smith, who's leaving "politico" for buzzfeed. what is that? and a look back at our most provocative interviews of 2011. i'm howard kurtz, and this is the christmas day edition of "reliable sources." it's been a better year for scandal. some sleazy, some superficial, all devoured by the media. perhaps the most chilling came from the world of sports. first at penn state, then at syracuse university with popular coaches accused of horrendous acts. >> in retrospect, i -- you know, i shouldn't have showered with these kids. >> what's it? >> yeah, well, that's what hits me the most. >> are you a pedophile? >> no. >> another major scandal involved a global media corporation, the one run by rupert murdoch with a slew of top executives arrested in a massive phone hacking operation. >> did you close the paper down because of the criminality? >> yes, we felt ashamed at what had happened and wanted to bring it to a close. >> and there were the inevitable political sex scandals. one topping a congressman, one exposing the dark side of a french politician, still another forcing a candidate out of the presidential race. >> is there a picture out there was you in your drawers that you are worried about? >> i think any normal person could say with certainty whether a picture was a photo of them or not. >> that's not a public of you? >> you know, i can't say with certitude my system was hacked. pictures can be manipulated, dropped in and inserted. >> strauss-kahn who denies all charge pleaded not guilty and was released in house arrest. what do you want? >> i want justice. i want him to go to jail. i want him to know you cannot use your power like this. >> i know these are awkward questions, but i'll ask the questions that are going to be asked -- was this an affair? >> no. >> was there sex? >> no. >> none? >> no. >> with the nonstop scandals, jamie mcintyre, newscaster at mpr and senior pentagon correspondent. lauren ashburn, former managing editor of "usa today" and a contributor to the "huffington post." and fred frances, former nbc correspondent who now consults with clients dealing with the media in times of crisis. lauren ashburn, we had dominic strauss-kahn accused of groping a maid, anthony weiner aar, acc of sending pictures of his private parts. why is this so much in the media? >> it was like a train wreck. we were here listening to the tape shaking our heads saying, how can these people just go out and deny and deny and deny? you know, it's the entertainment value of it. i've always said it's the peoplization of the media. we all love to see people fail. >> not to say these aren't serious allegations that should be covered. >> no, no, not at all. i'm not saying that. i'm telling you why the media covers what's going to get ratings. what's going to have interest, and these kind of stories have a lot of interest. >> there's also a loss of privacy that's been experienced with the explosion of new media and ways to get information out. it's just simply not possible to keep things secret and to cover up things that in the past you could. >> take the lens of coverage, titillation of famous people plus sexual misconduct equals circulation and ratings, or is there some lasting meaning to the stories? >>le wiell, the stories that yo highlighted are all important people in positions. these are not frivolous stories, nor are they frivolous charges. so you can have fairly high-brow coverage of low-prou stories. >> and fred frances, a lot of it revolves around lying. people saying they didn't do it. dominic strauss-kahn said this was consensual sex. and herman cain said it was character assassination, none of the women was telling the truth. then the media turned it into a character test for the public figures. >> in each of ftd cases and so many others, it's an example of the arrogance and ego when people get to the power they are. it's the demonstration of their arrogance -- >> but it doesn't mean that we have to go wall to wall with it. >> i want to get to -- >> no, you have to -- >> i think you're wrong. >> why am i wrong? >> right -- fred was going to agree. in the case of herman cain, it's a presidential candidate. in the case of sandusky, this was a guy who was one of the legends at penn state. wall to wall is not i think appropriate, but i think a serious discussion and a lot of time spent on figuring this out is important. >> the strauss-kahn case is compelling, the narrative was that he was a letch. the media latched on to it on that yet failed to think about ms. dialo having her own problems. >> it was something of a rush to judgment. everybody treated the guy like he was guilty. >> it was a rush to judgment. >> and to clarify, she credibility problems. she had lied to investigators. >> but so did a lot of the women who said they were sexually harassed or the woman who said she had an affair with herman cain. >> it's your point about