Fallout over Ollbermann remarks

[quote name='JolietJake']Looks like some of the things that Keith Olbermann has been saying have come back to bite him.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080908/ap_en_tv/tv_nbc_olbermann[/quote]

As someone who watches alot of MSNBC, I noticed that Scarborough has been exiting stage right every time Olbermann came on - guess that explains it.

Personally I think Olbermann is hilarious - the shovel comment was a little out of line but IMO this has more to do with kowtowing to Palin's anti-media crusade then anything else. I'm getting sick of the NBC NBC NBC drill drill drill USA USA USA nonsense coming out of the right since Palin got on the ticket, she's really bringing home the idiot vote for sure.
 
Kind of sucks, but just as some of the more conservative anchors are getting reeled back in (i.e. the Terrorist Fist Jab debacle), the liberals too much keep their leash short. On either side, things are getting far too passionate about reporting on politics when it requires a neutral delivery.

A pity though, because I do like Olbermann, though he nor MSNBC are not my preferred news venue.

~HotShotX
 
I like Olbermann, but it gets really annoying when everything he says he tries to make witty. And he talks in that tone...thank god I agree with his political beliefs and loved him as an ESPN guy, haha.
 
Too many anchors think that being "impartial" is letting both sides put their BS out there without being challenged on it. Its nice to see people like Olbermann and Campbell Brown out there calling people out.
 
[quote name='dafoomie']Too many anchors think that being "impartial" is letting both sides put their BS out there without being challenged on it. Its nice to see people like Olbermann and Campbell Brown out there calling people out.[/QUOTE]

But that's really not what people watch News Anchors for. They watch it to get the news, as reported. Not commentary.

Olberman needs to be thrown back in the O'Rielly, Hannity and Colmes, Glenn Beck play pin where he belongs.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']But that's really not what people watch News Anchors for. They watch it to get the news, as reported. Not commentary.

Olberman needs to be thrown back in the O'Rielly, Hannity and Colmes, Glenn Beck play pin where he belongs.[/quote]
Ehhhh, maybe that was true at one time. I think people want a little commentary these days. Otherwise i don't know why news stations would let their anchors do it. That's why some people only watch fox news, they want commentary they agree with.
 
I haven't watched Fox News in some time, but I don't recall any opinions during the news breaks or news segments. Granted, most of their schedule is filled with talking heads commenting on the news, I think that's different.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']But that's really not what people watch News Anchors for. They watch it to get the news, as reported. Not commentary.

Olberman needs to be thrown back in the O'Rielly, Hannity and Colmes, Glenn Beck play pin where he belongs.[/QUOTE]
Reporting the news is about facts. And when guests are being dishonest on your show, you have a responsibility to not let it slide, and report the facts as they are. This isn't NBC Nightly News, where you're strictly just reporting news, its coverage of a political convention.

Their job isn't to simply give equal time to both parties, its about the facts. And when people are loose with the facts, its their job to say so.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']I haven't watched Fox News in some time, but I don't recall any opinions during the news breaks or news segments. Granted, most of their schedule is filled with talking heads commenting on the news, I think that's different.[/QUOTE]
They work that in under the guise of, "some people say" in order to inject unsourced opinion.
 
Olbermann sucks, but so does Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc, etc, etc. Conservatives will talk about the liberal media all day and all night, but fact of the matter is conservative commentators are far more outspoken. My point is that, despite Olbermann being a hack, we need tools like him to be getting even more exposure and being even bigger hacks to counter the countless right-wing hacks. Trash like DailyKos and HuffPo are nice, but they hardly get the attention of the Fox News talking heads. Those outspoken right-wing hacks on Fox News are helping, greatly, the GOP -- the DNC needs its equivalent.
 
So Olbermann gets silenced but that fat fuck Scarborough gets nothin' (but god only knows MORE airtime)?

