Quote of the Day: On NBC Axing NBC Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews As MSNBC Anchors
The political quote of the day comes from Talk Left’s Big Tent Democrat (who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago at a blogging conference where he and some top conservative bloggers respectfully discussing politics invited me to join them for a drink) on NBC’s decision to as NBC dumped Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as MSNBC anchors:
Fox News is not a journalistic enterprise and we all know this. No one in their right mind would deny it. But NBC News decided that its MSNBC NEWS operation would not become a Left wing Fox News. I applaud them for that. Clearly it will continue to be a Democratic leaning organization in this election – with a nightly lineup of Tweety, Olbermann and, starting tonight, Rachel Maddow.
But it has done the right thing regarding its news coverage. It will not become Fox News Left. This is a good thing. We need journalists, more and better ones, to coin a phrase. Not more hackery masquerading as journalism. Now David Gregory is no one’s idea of a great journalist and calling him out for buying right wing nonsense is an important task but he is certainly more of a journalist than Olbermann and Matthews.
That hits the nail on the head.
In some quarters this is being painted as an opinion-suppression move by corporate media, NBC giving into the McCain campaign, the triumph of conservative commentary over progressive or center left commentary. But the reality is this:
Since the 1980s the mainstream media has been on the run as new information delivery styles and technologies have offered increasingly stiff competition. First, in the 80s, the mainstream media had to start competing with tabloids as the National Enquirer began doing political stories as well with the Gary Hart “Monkey Business” expose. Conservative talk radio mushroomed. Along came Fox News. And now the internet.
One popular new style of information delivery is opinion-based journalism versus fact based journalism. Even if you criticize the news media, fact based newspapers offer more sides to a story than radio and cable talk shows. Fox News essentially took the radio talk show model and grafted it onto the traditional broadcast model and delivers the news from the perspective of a Republican world view, in many cases.
Enter Air America. It was a counter-programming move which has (uh, oh, here come the complaints and ideological demonizations) generally flopped.
It has been unable to expand its audience beyond its anti-conservative talk progressive base. I traveled through at least 5 states in a 7 week period this summer and you need to call in FBI investigators to find it in most radio markets — or to find it on a station with a strong broadcast signal. Even though some of its programs are OK, it generally failed because it openly seemed to be trying to be a counter-force to conservative talk, unlike progressive talkers Ed Schultz or Stephanie Miller who aren’t Air America and who simply did entertaining programs that were progressive but didn’t seem to have as their main purpose electing more Democrats.
Enter MSNBC. With Olbermann showing audience growth due to progressives tuning in and spreading the word about him, his role has grown on MSNBC, a network that does not only have progressive hosts such as Olbermann but also Joe Scarborough. One issue: should a talk show host be a news anchor?
During the conventions, I watched MSNBC’s coverage and the Olbermann-Mattews team. As a former journalist I kept thinking: “Why am I even watching these two guys? Look how far journalism has fallen not just from the days of Walter Cronkite, but from the heyday of Tom Brokaw. This is going to play into caricatures of this network painted by some on the right.” It seemed strange that MSNBC would choose as anchors to people who advertised their political preferences and who had become tainted among some viewers who weren’t their fans.
As others have noted, Olbermann’s Edward R. Murrow alter ego hasn’t really worked for a reason: Morrow as not ALWAYS outraged on issues or about politicians. Olbermann will continue to be praised, linked and embedded on blogs but the bottom line is that he is not the modern Murrow but is now as predictable as Fox’s Sean Hannity. Just saying “Good night and good luck” doesn’t make you Murrow-esque.
And Matthews? He was a superb print journalist who used to run a great TV talk show but has now become so emotionally invested in some candidates and almost eager to tell the world about his emotions that he has started to become a caricature of himself and not the hard-hitting journalist he used to be. He has seemingly lowered his own higher past standards.
Corporate NBC had a problem: anchors are your SYMBOLS and reflect your brand.
Matthews and Olbermann still have shows that are still important to the network and the two can be good commentators. But anchors are the face of what you do and who you are — and in their coverage they seemed to be the face of Counter Fox News. It didn’t work for Air America in terms of market share, reviews or prestige, to be counter Rush Limbaugh and it didn’t work for MSNBC in terms of substantive ratings growth or media writers’ feedback to be Counter Fox News.
It’s like your mom said: “If your friend jumps off a cliff does that mean you have to too?”
