Then there was the time Mr. Moto gave an example that had absolutely nothing to do with what was being asked.
Saw thread title and wondered how long util someone said, “But Fox News!!!” I do not know Fox’s policy but:
Pretty black and white. I do disagree with that policy, however much I dislike Olbermann. It’s ok to spew partisan talking points on TV but not donate to preferred candidates? Dumb policy, but he violated it.
NBC says privately that they’re trying to show that they have journalistic integrity. However, people pointing and laughing is not going to get them there.
No, Diogenes asked about making things up and reporting on conspiracy theories and Mr. Moto worked in the word paranoid to refer to Olbermann.
It’s exactly the same thing.
Isn’t it?
This. Like others have said, it’s clear which way he leans it shouldn’t be surprising who he’d donate to, but I don’t understand how he didn’t realize he was violating the rules.
It would be a bad idea to determine how long the suspension will be before all the fact are in and before they gauge how their viewership and the public feel about this.
I see the New York Times is reporting that Fox’s Sean Hannity and Neil Cavuto have given money to Republican candidates, so if you want a counterexample, that would do the trick. (There’s at least one other wrinkle in this issue, which the Times also points out - a network might have one standard for its employees and a different one, or none, for people who are contributors and only work there part time.) I don’t know what NewsCorp’s policy on contributions is, if it has one. I’d say it compromises their integrity but I don’t think they have any, and we all know what NewsCorp is about. MSNBC is also partisan and has become more open about it with “Lean Forward,” but even if you have a side I don’t think you can have your anchors and broadcasters giving money to the people they are supposed to cover.
This issue here is not that Olbermann outed himself as a liberal. We all knew he is one. But say Grijalva or Giffords gets caught up in a scandal next month. Can you trust Olbermann to do a fair job interviewing them or reporting on what they did? If he didn’t address them, would you think he was covering for them? If he did talk about it, would you think he might be pulling his punches?
I’ve heard that this is also the problem with his donations. Even if it was OK to make them per his contract, he didn’t disclose them. If you’re interviewing someone when you’ve made a donation to their campaign, I’d like to know while I’m watching/reading the interview.
He might have just been mistaken - but he sure made a conspiracy-flavored mess of the thing. Didn’t look like he investigated the matter much before spouting off - his staff could have told him about the Twitter accounts.
Since then, I guess he has been using Twitter all of the time.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24797758/
Straight from MSNBC’s website. According to Olbermann, Hilary Clinton was invoking assassination while running against Obama for the Dem nomination in 08.
At the very least, he took something Clinton said and stretched it so far from its original meaning that his message and hers are not even remotely similar.
Unfortunately he was not the only person who took it that way.
Nobody asked for cites involving other people. And I don’t know who all took it what way, but his comments were, if not invoking conspiracy, stretching the truth to its extreme.
It doesn’t affect your cite; I’m just pointing out it was a common piece of stupidity for a few days. I don’t think there’s anything conspiracist about it, though. It’s biased, stupid, and judgmental.
I’m just surprised to hear him considered a journalist. If he’s a journalist in the tradition of objective journalism, he’s a miserable, ridiculous failure. But he’s not at all a part of that tradition, as far as I can tell: he’s part of a different tradition.
In my opinion, it totally makes sense for NBC to parse out who the partisans are and who they aren’t–not just for this rule, but for all kinds of behavior. If a supposedly objective journalist writes a book that excoriated an entire political party, I’d see a problem–but this is par for the course for modern-day pundits. They’re a different creature from journalists.
I’m not super-familiar with Juan Williams, for example, except from his NPR commentary, but I always got the impression we was in the supposed-to-be-objective camp. I never got that impression about Olbermann, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Colmes, or any of their ilk.
Amusingly, Phil Griffin’s Wikipedia bio has been vandalized to read “Phil Griffin is a Teabagger. He was named Teabagger in-chief in November 2010.” It’s possible Scarborough* went through the proper channels with his contribution and Olbermann didn’t, but makes you wonder what personal issues are at play. Olbermann is supposed to be hard to work with. I think there should be a hard line on this stuff, but from the network’s point of view, declaring yourself progressive and then suspending Olbermann for this is really confusing.
Here’s some more, from an old New Yorker piece about Olbermann.
*And just to get back to my earlier point about open shilling, let’s not forget Scarborough is a former Republican Congressman.
From the dailykos article:
From WaPo:
So it’s possible Scarborough was within the rules at the time.
Or according to MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19178161/
So it’s possible Scarborough sought permission.
There’s not enough data to validate dailykos’ comparison.
False equivalence. Olbermann is nothing like Glenn Beck. He may be on the other side of the political debate from Beck, but his rhetorical style, his standards for commentary and so forth are an order of magnitude superior to Beck’s.
Once again, a false equivalence. O Reilly regularly tells outright, verifiable LIES and does not back down when he is shown to be wrong. Olbermann may have been wrong on the facts a time or two, but I have never known him to not back down when he is shown to be wrong.
Makes no difference whether Olberman is a complete partisan or not. What if, in 2008, he had contributed to Hillary’s campaign and not Obama’s or this year, if he had contributed to Lisa Murkowski and not Joe Miller?
“Single out” or include him in a montage? He certainly deserved to be singled out though… perhaps he is now the Worst Person in the World.