Liberal media indeed. :rofl:

David Gregory = ratings DEATH. They'll come to their senses soon enough.

thrust, the best example of a reporter not wearing their views on their sleeve and still calling dude on their shit was the late, great, great, great Tim Russert. He would call everyone on their shit, cite sources, quotes, tough questions - NOBODY can hold a candle compared to him.

You know who doesn't need to ask questions? Bill O'Reilly; you pretty much write yourself off the "journalist" roll call once you ask someone like Obama about William Ayers. I'll bet that pinheaded fuck hammered John Kerry about the Swift Boat fuckers, too.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']I haven't watched Fox News in some time, but I don't recall any opinions during the news breaks or news segments. Granted, most of their schedule is filled with talking heads commenting on the news, I think that's different.[/quote]

That's funny, in all the times I've passed by Fox News, I don't remember seeing any news.

BTW - some funny MSNBC clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CudatgNdoIU&feature=related
 
Olbermann is a douchebag. He has no business doing real news coverage and should stick to his hyper-partisan commentary show. Having him anchor during a convention would be like Fox putting Sean Hannity in the same spot.
 
[quote name='elprincipe']Olbermann is a douchebag. He has no business doing real news coverage and should stick to his hyper-partisan commentary show. Having him anchor during a convention would be like Fox putting Sean Hannity in the same spot.[/QUOTE]

But... didn't they? I thought it was Hannity & Greta for FOX News at the Republican convention...
 
[quote name='Koggit']But... didn't they? I thought it was Hannity & Greta for FOX News at the Republican convention...[/QUOTE]

Was it? I watched C-SPAN personally...if they did that was stupid as well.
 
[quote name='JolietJake']Networks want their biggest names doing their biggest stories.[/QUOTE]

It's sad when the "biggest names" are partisan hacks.
 
All of the anchors are partisan hacks even if it's just a persona. It's the WWE-fication of the news. People like to see drama and conflict instead of rational discourse and balanced news.
 
How is Bill O'Reilly not under any media scrutiny? Is it because he says stupid shit so often that everyone's used to it?
 
[quote name='chasemurata']How is Bill O'Reilly not under any media scrutiny? Is it because he says stupid shit so often that everyone's used to it?[/quote]

Loofahs.

That is all.
 
Olbermann's Countdown is just about my favorite hour of TV. I watch it because it seems to be the only place on TV that I can find that "liberal bias" the conservatives are always bitching about.

I think Rachel Maddow's new show is pretty fucking excellent, too.
 
[quote name='depascal22']All of the anchors are partisan hacks even if it's just a persona. It's the WWE-fication of the news. People like to see drama and conflict instead of rational discourse and balanced news.[/quote]

I'd love to see good 'ol J.R. as a News Anchor. But that's just me.
 
[quote name='bmachine']Olbermann's Countdown is just about my favorite hour of TV. I watch it because it seems to be the only place on TV that I can find that "liberal bias" the conservatives are always bitching about.
[/QUOTE]

It's all over the place. Just pick up your local major newspaper.
 
*groan*

Always with the allusions, never with the proof.

Sometimes I feel like I'm having the same conversation when we discuss proof that god exists or that there's a liberal bias in the media.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']*groan*

Always with the allusions, never with the proof.

Sometimes I feel like I'm having the same conversation when we discuss proof that god exists or that there's a liberal bias in the media.[/quote]

Don't forget the myth of global warming and the theory of evolution!
 
[quote name='mykevermin']*groan*

Always with the allusions, never with the proof.

Sometimes I feel like I'm having the same conversation when we discuss proof that god exists or that there's a liberal bias in the media.[/QUOTE]

C'mon, myke, I gave you plenty of proof in the past (the polls that have 90+% of journalists voting Democrat) but you just won't accept them.
 
You know Myke, I've applied for a security clearance. The form actually asks if you've ever been associated with someone who plotted to destroy the United States. Now, if I filled that section out with a name, I likely would not have gotten that clearance.