NBC chose not to jump off the cliff.
UPDATE: What was the breaking point? The AP suggests it came because Olbermann was starting to get seriously out of control and into turning coverage into one big editorial comment.
35 Responses to “Quote of the Day: On NBC Axing NBC Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews As MSNBC Anchors”
[...] Original JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief [...]
There's no doubt that they are both extremely opinionated. I watched FNC's coverage of the GOP convention, and was not particularly surprised to see Bill'o as one of their anchors. Its a good move by NBC, that will keep their coverage above Fox's journalistically— which is pretty easy to do. Gregory is a good pick.
I enjoyed watching Keith and Chris. They are a far better alternative to that tool Gregory or the conservative bobsey twins Buchanan and Scarborough.
Scarborough use to be more even on his program and fun to watch though I did not agree with him. But, since he's had Buchanan on as his sidekick almost every morning for the past 6 months I have stopped watching altogether.
He's become a far right big mouthed egomaniac with a very nasty streak.
Gregory I don't even watch. He's a shallow, inside the beltway gossipy tool.
I think for most of us on the left, we could understand this better if MSNBC put in someone good like Chuck Todd. But, with Gregory, that is simply an insult to everyone. They keep trying to shove this shallow talentless hack down our throats and no one is buying.
Gregory is inoffensive, but I think Glenn Greenwald hit the nail on the head in his article on this subject.
Cable news is filled with conservative commentators and hosts (including Chris Matthews, who has embarrassed himself by showing his manlove for Romney, Giuliani and Bush [see Greenwald's article for quotes]). We have Lou Dobbs, Brit Hume, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Joe Scarborough to name a few. But as soon as one anti-Bush voice gets on TV, we hear the rightwing bleating about how the end of objective journalism is at hand.
But Keith Olbermann is the anchor of their highest rated show. By far. Phil Donahue was the host of their highest rated show when he was on MSNBC.
The “journalist” I can never stand is the smug and self-absorbed Tucker Carlson. I was grateful that MSNBC cancelled his show and then minimized his contribution during the convention.
I don't mind Scarborough or Buchanan- as they keep it real. I don't want MSNBC to become the left's version of Fox.
I don't put Olbermann, O Reilly, Mathews or others in the same class as Cronkite, Murrow, Rather ( in his better days).
The aforementioned are personality pundits, nothing more. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are more journos than the spin hucksters. They do research for the sake of pointing out the absurdity of it all.
I will disagree with Kritt here. I think BTD is right and Olbermann and Matthews should be analysts and not moderators. Gregory is a putz. I'd rather have Brokaw or Williams as moderators than Gregory. But Olbermann does not qualify as a moderator. And Matthews is so full of his own emotion that he gets in the way.
Don't get me wrong, now. As an Obama partisan I love having Olbermann there. And I love Countdown as a cheerleading show and as a chance to push liberal blog issues into the mainstream, which is what Fox News does for the right. But he is not a moderator.
You all have to admit, Keith was right when he pointed out how disgusting and offensive the 9/11 video was at the RNC.
I saw the idiocy on Salon about “right-wing suppression” [sic] of the likes of Keith Olbermann and regurgitatied complaint about the “myth” [sic] of the liberal media and the corporate-ownership BS that in no way explains the routine leftist and partisan-Democratic bias in the media's _content_ that comes from its jouralists and editors (not the evil corporate right-wing owners and stockholders).
I have no problem with them being analysts– just not anchors.
DLS- If you are conservative– anything that doesn't echo your viewpoint seems too far to the left.
“One popular new style of information delivery is opinion-based journalism versus fact based journalism”
Conservative talk radio and Fox's divergence from liberalism in the media was a reaction to, and a result of, long-standing left-wing major-media opinion-based journalism! They are more often and more to the left than Fox is to the right today.
MSNBC chose to go too far to the left (being left is something we've all been used to for _decades_) and had to answer for some real abuses. Yet they are intriguing in that they are going to continue to go well to the left and actually shoot for that small target audience of ideologues *** plus the young people in this country *** which can be a great new market and a market _recovery_. There does seem to be a new recent rise of the real left, the farther left, the activist left, and a market for it, as seen by the success, _finally_, of left talk shows. Rachel Maddow and MSNBC have the confidence to assume the risk of having her go on television. It may be a fluke that simply is one aspect of public dissatisfaction with the GOP and conservatism (and the rest) that we have seen develop between the 2004 and 2006 elections, or it may be something deeper. Certainly the appeal to the young and naive, who have been deserting the “old media,” really has potential to reclaim market share for MSNBC.