whether the amount of coverage is over the top, that's a function of how the media has changed. all news cable outlets like cnn and other don't have to be the newscast of record of every important thing that happened today. they can and often do just focus on a couple of trending stories and smother them with coverage. i think with the news these days that's not entirely indefensible. >> let me make the point about anthony weiner. he was given multiple opportunities to come deleon. >> he went on 27 shows and said he didn't do, it then he said in a press conference, yeah -- >> in the new year, hopefully we don't have to hear anthony weiner joke. >> and there were some going ones. we teach our clients in 15 seconds to tell the truth. even if it's a bad news story, the truth is only going to be a couple of days story, maybe a week. if you lie, it stretches it out to three weeks. >> that's -- >> that's the train wreck you were talking about of -- >> you just go -- people who are watching, you have a gut feeling about something. you can look into somebody's eyes, all the body language stuff that people tell you about. you can look into their eyes and say, hmm, he's looking down, i don't believe this -- >> and you may haven't to look at his eyes, there were pictures -- >> geez. >> last joke of the year. sorry. >> a very different tone as you started to allude to to the case of bernie fine at syracuse and jerry sandusky at penn state. now you have children involved. in a presidential campaign, allegations come up, smeome peoe have fun with. these were not fun. >> it was sickening. >> it's a sad state of affairs when there needs to be parental guidance for people to watch a newscast. >> tiger woods, wall to wall with that. >> indeed. and the dart here goes to espn that had an audiotape of the syracuse coach for over a year -- >> no, eight years -- >> eight years. i'm sorry. >> the top executive said we didn't have enough, we didn't have a corroborating source. these are tough calls. >> if that audiotape had been of herman cain it would have been on senior citizen that day. >> the event -- on cnn that day. >> the event was even though the allegations were credible and the story was serious, we sought initially a backlash again the media. many people in the penn state community in particular felt the media was overplaying the story and going overboard, we even saw the demonstrations from people. >> that was until jerry sandusky went on national television and you heard that clip. you're in the p.r. business. why would anybody allow him to do that? >> it's not just that as a lawyer allowed him to go television. it's that his lawyer has been trying to drum up media support. he's been trying to sell his story, and as if he were not an unsympathetic character as it is -- >> "the new york times." >> selling it to "the new york times." >> sell it -- it went on. >> in my view, the local press as is often the case in college towns builds up cases -- joe paterno who did nothing when he heard about the allegations, turned them into demagogues. >> and the harrisburg reporter came out and said, hey, this is going on, i'm publishing it. >> she was on the program, she did a great job. she's in her early 20s. and "the harrisburg patriot news" deserves a lot of credit. i want to turn to the murdoch phone hacking scandal. "news of the world" got shot down. for the revelations and people whose phones were hacked into, not just celebrities and royals, by the way, how much did this tarnish or not tarnish murdoch and the news corp.? >> if you had followed the case and seen tactics employed by the british press to get information -- some of it is just shocking. you know, i've always been a critic of what's going on in the american press. and it -- but it always compares favorably to what's going on in britain. >> right. >> and these hearings have laid bare a lot of that process. >> and cnn's piers morgan testified in the inquiry, he was asked about some quotes that had been attributed to him a few years back. a widespread practice, he said, of the phone hacking. loads of journalists were doing it. he says now, i was repeating the fleet street rumor mill. >> he wasn't exactly doing it. piers morgan of cnn took the equivalent of the fifth when he wouldn't talk about how he learned that sir paul mccartney was talking to his elk wife, how he learned of that transcript of that phone message. he refused to answer that question. and i think he has to come clean. >> he said he was protecting his source. >> yeah -- >> but he didn't take the fifth in denying that he had firsthand knowledge of phone hacking. was that proven -- parliamentary inquiry, did it prove that he did? >> the fact is so many reporters of the reporters, "the news of the world" and ""daily mirror" er, he was an editor of both. they said he knew what was going on. >> they said they believed he knew. i