Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay from MSNBC for making donations to three Democrats in violation of NBC’s ethics policy.
Advertisement“I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night,” Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement. “Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
Olbermann, who does not hide his liberal views, has acknowledged donations of $2,400 each to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords during this election cycle.
NBC’s ethics policy generally bars political activity, including contributions, without the approval of the president of NBC News, Steve Capus, according to a 2007 story on MSNBC.com.
In response, Ed Morrissey awards Phil Griffin the Louis Renault Award:
The more I think about this, the more ridiculous it gets. MSNBC offers the most ridiculously biased televion coverage of politics possible, crowning it with Election Night coverage that had people wondering if NBC needed to hire grief and anger counseling for the entire on-air staff. And now, because Olbermann contributed to three Democrats last month, suddenly Griffin suspends him because “these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest”?For this, Griffin gets the Captain Louis Renault Award for his shock, shock! at finding that Olbermann may have jeopardized his standing as an impartial journalist:
Meanwhile, what’s going out on the air at MSNBC is almost as fascinating as its backroom machinations. At long last, we have the answer to that burning question: what sort of man reads Newsweek?
“Lawrence O’Donnell is a socialist,” Alexis Levinson of the Daily Caller writes:
At least, that’s what the MSNBC commentator himself told Glenn Greenwald when they duked it out on the air Friday on “Morning Joe.”
“I am a socialist,” O’Donnell said. “I live to the extreme left.”
* * *The loss of so many Blue Dog seats, Greenwald insisted, meant that this election was not an attack on liberalism, but O’Donnell was unconvinced.
“Blue Dog dominance passed the most liberal health-care bill!” O’Donnell retorted.
O’Donnell attacked Greenwald for being a “progressive,” a label he had accepted earlier in the show.
“Unlike you, Glenn, I am not a progressive,” O’Donnell said somewhat condescendingly, “I’m not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive.”
Also at the Daily Caller: “The Election Night clip MSNBC doesn’t want you to see.”
At Reason, Michael C. Moynihan asks, “Which is in worse shape, the state of the American economy or the state of American punditry?”
Or to tie this in with one of yesterday’s posts, no need to fire up the B-58s when the dinosaur media’s spent the last decade doing a remarkably job of imploding all by itself.
Update: While the length of Olbermann’s suspension is currently unknown, already, new job offers are pouring in!
Update: Keith’s closest friends circle the wagons on his behalf — though the consensus is not entirely universal.
Related: MSNBC: the network that brings new meaning to the word “explosive!”
Update: Steve Krakauer of Mediaite.com, the Website created by NBC legal analyst Dan Abrams, adds, “‘indefinitely’ is David Shuster language. That’s a big statement.”
Shuster’s suspension has so far proven quite “indefinite” indeed.
Will Olbermann’s be of similar duration? TV Newser reports, “Insiders we’ve talked to say Olbermann won’t be back. The question is whether he’ll leave or MSNBC keeps him off the air.”
Update: “It’s not about Olbermann’s job. It’s about Griffin’s. Well played, Phil.”
Update: Clearly, the solution to MSNBC’s myriad woes is obvious. Rehire Soledad O’Brien back from CNN, put the MSN back into MSNBC, and return the channel to its mid-1990s glory days. C’mon NBC, do this; win one for Dev Null!
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It was nice to read that other people besides myself, thought the staff of the mainstream media appeared to be having a nervous break-down. I was puzzled. The thought occurred to me; is this because if the news does not go the way their employer desires, they will then have the cane used on them….or fired?
Something is not right in the newsrooms of today.
Next he needs to firs the rest of the newsroom and editors and at least half the crew of NBC MSNBC and then resign in disgrace!
Maybe someone at MSNBC was asked to create a, “distraction.”
What a great article. I may be the only person who never watched all of “Casablanca”, but now I know about Capt. Renault. At first I thought it may have been an allusion to the Renault auto, the only car less reliable than the Yugo. SHOCKED! That was great.
The title of the article was also great in that I was waiting for some made up MSM number about how so many people lost their jobs since the Demo Debacle on Tuesday. Yes, the dems lost big, but their collective staff can find religion, perform a pirouet, and viola! show up with “Republican” tatooed on their foreheads where 666 had previously been. Then they can go to work for the new guys.