And it even gives the small fraction of older people in this country with far left views, like Green Dreams and Chris WWW, as well as many more less-far left but definite liberals, a better outlet for their views as well as a stronger alternative to frequently-conservative Fox.
Let 'em take the risk.
Dan Rather would be right at home at the new MSNBC. More appropriate and honest, too…
DLS conveniently ignores the truth about the media that loved Bush II, dug up all the crap they could on Bill Clinton for eight years, pushed the Iraq war, and employs far more rightwing pundits and anchors than anything else.
Let me modify a statement from DLS from another thread to fit this one:
DLS,
You've been talking about how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should not be bailed out by the taxpayers. Presumably you know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not funded by the taxpayers right now. Apparently, Sarah Palin is not aware of that fact.
Note this paragraph fromt he McClatchy article:
“McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, speaking in Colorado Springs, Colo., said Fannie and Freddie had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, however, aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.”
When you say that something has “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers,” you are referring to something that the government runs and taxpayers already fund. Does Sarah Palin know what Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae do?
What Chris quoted:
“It didn’t work for Air America in terms of market share, reviews or prestige, to be counter Rush Limbaugh and it didn’t work for MSNBC in terms of substantive ratings growth or media writers’ feedback to be Counter Fox News.”
is, currently, not true, and MSNBC's gamble is that it may no longer be true.
Clarifications:
* It's not only Limbaugh (who is still best known, and the best of the talkers), but the others (Hannity, Beck, Boortz, and the lower-tier copycats).
* Fox stands out only because it's not overtly liberal the way the other networks and news sources (newspapers) are. MSNBC's farther-left shift is greater (farther left) than Fox's frequent right-of-center behavior. Fox obviously has found a missing major market (non-liberals) and thrived; MSNBC's farther-left move (almost militant) is risky, but has the advantage of appealing to normally liberal, naive youth. The rest of society is not monolithically conservative, either; even evangelical Christians who normally are considered definitely Religious Right (as opposed to the Religious Left, who has been quiet since the 1990s and may now take much more initiative as part of leftism's recent resurgence), are like the rest of society in often being concerned with, for example, environmental issues even if they aren't standard lefty environmentalists. (Better vehicle fuel efficiency is approved by over ninety per cent of the electorate, for example; federal research on wind, solar, and hydrogen energy, eighties per cent.)
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/933/a-closer-look-a…
[...] JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief wrote an interesting post today on Quote of the Day: On NBC Axing NBC Keith Olbermann and Chris …. Here’s a quick excerpt: [...]
How many liberal anchors are on CNN and MSNBC? How many liberal anchors are on NBC, ABC and CBS? How many liberal columnists are at the Washington Post, the NY Times, or the WSJ?
In the major media I can only think of Keith Olbermann, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Rachel Maddow (who is relatively new), and EJ Dionne.
Elrod,
Yes, the two “corporations” have a federal charter (these are government-formed corporations) that are funded currently by the private sector. Quasi-private — note that the federal presence is there and (as with PBGC) there always is out there the implicit demand on the taxpayers for a bailout to keep these corporations running if need be. (To date the concern has been with PBGC because of all the pension terminations that have happened in recent years.) McCain-Palin may be confused by the difference in the organization of Fannie Mae, for example, in 1938 versus the changes made to it when its charter was renewed in 1968. But the implicit demand on the taxpayers has always been there, as it has been with PBGC (not required, but obviously implicit).
Chris, you can be deceptive (without success) all you want; the media's record is there for all to see (vision or interpretation problems some of you may have notwithstanding).
Chris, you have a lot more thinking to do.
And in the meantime, here's the kind of opinion and entertainment you can enjoy.
It's name is a lie, but it fits in with your world view.
http://www.fair.org/index.php
Two people have said they watch O’Reilly anchor some of Fox’s coverage at the republican convention.
I must have missed that and, if true, should be a black mark against Fox.
Can anyone confirm he was anchoring, or was he shown in an opinion piece?
DLS,
@ Greenwald… here is Sumner Redstone in 2004:
As for NBC, it's owned by GE, a major war contractor. FOX is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a notorious ideologue.
