One week after Media Matters for America pointed out how Washington Post staff writer Howard Kurtz reported Republican pollster Frank Luntz's false claim that Luntz has “done no GOP work since 2001” without investigating if Luntz was telling the truth, Kurtz uncritically accepted another misleading claim from Luntz.

Kurtz reported in his October 11 “Media Notes” column that Luntz “said last week he had forgotten that he worked for California gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon in 2002 and for the effort to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis last year.”

Kurtz wrote that he asked Luntz how his political work “squared with his MSNBC role,” but Luntz dodged the question, claiming that during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he worked only for MSNBC, not for political clients. But Luntz did not address whether he worked for MSNBC while doing campaign work in 2002 and 2003. In fact, Luntz hosted his own program on MSNBC, America's Voices, in 2003 while he was also working on the California recall (hat tip: Roger Ailes). The earliest Nexis transcript available for the show is from September 20, 2003. The California recall election occurred on October 7, 2003. Apart from America's Voices, Luntz appeared as a commentator on MSNBC a total of 81 times in 2003, mostly on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Scarborough Country.

Kurtz implicitly defended Luntz -- whom MSNBC dropped from its debate coverage the day after receiving a letter from MMFA -- by distinguishing Luntz from FOX News Channel chief political correspondent Carl Cameron, who wrote an article containing fabricated quotes by Senator John Kerry that appeared on FOXNews.com on October 1. Kurtz wrote: “Frank Luntz's situation is far different [from Cameron's]. No one at MSNBC has questioned the pollster's work.”

But though MSNBC hasn't questioned Luntz, polling professionals have, as MMFA has pointed out. In 1997, the American Association for Public Opinion Research reprimanded Luntz for his polling work on the Republican Party's 1994 Contract with America campaign platform, according to a Salon.com article. Similarly, WashingtonPost.com reported that the National Council of Public Polls “censured pollster Frank Luntz for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention.”