Keith Olbermann was suspended from MSNBC on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, violating NBC’s News ethics policy.
MSNBC TV President Phil Griffin announced in a statement: “I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
The donations were first reported by the Politico website earlier in the day. Olbermann acknowledged the donations in a statement to Politico, saying he gave the maximum legal donation of $2,400 to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Tea Party candidate Rand Paul.
The charismatic, debonair and dramatically verbose host of MSNBC’s highly rated TV show “Countdown” - Olbermann is the sort of “on air” personality that you either love or just cannot stand.
With Fox ownership and TV hosts contributing millions to Republicans and allowing Tea Party candidates to openly solicit contributions on air - free of charge, it would seem a direct correlation between media bias and the almighty dollar (giving money to campaigns) has undoubtedly been proven true by FOX after all - who has only one policy about journalistic ethics: NOT ALLOWED.
Still I cannot excuse MSNBC for their lame handling of this seemingly harmless deviation on Olbermann’s part of the MSNBC employee policy.
Already, the FaceBook groups are promoting the boycott of MSNBC until Olberman is allowed to return. Keith’s absence will only hurt MSNBC’s ratings in the short and long term. I suppose rules are rules, but it will be difficult for millions of loyal viewers to fill the void until Keith Olbermann is once again allowed to freely bash the "right wing-nuts" as only he truly can.
Olbermann’s usually prolific Twitter feed was noticeably silent on the entire issue.
I watch PBS and BBC both every nite just to get a “neutral” POV, but Judy Woodruff is a blue-bible Dem and last nite she was chortling when she asked about Sarah Palin’s presence in Alaska to an Anchorage Dem reporter when he said “she’s not around when things aren’t going well…” Woodruff is as big a snark ho’ as the Courics and Sawyers of the admittedly blue channels. Sarah came out a winner three nights ago, but Woodruff and the rest of the third-raters on PBS, especially Mark Shields, an over-the-hill guy if there ever was one, are all in the bag for the DNC.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC is the internationalist socialist channel, but since I was an FSO living overseas on four different continents in the day, I watch just to keep tabs on the EU & Middle East, just to name two areas I worked in at State. BTW, my best contact @ State runs the Afghanistan Desk and confides all the fire and brimstone about Karzai is merely Dick Holbrooke’s revenge for Karzai’s snubbing The Big Dick mercilessly over the last two years. All our US allies took bagfuls and suitcases full of cash from the CIA in the Middle East. Why should Afghanistan be an exception? Especially for Iran, on the country’s western border. We pay Karzai under the table or did so for five years or so, even before he was elected President.