Monday, February 04, 2008

While watching Fox News Watch this Saturday, we heard this tease for an upcoming segment:
He's opinionated and he's neutral? How in the world does MSNBC's Keith Olbermann get away with his multiple media roles?
A picture of Olbermann from his "Countdown" show appeared, followed by the "Daily Kos" logo over text. The actual segment criticized Olbermann because he hosted his network's coverage of the State of the Union address, then, while interviewing former presidential candidate Bill Richardson, told Richardson he would have made a good President.

Let's think about this for amount. Simply hosting a State of the Union address does not make one neutral. After all, Brit Hume regularly hosts this coverage on Fox News, and since Hume left ABC News, no one has confused Hume with a neutral party. Hume's colleagues Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have multiple shows.

The segment itself, to my knowledge, never addressed Olbermann's commentary roles other than the one he does for NBC News. Do they consider Olbermann a news anchor? Yes, but we don't. He's anchoring his own show, which is part news and part opinion.

If the argument is the network bills itself as neutral, yet hires people who do liberal commentary elsewhere, that's a valid point. But networks don't hire neutral people to do prime-time shows.

P, X

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