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.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.