Where ethics cross the line.

A reporter from CNN whilst interviewing a journalist wounded in Iraq blurred the boundaries between objective reporting and .

Howard Kurtz invited Kimberly Dozier onto his show on Sunday(reports the New York Times)to discuss the latters book.During the Interview extracts were read out.

Then at the end of the interview,Kurtz said

“I should mention that my wife has done some promotion work for Kim Dozier’s book.”

According to the report

The interview represented another complicated tangle in the complex world of Mr. Kurtz. He is paid by two of the nation’s largest media entities — The Washington Post Company, which employs him as a media reporter, and Time Warner, which owns CNN — to cover the doings at their news organizations, and those at their competitors’. But several media ethicists interviewed in recent days said that, given the financial arrangement between Ms. Dozier’s publisher, Meredith Books, and Ms. Annis, Mr. Kurtz should not have done this particular interview at all.

Kurtz maintains that the disclosure was sufficient in itself to cover the ethical question but surely it would have been a simpler option to get someone else to do the interview?