Also, Elrod, if PBGC is bailed out by the taxpayers, many of us will want to see cost control through a lowering of the maximum benefits PBGC will be obliged to pay the beneficiaries. That is, _all_ beneficiaries should see a lower maximum and benefit payment schedule if, for example, the Big Three terminate their pension plans and dump gargantuan obligations onto the PBGC (which in that case, I could not see any way to avoid a taxpayer bailout).
The UAW “thirty and out” people retiring often before fifty can find new jobs. If the Big Three force a taxpayer bailout of the PBGC, the following should be _reduced_:
http://www.pbgc.gov/workers-retirees/benefits-i…
If the media was so liberal, then why did we hear about Obama's flag pin, his bowling score, his Reverend, whether or not he was a celebrity, whether or not the media was treating him too nicely… why did we find out about Bill Clinton's penis?
Why did they cheerlead the war, cheerlead for Bush? Why is everything that happens, including a hurricane, good for McCain?
The facts just don't add up.
Chris—-
Good question.
First of all, Joe, yours was an excellent post. The topic itself is not my point, but rather your construction……..attempting to cover the issue from both sides and attempting to weight analysis over personal opinion. Should you be able to persuade your other contributors to this model, your potential for garnishing hits would grow exponentially. Author opinion pieces are a dime a dozen in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, the troops let you down on your quest.
Instead of seeing this as a logical business move to try and capture the new viewership that will tune in for only the major political events……..they probably did not hit the numbers they wanted for the convention, so they don't want to miss them again during the debates……..the troops can't quite understand why this privately-owned enterprise somehow gets to do something they don't like.
The incremental regular folk viewers for these events have already proven they don't give a tinker's damn for the political opinions of the anchors because they don't tune in at other times.
Just to answer my own question raised above concerning O’Reilly anchoring convention coverage at Fox. This from TalkLeft:
“While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.”
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/9/7/232948/1518
I didn’t think that any credible news outlet would put an opinion commentator into an anchor position. I was correct.
jwest,
I suggest you read up about Brit Hume.
Here is one nice nugget from Hume about John Murtha:
Chris,
I’m going to assume you had a point.
If that point is that Brit Hume is a republican version of Olbermann, I think you might have a rough time selling that to even this crowd.
Check to see if the quote you cited came from an editorial or some time he was acting in the role of opinion panelist. If he said this while performing as an anchor, I would be very surprised.
Yeah, you, DLS and casualobserver probably don't see anything wrong with Brit Hume. Go figure.
More gems from the unbiased Brit Hume:
“The American people don’t like the Iraq war, probably never will, but they’re not rooting for us to lose. They don’t seem invested in our losing the way the Democrats so often do.“
“Make no mistake about. This is what a lot of Democrats and those who support them think. They think the war on terror is some kind of a political scam which the administration is using to undermine civil liberties and expand the power of the executive branch of the government. They do not treat it particularly seriously.”
“It is very serious misbehavior on the part of Congressman Foley, whether it stems from arrogance or just weakness of the human flesh is another question. It’s probably worth noting that there’s a difference between the two parties on these issues. Inappropriate behavior towards subordinates didn’t cost Gerry Studds his Democratic seat in Massachussetts, nor Barney Frank his. Nor did inappropriate behavior toward a subordinate even cost Bill Clinton his standing within the Democratic Party, even though indirectly he was impeached for it. Mark Foley found out about this, was found out to have done this, and he’s out of office and in total disgrace in his party.”
Wow.
Now that I see his comments written out like that, I’ve got to admit Brit Hume looks like a raving, right wing lunatic.
He could be Keith Olbermann’s evil twin.
Fox must use special drugs to prevent Hume from foaming at the mouth during broadcasts.
(heh)
jwest,
I never said he was a lunatic. If he was he'd be less effective. By masquerading as an “unpretentious journalist” the rightwing talking points he spews take on added weight.
Good for MSNBC, Olbermann's show can be fun to watch -when he doesn't go off the deep end- but having him as a anchor isn't a good idea. During the Denver convention, you could almost see him pop a boner whenever Obama's name was mentioned.
Gregory is kinda boring, I hope they can pair him with someone with a personality, but a good pick.
This seems to be a difference between us that lean-left and those that lean-right. I don't see any “lefties” here crying about this but see those that lean-right continue to cry about the “Liberal-media”.
Looks like NBC has decided that Olbermann's bias wasn't good for the networks journalistic integrity. I agree, good move NBC.