The terrible Daily Beast column by Howard Kurtz, whose entire accusatory angle on NBA player Jason Collins’s coming out was predicated on a reading comprehension error, has been retracted. (Update: Kurtz has been dropped by the site altogether, Politico reports. See below.) A clip of Kurtz making the same incorrect claims — that Collins left out his previous engagement to a woman, which he did not — in a video for his side-side-project the Daily Download was also pulled, but Gawker saved it, in case you want to hear Kurtz say, “How could she not know?” and “Obviously, in basketball terms, he has played both sides of the court” and then snicker.
Update: “The Daily Beast and Howard Kurtz have parted company,” Tina Brown said in a statement. On Twitter, she added, “we wish him well.” Kurtz was rumored to be making well into the six-figures in Newsweek/Daily Beast salary after being lured to new media from the Washington Post. But he’ll be okay: Kurtz still has his ironically named show, Reliable Sources, on CNN. And the Daily Download.