want to make that distinction. lauren ashburn, is there any lesson -- it's easy to be snooty from our side of the atlantic, say those british tabloids. >> right. >> a lot of american organizations do questionable things. is there any lesson here from the revolting behavior that some of these people pulled off -- >> i think we've talked about this a lot. you've had chris cuomo on the program cha who has talked about how it seems as if by paying licenses fees that we're offering people money to appear on television. and that is a slippery slope. >> nbc has stopped that, to its credit. >> all done it over the years. i have done it at nbc. other reporters have done it. you buy documents. you pay for video -- >> photographs. family souvenirs. all right. >> photographs. >> it's still pay for play. >> glad to have that confession. when we come back, presidential campaign in which the media seemed to give each candidate 15 minutes of fame. a look at the 2012 coverage in a moment. truth is, nyquil doesn't un-stuff your nose. really? 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[ deep breath ] thank you! that's the cold truth! that is better than today. since 1894, ameriprise financial has been working hard for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. together, for your future. ♪ the presidential campaign has been a roller coaster ride for the press with one republican front-runner after the other, one strange obsession after another. >> he doesn't have a birth certificate or hasn't shown it. he has what's called a certificate of live birth. that is something that's easy to get. >> michele bachmann won. that certainly cements her position as a serious player in this race. >> michele bachmann is in sync with a lot of the mood of the primary voter on the republican side right now. >> i would do away with the education, the -- commerce. and let's see -- >> oh, my. >> i can't, the third one i can't. sorry. oops. >> the pundits would like for me to shut up, drop out, and go away. >> if anyone's dirty, it's newt gingrich. a man whose personal morality has been drawn from the sewer. a man who pontificates about his catholic faith and morality but repeatedly commits adultery. >> we'll take a second to recoil from that. you could say it's been a wild and crazy campaign, and it has. or you could say journalists have a.d.d. and keep flighting from one trivial story to the next. >> or voters have a.d.d. or the republican candidates -- >> you can't blame the voters. they haven't even voted yet. there hasn't been a single vote. >> the polls, i guess. >> okay. >> it's been an extremely fascinating phenomenon to watch the coverage of the republican presidential candidates as they go -- as we lurch from one to the other. i'm not sure what lesson you can draw from that except -- go ahead. >> the media gets a i did proportionate amount of coverage. when it get drilled down, cain, others, they fade away -- >> how come people were so sad that cain left? now we're covering health care, right? i mean -- >> deal with the issues. >> you don't have to talk about an issue. >> you know, as we have caromed from one candidate and story to the next, we not only let -- it's funny to watch now, wouldn't let donald trump dominate this race. the guy was never going to get into the race. for weeks and weeks. but you could say the media let him push the obama birther issue, the phony issue, into the mainstream coverage. >> you could make the opposite statement that in each of these candidates that flamed out over time, it's because there was intense scrutiny of the things that they said. whether it was herman cain's 9-9-9 plan or whether it was his personal life or whether it was newt gingrich and his record and his congress. in each case, we've seen them sort of raise to the top. we've seen a lot of tough reporting. then we've seen the fortunes change -- >> i have to agree with you about the voters. i think that among the republican party they're waiting for ronald reagan to come in with his lasso and on his horse. and yet they have all of these other people that they're not satisfied with. therefore, as you say with the polls, it goes up and down. forget it -- >> the polls don't just go up and down by themselves. there is the question -- the debates have been a major feature. there is a question of media coverage. and if we certainly drill down, to use your phrase o herman cain's tax plan or mitt romney's health care plan in massachusetts, all of that, why do journalists only do that when somebody is rising in the polls? it almost seems like we can only cover one or two candidates at a time. everyone else gets a pass. the new person rises up and investigative reporters get unleashed. >> look at the control room. if you've been in the cnbc control room, there are 100 monitors. it's no wonder that reporters have a.d.d. we do focus on one -- we've done