FROM FLIGHT ATTENDANT TO TV STAR?

Steven Slater, the much-celebrated flight attendant who reportedly ended his career dramatically after an encounter with an obstreperous passenger by releasing the emergency chute and sliding onto the tarmac, has been approached to host a reality TV series, the celebrity website TMZ reported over the weekend. According to TMZ, the show, in which Slater would help people quit their jobs, would be produced by Stone Entertainment, which the website describes as “a powerhouse in the reality TV world,” although it is difficult to find information about any reality show the company has ever produced. Meanwhile, as reports continue to mount that passengers aboard Slater’s flight saw no altercation between him and any other passenger, some critics are suggesting that reporters had failed to obey a cardinal rule of journalism: remain skeptical until the fact-checker has turned off the unreliability light. On his Reliable Sources program Sunday, media critic Howard Kurtz showed clips from various broadcast and cable news programs celebrating Slater’s act, then remarked, “News outlets are taking a colorful incident and inflating it into a cosmic cultural protest because that gives them an excuse to keep pumping it up. And with that, I’m going to slide right out of this bogus story.”