Howard Kurtz Lied About Business Ties To Fox News Contributor
Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz has repeatedly claimed, most famously during a live interrogation on CNN, that his relationship with Fox News contributor Lauren Ashburn amounted to a limited venture for which the MediaBuzz host was compensated on a piecemeal freelance basis. Confidential documents obtained by Gawker, however, tell a dramatically different story.
Kurtz and Ashburns relationship centered on The Daily Download, a puzzling tech website owned by Ashburn (and funded by The Knight Foundation) that culminated, in May 2013, with a video of Kurtz and Ashburn smearing NBA player Jason Collins for coming out as gay. Kurtz was later fired from The Daily Beast and abruptly departed CNN after denying any substantial involvement with the Daily Download.
Yet in a grant proposal submitted by Maryland Public Television to the Knight Foundation on December 10, 2010, Kurtz is listed, along with Ashburn, as a salaried co-host of the Daily Downloads 60-second digital reviews, which aired on public television, and a daily blogger at the Downloads website. One year after that submission, Knight awarded Maryland Public Television $230,000, the majority of which went to Ashburns own media company, which helped pay for Kurtzs extracurricular position.
Kurtzs precise salary is difficult to pin down, but the proposal and other documents indicate he received a substantial income that certainly appears to be classified as a salary.
http://gawker.com/howard-kurtz-lied-about-business-ties-to-fox-news-contr-1498598801