edition of Reliable Sources, Kurtz asked Rich if that label was “fair to [Fox] correspondents like Carl Cameron and Jim Angle and Major Garrett ... who are trying to do a straightforward job.” But Media Matters has documented numerous examples of reporting by Cameron, Angle, and Garrett that belie Kurtz's statement that they are “trying to do a straightforward job.”

Kurtz made his remark on Glenn Beck in the context of discussing Olbermann's comments quoted in the October 2007 issue of Playboy: “Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda -- worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.”

Fox News is reportedly the most-watched cable news network in America. The New York Times reported on August 2 that “Fox News remained entrenched in first place” in the July 2007 cable-news ratings race, while rivals CNN and MSNBC battled over second place. Moreover, a 2003 study conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks that was based on seven U.S. polls conducted from January through September of that year found that “Fox was the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions [about the war in Iraq]” The study gauged misperceptions on the following issues: “Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found,” “Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq,” and “World public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq.” The study also found that “Fox News watchers were most likely to hold misperceptions -- and were more than twice as likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions.”

From the study:

From the September 12 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

KURTZ: Look, I'm not -- look. Keith Olbermann is somebody who interviews people and spouts off on cable and has had some success doing it. And I think he's very talented. But I think those comments -- Al Qaeda, Ku Klux Klan -- are so over the top, it's just beneath him. It's beneath the kind of erudition I would expect from him.

BECK: Do you -- do you even understand what he was talking about?

KURTZ: I think the argument that I've heard Olbermann make in the past about Fox News -- it's not an argument that I embrace -- is that, because it poses as a news organization and puts out dangerous misinformation --

BECK: But that's what he's doing!

KURTZ: -- and is -- is a cheerleader for the Bush administration, that it's misinforming our society. But you know what?

BECK: Howard --

KURTZ: They're entitled to do that.

BECK: Let me ask you this question. Who makes you weep more for journalism: Keith Olbermann or me? That's quite a question.

KURTZ: I think you both have plenty of opinions and are both paid to spew them on the airwaves.

BECK: At least I admit it. Howard, thank you very much.