that. we go to the next, okay, arab spring, next, back to crane kraun. it's difficult to keep -- herman cain. it's difficult to keep all the balls in the air. >> you're buying the short attention span they're? >> i am. >> and the reason we don't give mitt romney the coverage is because the complaint is that he's boring. where is it written that a candidate has to be entertaining? >> and it might be good for the country. >> so are you suggesting that, you know, this is not just about the candidates who rise and then seemingly, inevitable fall in the gop polls. but remember all the noncandidates -- how many weeks and months did we spend, sairp might run, chris kristi was going to come in, saying it's not too late for someone to get in. meaning me. >> the other thing is how often the conventional wisdom is wrong. how often the candidates were written off early -- >> newt gingrich. >> then reality sets in and we discover that all of the conventional -- the appealing narrative that's been pushed along by the media turns out to be flatly not true. >> i give you ron paul, okay? if we're talking about a quirky oddball kind of candidate, this man may win iowa. and he's been all but ignored the last seven or eight weeks. >> this is a fascinating case story. the editor of "national review" and republican pundits are trying to discredit ron paul. they didn't worry before. they say if paul wins the iowa caucuses, no one should take them seriously again. in other words, will be discounted by them -- discounted because ron paul went out, organized, got people excited and managed to win. >> he's wrong for the reason she said. it's conventional wisdom. if you see the iowa caucus -- he will drop in the polls and ron paul will have money pouring in like we've never seen. >> this brings us to what we were discussing, that is the propensity of the press to people on, many would say, the candidate rising at the moment. ron paul has been out there all year. he was always going to get his share of the vote. t"the new york times" saying he used to have crazy newsletters with revolting, racist stuff, he claims he didn't see it. it was written in 2008. "the new york times" was blunt in saying we're bringing this to people's attention again. why not before? because nobody care good ron paul. >> well, you know, it's common sense that you're going to spend more time covering people who look like they'll have a chance to win. it was an something phenomenon to see the national review dedicate almost an entire issue to defeating newt gingrich once he was a viable -- >> gingrich unlike romney is great copy for the press. we love to write about his colorful language and his lobbying for freddie mac and his -- >> and tiffany's. >> right. >> it's starting to pile on for newt gingrich. frank broony, of "the new york times," wrote this piece last week that was the most scathing, ticking off this sort of missianic complex that newt gingrich had. more and more people will talk about how newt gingrich compares himself to franklin delano roosevelt and -- >> i think we've been befuddled this year, we in the establishment press, as we have said, you know, michele bachmann can't win, and newt gingrich, you know, was -- you know, was kind of run out of town when he was house speaker in the nine points in pie his own people. a lot of voters and people in nap and iowa not only want to make up their own minds and not have us tell them who's viable and who's not, but for many republicans, it is actually -- you know, the fact that the media are ganging up on somebody in their view is a plus because they don't like the media. >> look at the way newt attacked -- what was it -- chris wallace at the debate. everybody started cheering. >> mickey mouse questions. >> there is that antipathy. we're down there with lawyers now. >> journalism has been famously been called the first rough draft of history. we're seeing rough drafts are getting rougher as time goes on. but they're also more -- they're revised more often and quicker in this information age. and i want to -- >> you all have given me different pieces of the puzzle here that amounts to what i think is a scathing indictment. you said we flip from story to story. you said we're bored by something like romney. you said we'd rather cover the birther issue than dig into the intick cease of health care. none of those are good. >> but none sell papers or get people to watch television. i'm saying that the factor is going after the quirky candidates and the candidate of the moment or of the week is the fact that that's the most interesting story. >> let's step back. let's step back and look at this. by shedding the light on all of these people, no matter that we're doing it one teamwork, three, two, one, according to polls -- >> in kai on theic fashion -- -- chaotic flagz "tonight show." >> or if they're up in the polls or not up in the p