It is bad enough that Glenn Beck continues to pollute the airwaves on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, having called for people to be "shot in the head" with no repercussions whatsoever. However, now we learn that Keith Olbermann is being dumped unceremoniously from MSNBC subsequent to NBC being bought out (oh, excuse me, "merged with") Comcast. Funny how the minute I saw the reports that this merger was going to happen, the first thought that came to my mind was, "they will fire Olbermann," which I then dismissed as mere paranoia. Well...
Anyway, I recognize that he has his oddities, such as going on for some time after Obama became president to end his broadcasts with how many days it had been since "President Bush declared mission accomplished in Iraq." But he was and is far superior to Beck and many others who persist without any question of their being fired on Fox and elsewhere (although we did see Juan Williams get the boot on NPR, only to have him get a huge contract from Fox and more recently the person who booted him booted herself). Someone should remove the jackass who removed Olbermann, but the trend in US media of ever larger corporations controlled by ever more conservative owners pushing to slice off the left while encouraging the right seems nearly unstoppable.
Those were my first thoughts, as well. But I'm not sure they stand up to the cold light of day.
ReplyDeleteKeith is pretty notorious for not getting along with management, and I think (or guess) that is the real story here.
Rachel, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Ed Schultz are all further left than Kieth, and they're bringing in Cenk Uygur, another fiery liberal.
I don't like the move, but I really don't think it takes MSNBC to the right, even a little.
Cheers!
JzB
I have just seen on daily kos that there is a New York Times report coming out that says that this action was several weeks in the making and had nothing to do with Comcast, indeed that the Comcast people were worried that they would be blamed for it if he was removed right after the merger, which has indeed happened.
ReplyDeleteApparently the deal puts a gag order on Olbermann and restricts him from being on TV anywhere for some extended period. I am really wondering what all that is about, but apparently all involved are not saying much of anything. Pretty clearly there is more going on here than we know about at this point, but it may be that I am off-base in blaming Comcast for this.