Obama would have to put down William Ayers and still gets a security clearance.

[quote name='elprincipe']C'mon, myke, I gave you plenty of proof in the past (the polls that have 90+% of journalists voting Democrat) but you just won't accept them.[/quote]
Myke's a liberal, remember? He needs only to keep repeating the same thing and it becomes true, regardless of facts. OBAMA IS THE MESSIAH SWIFT BOAT IS THE ONLY TRUE EVIL etc etc. It is really the only thing he's ever been good at on this site.

I mean, seriously. Just compare the media's silence on Edwards's affair before he finally came out with it vs. their feeding frenzy on Palin's kid being pregnant. If you don't see bias there, you're just willfully ignorant.

EDIT: Really though, I have to commend him. The rhetorical position he takes is an excellent position. He only needs to dismiss any actual evidence as outliers, that Olbermann's childish playing at being an infantile Murrow-wannabe is an outlier in a right-wing dominated press. He can laugh off and dismiss anything as "unconclusive" or "unconvincing" while howling about those evil righties. I'll give him that he knows his stuff.
 
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[quote name='RollingSkull']

I mean, seriously. Just compare the media's silence on Edwards's affair before he finally came out with it vs. their feeding frenzy on Palin's kid being pregnant. If you don't see bias there, you're just willfully ignorant.[/QUOTE]

C'mon, that's not proof. Anything less than signed affidavits or on-air admissions of personal, left-leaning bias means they're closet conservatives by default.
 
[quote name='elprincipe']C'mon, myke, I gave you plenty of proof in the past (the polls that have 90+% of journalists voting Democrat) but you just won't accept them.[/QUOTE]

Don't be silly. That's no proof they are biased. It's just a statistical fact that higher educated (read: smart) people vote Democrat. Duh. And only greedy ignorant people that don't care about the poor vote Republican.
 
So they vote Democrat, does that necessarily mean that what they report has a liberal bias? Do you think people say that the people on Fox are biased to the right because of how they vote?
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']Don't be silly. That's no proof they are biased. It's just a statistical fact that higher educated (read: smart) people vote Democrat. Duh. And only greedy ignorant people that don't care about the poor vote Republican.[/quote]

Dems do care about the poor. Quite a bit, they want to teach those uneducated rubes how to think and act. You know... just so long as they don't actually have to see or touch them... Disgusting creatures.

And the dirty poor definitely should stay away from the our upper class lefty parties. Disgusting stupid creatures... some of them are even religious? Can you believe that? Well, it is our burden as the white, educated men to bring civilization to these poor, stupid rubes through the power of our caring.... just... eh... so long as we can do it from over here.
 
[quote name='RollingSkull']I mean, seriously. Just compare the media's silence on Edwards's affair before he finally came out with it vs. their feeding frenzy on Palin's kid being pregnant. If you don't see bias there, you're just willfully ignorant.[/quote]

Sorry to break up the Republican circle-jerk, but Edward's affair was broken by the National Enquirer (of all publications) and he only came clean before it became public knowledge anyway.

Much like the story about Palin's daughter was broken by left-wing blogs, and Palin only came clean because it was a matter of time before we found out the whole truth anyway.

Now, if you think any reporter is going to sit on a juicy sex scandal for any candidate (liberal or conservative) you need to go back in the cave and tighten up that tin-foil hat a few notches.
 
[quote name='elprincipe']C'mon, myke, I gave you plenty of proof in the past (the polls that have 90+% of journalists voting Democrat) but you just won't accept them.[/QUOTE]

Find me those again. I don't recall seeing them.
 
[quote name='camoor']Sorry to break up the Republican circle-jerk, but Edward's affair was broken by the National Enquirer (of all publications) and he only came clean before it became public knowledge anyway.[/quote]

And yet despite the photo-ops of Edwards as white as a sheet at the same hotel as his mistress, not MSM publication one sent their reporters in to investigate.

