The bottom line is they had no choice but to suspend him. It would have been impossible for them to attack FOX for allowing their commentators to make political contributions while not punishing someone acting in the role of journalist for doing the same.
If you want to report the news, you don't get to help make it. I'm not a journalist and I know that.
By donating to three Democratic candidates while covering the midterms on MSNBC, Olbermann crossed a bright journalistic line—even for a commentator whose partisan sympathies are no secret.
The network had no choice but to suspend him, even though he's the biggest draw on NBC's cable channel. "Mindful of NBC News policy and standards," MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement, "I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."
The real forehead-slapper here is that Olbermann donated the legal maximum, $2,400, to Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva on Oct. 28—the same day he interviewed the congressman for Countdown. Viewers, of course, had no way of knowing.
Olberman is of course free to be as partisan as he likes when filling his role as a commentator. However, when acting as a journalist and reporting the news there is a significant difference: his responsibility to his audience and to journalistic tradition is to provide facts. That's it. Nothing more. If he fails to remain unbiased in this capacity, than MSNBC has no ethical option save to remove him. Otherwise, they're as useless as FOX.
What has not gotten a lot of attention in the midst of this controversy is that GE’s NBC Universal, one of the largest media conglomerates in the country, is in the process of merging with Comcast, the largest cable television provider in U.S. The new head of that company would be Stephen B. Burke, Comcast’s COO and a “Bush Ranger” who raised at least $200,000 for the '04 reelection campaign of Pres. George W. Bush.
ReplyDelete