Reaction to Olbermann's Demotion at MSNBC

It seems that your opinion of Keith Olbermann and his demotion at MSNBC over the weekend is guided by what side of the aisle you stand on.

Michelle Malkin comments:

MSNBC, the left-wing basket case cable network, is in full meltdown mode. After several weeks of on-air sniping and tantrums from the Spittle Twins, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, executives at NBC apparently staged an intervention.

They will no longer anchor political coverage or the debates. The fair and balanced savior?

Jeff Bercovici in Mixed Media says:

MSNBC has finally come to its senses and taken Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews off anchor duty -- and Olbermann's reaction perfectly illustrates why it was necessary to do so.

Throughout the election season, Olbermann and Matthews have co-anchored event coverage even though both function as opinion journalists in their primary roles at the network -- Olbermann as host of Countdown and Matthews as host of Hardball. MSNBC president Phil Griffin has said this arrangement worked because the two men "put on different hats" to anchor straight news coverage.

But no one seems to have briefed Olbermann on the whole hat-switching thing. He capped off two weeks of embarrassing convention hijinx by launching into a lecture on Thursday night after the Republican National Convention featured a tribute to the victims of 9/11. Olbermann decreed the video "inappropriate" and exploitative.

According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, that character break led directly to this weekend's decision to have David Gregory anchor all upcoming election coverage.

Olbermann claims he initiated the conversation about taking himself out of the anchor chair -- but he also tells the Times, "I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue."

Media Channel has this to offer:

MSNBC’s announcement that it is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews with David Gregory as anchors for its main political events (the upcoming presidential debates and election) vividly illustrates several long-obvious facts. First, nothing changes the behavior of our media corporations more easily than vocal demands and complaints from the Right, which petrify media executives and cause them to snap into line. ...

Second, in response to media criticism that the press is insufficiently substantive and adversarial to political power, the claim is frequently made that media outlets are simply driven by the profit motive, and that their programming choices are nothing more than a by-product of ratings. But in MSNBC’s case, that is plainly untrue. Back in 2003, they actually canceled their highest-rated program, Phil Donahue’s show, for purely ideological reasons — because, at a time when the establishment “liberal media” were systematically amplifying the Government’s pro-war views and excluding anti-war views, that short-lived MSNBC show was one of the only venues in America where one could hear anti-war viewpoints, and NBC’s fear of angering the Government and the Right clearly caused them, first, to impose extreme and unusual restrictions on the show’s content, and then to cancel it altogether.

Third, this episode demonstrates what Eric Alterman documented several years ago: that the greatest and most transparent myth in American politics is that the U.S. has a “liberal media.” That is a myth that is maintained, first and foremost, by defining anyone who isn’t Rush Limbaugh as a “liberal.” Hence, people such as the wife of Bush official Dan Senor (Campbell Brown) is a “liberal,” as is Alan Greenspan’s wife (Andrea Mitchell), along with establishment-worshipers such as Rush-Limbaugh-admirer Brian Williams, right-wing-talking-points-spouting Charlie Gibson, and anyone who writes for the war-enabling New York Times and Washington Post.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates this absurd dynamic more than the painfully inane perception that Chris Matthews — for years a prime target of liberal media critics — is some sort of “liberal.”

Finally, and perhaps most notably of all, Olbermann’s role as anchor somehow destroys the journalistic brand of both MSNBC and NBC, while Fox News continues to be deemed a legitimate news outlet by our political and media establishment. Fox does this despite (more accurately: due to) its employing Brit Hume as its main anchor — someone who is every bit as partisan and ideological as Keith Olbermannn is (at least), who regularly spews the nastiest and most vicious right-wing talking points, yet because he’s not a liberal, is deemed to be a legitimate news anchor.

And finally, a blogger at Daily Kos has this to say, which is backed up by hundreds of comments on the blog:

NBC bent over and took one for the GE team because of complaints from Republicans. So kudos to NBC...America can't have too much fair and balanced news coverage.