Media and the hunt for the Washington-area sniper

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(CNN) -- Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Chief Charles Moose, said Wednesday that leaks in the media about the Washington area sniper case is interfering with the investigation. Does Moose have a valid point or are the media just trying to keep the public informed in hopes of helping to solve the case?

Howard Safir, former New York City police commissioner and Howard Kurtz, "Washington Post" media critic and host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" stepped into the "Crossfire" to debate the issue with hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson.

BEGALA: Howard, one of the things we have seen certainly here on CNN and the other [networks that] are covering this story, has been a seemingly endless parade of content-less press briefings. It's a bit of a vicious circle. Should these officials take so much time to brief the press when there are no developments? Should we in the press cover it when they do?

KURTZ: Well, a cynical answer, Paul, would be that police chiefs and sheriffs and county executives like to bask in a national limelight when they have the unfortunate circumstance of having a high-profile case or crime in their jurisdiction. But I'm not going to give you the cynical answer.

BEGALA: ... The media is selling soap, right? The media wants the ratings. They want the readers. And so we take it to them. I mean there's a cynical argument on both sides, right?

KURTZ: You're a half a step ahead of me, because I was going to say I think police officials in these cases are mostly responding to a barrage of media requests. And the question could just have easily been asked -- and I've been critical of this -- why does CNN and the other cable networks -- you can certainly understand local stations -- feel the need to put up that breaking news logo and put on every news conference when it's clear it's just a status report with no significant advance in the investigation?

I think it is because they want the appearance of breaking news, even when unfortunately there is no breaking news in these cases.

CARLSON: Commissioner Safir, Howard Kurtz refers to these as status reports. A lot of them are. Some don't even rise to that level, however.

I want to play you a very brief sound bite here from Chief Moose at one of yesterday's many briefings.

Video clip:

MOOSE: I have no information to report on any part of the investigation.

CARLSON: So, that's it. That was the whole reason for hauling out the TV crews on double overtime. It is true? I mean one has to suspect that some of these guys like being on TV, as awful as that sounds. Do you think that's true?

SAFIR: Well I happen to agree with Howard Kurtz that a lot of this is pushed by the media so they can get their sound bites no matter what they are. But I think you also have an obligation as a public official to maybe not say what Chief Moose said in that particular sound bite, but rather to give a progress report that you have so many people working on it, that you're diligently pursuing every lead, and just to give the public some confidence that you're continuing to pursue something that is terrorizing the community.

CARLSON: So, I think you're kind of confirming what I have been suspecting, that police departments use the press for their own ends. And that's OK, because the press helps solve crimes in some cases.

SAFIR: They use each other.

CARLSON: Right. OK, but isn't it a little hypocritical then for chiefs of police to flip out on television when there is a minor leak and sort of bite the hand that continuously feeds them?

SAFIR: Well I think that Chief Moose, if he could take back that comment, probably would have. But I also understand the kind of pressure that he's under. This investigation is moving very slowly, he's getting all kinds of criticism. And, you know I'm sure he would rather have not said that, but he's a professional law enforcement officer and I'm sure he will regain his composure.

BEGALA: Howard, let me ask you about another comment that Chief Moose made. It was about the endless parade of analysts who have been second guessing and projecting and kind of prognosticating. And as somebody who does that in politics, I'm not about to attack that. I think that is very useful, of course, to criticize the government at every turn through the media.

But at the same time, the media convicted Richard Jewel falsely of the Atlanta Olympic bombing. They falsely said that the Oklahoma City bombing was done by Middle Eastern terrorists. I mean, doesn't the media get it wrong a lot of the time? And doesn't Chief Moose have a point?

KURTZ: Chief Moose definitely has a point on that part of his criticism. What happens is, since there is so little official information available from these investigations, and a voracious media appetite because, after all, there's lots of public interest in these kinds of crimes, you round up this usual parade of suspects of ex-analysts, ex-detectives, ex-police chiefs, forgive me, who sometimes, not all of them and not on all occasions, will engage in all kinds of speculation when they don't know the details of the case.

And I think the media there are guilty of just trying to fill air time, grab ratings, grab viewers by the eyeballs and trying to keep the story alive, even though they don't have, obviously, the people they would like to have, which are the people actually working on the investigation. By the way, Chief Moose did soften his tone at a subsequent press conference today, where he thanked the media for their cooperation. I think he realized that perhaps he had gone a little too far in his early morning tirade.

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