Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz seems to think that the job of a media critic is to uncritically pass along dubious right-wing “journalism” without any indication of its flaws.

Kurtz's coverage of Tea Party coverage today, for example, contains this passage:

In related news, “New Hampshire Democrats are engaged in a statewide search for liberal activists willing to attend so-called tea parties on Thursday and carry signs expressing racist or fringe sentiments, a Democratic source with knowledge of the effort tells NowHampshire.com.

”According to the source, who sought anonymity for fear of reprisals, the Dems' last minute scramble reflects a growing obsession among party leaders that they need to discredit the tea party movement soon or it will overwhelm them come the November election."

Kurtz didn't mention the fact that “NowHampshire.com” was created by right-wing activist Patrick Hynes, which makes it a little hard to believe that a “Democratic source with knowledge of the effort” would give it this scoop. Nor did Kurtz mention that former New Hampshire Democratic party chair Kathy Sullivan denied the NowHampshire report's claim that she is behind the “statewide search,” calling it “a total fabrication.” Instead, Kurtz simply passed along the highly dubious report without any indication of the web site's ties to the GOP or that the allegations have been denied.

Heck of a job, Howie.

Kurtz then quoted a Fox News article about the Tea Party's “so-called 'fringe' and its accompanying antics [which] continue to give critics fodder” -- without noting that Fox itself has promoted some of the same fringe claims the article mentioned.

Then Kurtz quoted a man saying Barack Obama is “a Muslim,” without noting that this is false. (In 2008, Kurtz criticized a Washington Post article for reporting, but failing to debunk, the claim that Obama is a Muslim.)

UPDATE: Just to clarify, the NowHampshire.com report did include Sullivan's denial -- but Kurtz omitted it. That means Howard Kurtz's little write-up of the controversy was actually less fair and balanced than the right-wing web site from which he cribbed it. Impressive.