For the record, the Enquirer has scooped the MSM on this, on Rush's painkiller addiction, on the shoes O.J. Simpson wore that were pertinent to the case, and the list goes on...
 
[quote name='RollingSkull']And yet despite the photo-ops of Edwards as white as a sheet at the same hotel as his mistress, not MSM publication one sent their reporters in to investigate.[/quote]

Come on, you're really reaching here.

Coverage of the affair was all over newspapers and TV, even MSNBC did a full-on expose of the affair from the beginning to end including the documentary he paid his mistress to make, titled "The Real John".

Face it - sex scandals get big ratings, and at the end of the day that's all media corporations really care about. If they really had an ideological bent they'd be giving you dry lectures full of facts about how much we're spending in the Iraq war, how far into debt it's putting us, how screwed up our patchwork healthcare system is, etc
 
[quote name='camoor']Come on, you're really reaching here.

Coverage of the affair was all over newspapers and TV, even MSNBC did a full-on expose of the affair from the beginning to end including the documentary he paid his mistress to make, titled "The Real John".

Face it - sex scandals get big ratings, and at the end of the day that's all media corporations really care about. If they really had an ideological bent they'd be giving you dry lectures full of facts about how much we're spending in the Iraq war, how far into debt it's putting us, how screwed up our patchwork healthcare system is, etc[/quote]

Yes, but only AFTER Edwards confessed it. They didn't dig for this they way they would have.

And you have a very narrow definition of "ideological bent." They don't have to give you dry lectures to give you lefty news. They can pick and choose the sexy stories all the same. It is much easier to talk of "grim milestones" of US casualties and Gitmo than it is to report enemy casualties and progress in Iraq.

Hate to break it to you, but you don't own the definition of what would be liberal.

Oh, and in relation to thrustbucket's fallacy-riddled excrement "smart people are democrat," rather than debunk it, I'll just return fire with successful people are Republicans. People who know how to succeed in life, run businesses, provide services people need in exchange for money, are Republicans. No wonder the bitter democrats who make nowhere near that kind of money or enjoy nowhere near that kind of success want to levy taxes on the successful.

Gotcha games are fun, aren't they?
 
Alternately, you could just play the game I do. Find a news article, AP is usually the best for this sort of thing, since most news outlets just feed you AP stories, describing malfeasance on the part of a Congressman or some other political type and play "Guess that party." See how long it takes for the article writer to indicate the party of the alleged perpetrator of villainy or sexual indiscretion.

I'll give you a hint: If the R-word isn't mentioned in the first paragraph, ten will get you one the person in question leans leftward.
 
Which is simply more untruth and allusion.

I mean, really, anyone who claims that there is a "firestorm" of news about Bristol Palin is utterly full of it.
 
[quote name='RollingSkull']Alternately, you could just play the game I do. Find a news article, AP is usually the best for this sort of thing, since most news outlets just feed you AP stories, describing malfeasance on the part of a Congressman or some other political type and play "Guess that party." See how long it takes for the article writer to indicate the party of the alleged perpetrator of villainy or sexual indiscretion.

I'll give you a hint: If the R-word isn't mentioned in the first paragraph, ten will get you one the person in question leans leftward.[/QUOTE]

That's a good example of bias by omission. As well as all the stories they decide NOT to run in the first place. Alternatively, there's a greater attachment of "right wing" to "conservative", or "republican" in television media reporting than the mention of the word "left-wing" in connection with "liberal", or "democrat". It's as if there are no conservatives, just right-wing ones, and they are all fringe reactionaries. You people who don't notice this shit are blind, or ignorant, or both.

You can dissect almost any news story from CNN, AP, MSNBC, or any daily newspaper and note the adjectives used to describe Bush, his policies, his staff, fellow republicans, and his advisers are far from objective and are selected for the express purpose of shaping viewer opinion on a given story's premise. This is not even mentioning the facts they choose to omit from stories as well. Fox does it too, no one could deny that. They're just the reverse to most all others' obverse.

