Joe Kohen
Howard Kurtz, the former Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast, apologized Sunday on his CNN show Reliable Sources for erroneously saying Jason Collins was not open about his engagement to a woman in the Sports Illustrated article in which Collins became the first active male athlete in a major sport to come out as gay. “It was a mistake that I made and it was sloppy and inexcusable,” Kurtz said, while also apologizing for initially modifying the story rather than retracting it. “I am truly sorry.” Kurtz said he read the profile of Collins, but did so “carelessly” and didn’t see that Collins said he’d had a fiancée. Kurtz also said he took an “inappropriate” tone in a video about Collins he made with Lauren Ashburn at the Daily Download, a site at which Kurtz’s involvement has been questioned. Kurtz said it was simply “unfortunate timing” that he left The Daily Beast the same day that his Collins story was retracted, and that an “amicable divorce” had already been in the works, about which The Daily Beast has no comment.