What I've been noticing more and more lately is small, off-hand, off-cuff remarks or one word quips at the end of location shoots and viewer interest pieces. Joe anchor will sum up the previous reporters story with a snide comment or feigned bit of altruism after the story has ended, instead of just launching to the next story or commercial break. Even just one word said in a particular way can telegraph the anchors opinion on a subject. It's unprofessional, but I guess the networks encourage this behavior to make the anchors more human, like our best buddy is delivering the news to us. It's disgusting. It's like watching an entire day of Fox and Friends on every channel.
 
[quote name='RollingSkull']Yes, but only AFTER Edwards confessed it. They didn't dig for this they way they would have.

And you have a very narrow definition of "ideological bent." They don't have to give you dry lectures to give you lefty news. They can pick and choose the sexy stories all the same. It is much easier to talk of "grim milestones" of US casualties and Gitmo than it is to report enemy casualties and progress in Iraq.

Hate to break it to you, but you don't own the definition of what would be liberal.

Oh, and in relation to thrustbucket's fallacy-riddled excrement "smart people are democrat," rather than debunk it, I'll just return fire with successful people are Republicans. People who know how to succeed in life, run businesses, provide services people need in exchange for money, are Republicans. No wonder the bitter democrats who make nowhere near that kind of money or enjoy nowhere near that kind of success want to levy taxes on the successful.

Gotcha games are fun, aren't they?[/quote]

You're the kind of guy who gives conspiracy theories a bad name. Everything is so ass-backwards in your post even a casual google search will prove it wrong.

I don't have time to debunk everything, but just lemme at that "Republicans are successful" tripe.

Bush W's business experience is a study in taking advantage of political connections and massive taxpayer-provided subsidies to make up for piss-poor business skill. When the Chinese employ the same techniques we call it "communism".

Oh - and if Republicans are the party of the financially successful, how has Obama raised record amounts of funding? Even with all the massive corporate donations rolling into McCain's lobbyist-controlled campaign HQ, it's Obama who is breaking records for campaign contributions in these last months.

You see - you can be successful and reform the healthcare system and be against a costly and unpopular war. I don't care if you think I'm not a liberal, you're probably right, that label doesn't accurately define the entirety of my political beliefs, but I could live in a country run by forward-thinking compassionate people. I can't live in a world run by a sell-out old man and his war-mongering theocratic hypocrite of a VP.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']That's a good example of bias by omission. As well as all the stories they decide NOT to run in the first place. Alternatively, there's a greater attachment of "right wing" to "conservative", or "republican" in television media reporting than the mention of the word "left-wing" in connection with "liberal", or "democrat". It's as if there are no conservatives, just right-wing ones, and they are all fringe reactionaries. You people who don't notice this shit are blind, or ignorant, or both.[/quote]

Show me stats.

You can dissect almost any news story from CNN, AP, MSNBC, or any daily newspaper and note the adjectives used to describe Bush, his policies, his staff, fellow republicans, and his advisers are far from objective and are selected for the express purpose of shaping viewer opinion on a given story's premise. This is not even mentioning the facts they choose to omit from stories as well. Fox does it too, no one could deny that. They're just the reverse to most all others' obverse.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

What I've been noticing more and more lately is small, off-hand, off-cuff remarks or one word quips at the end of location shoots and viewer interest pieces. Joe anchor will sum up the previous reporters story with a snide comment or feigned bit of altruism after the story has ended, instead of just launching to the next story or commercial break. Even just one word said in a particular way can telegraph the anchors opinion on a subject. It's unprofessional, but I guess the networks encourage this behavior to make the anchors more human, like our best buddy is delivering the news to us. It's disgusting. It's like watching an entire day of Fox and Friends on every channel.
Click to expand...

Care to provide an example of how this is inherently a "liberal" problem?
 
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