But the biggee? Overblown, er Olbermann. However, this is just a show trial as would be practiced by the Dems when one of their own has been caught. KO and Griffin.
Good on you, Ed.
Captain Louis Renault… That’s very good! Of all the liberal gin joints in the world… he had to be kicked off that one!
This is why the Germans invented schaedenfruede.
I am surprised he was suspended, perhaps they were looking for a reason. His bias has never been a secret and I was not aware that he was a journalist, I thought he was an on-air personality, or whatever the correct term is.
Kief put his money where his mouth is. That’s commendable. NBC execs expose themselves as the biggest hypocrites who ever pretended to have an ethics code. We may eventually learn the real reason they dumped the fool. Maybe Obama doesn’t like him.
Hey Keith, I hear there’s an opening at NPR . . . . . you might want to check it out.
Yes! They need someone to fill the Dan Schorr Seat!
Olbermann is despicable, but the no contribution rule is equally so.
Are these people so stupid that they do not see that the average American knows who they support? Do they really think that we will see them as unbiased merely because they don’t make monetary contributions to the Democrats when in fact they make contributions in kind with propaganda posing as newscasts?
What a lucky break…now Alan Grayson can move right into Untermann’s slot
The Obongo administration needs to can Robert Gates yesterday and replace him with an Olbermann/Chris Matthews tag team. All of America would tune in to the WH daily press briefings in anticipation of Keith popping his cork or Matthews peeing down his leg when the Messiah read some Dimocrat scripture from his teleprompter. My God what an embarrassment these people should be to NBC…if only their executives were equipped with brains.
You did mean Robert Gibbs I am sure the worlds worst liar, and goofiest press secretary for the President of the United States ever, that must almost daily lie to the press to justify his and his bosses existence!
While viewing that video of Soledad O’Brien, I threw up in my mouth…
Liberal news media must support the false distinction between their published opinions (their free speech) and evil political money (the other guy’s free speech).
Olby could rant and rave against conservatives (good) but must not give any money, even to the Liberal cause (money is evil). Preserving their political near-monopoly (everyone but Fox), and their view that money is evil (except as a salary) is more important than preserving Olby.
Comcast, how goddam long does it take you to take over?
Andrew McCarthy and most of the crew at National Review Online, think this is incongruous.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/252684/olbermann-andy-mccarthy
There are probably a trillion reasons to fire this goof, (trillion being the new several dozen) but this one is simply too odd for words. He crossed swords with Jon Stewart, always a bad career move on the left.
Some genius at MSNBC or perhaps NBC woke up one day and said, “I think we should out-Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh. The problem with this cockamamie notion is and was, when you live in a cocoon, cordoned off echo chamber, you are incapable of understanding why Rush is successful…your pre-masticated doctrine is superimposed over your myopic filter…and you get…”double A ball” on your best days.
This is Air America, the Hindenburg Model. Olbermann gets fired…”oh, the humanity”….uh, no.
But the reason they used to suspend him indefinitely sounds suspiciously like a leg trap for those not on the rabid left…who supported Juan Williams. Is this a test? A compare and contrast the “reaction to the principles” game?
The difference of course, is that Juan Williams is a human being.
“The difference of course, is that Juan Williams is a human being.”
You just can’t help falling apart int he end, can you CF? All hifalutin and thinky like but you always dissolve into your true self . . . petty, arbitrary, illogical, judgmental.
For Olbermann to be suspended over donating to Democrat politicians because this would somehow make him seem biased as a journalist tells me that they were looking for a reason to get rid of him. He has pissed someone off over at CNN, because we all know just how biased he is and donating money to Democrats is not what tipped us off.
Olbermann was sus-fired-pended because he single handedly out-competed Onion TV. He’s the man who created Nationally Broadcast Clowns. With the whole world laughing out loud at their TV programs because of Mr Olbermann they decided they couldn’t take it any more. It was also a vain attempt by Mr Griffin to save his job if Comcast takes over. I think Comcast will in any case dispense with Phil, the shouting white guy and the lady with the sneering spectacles.
Please flush the ‘tingly up the trouser-snake’ leg Chris Matthews from MSNBC [as it circles the drain] too!
*clicks heels together three times and recites a few Christine O’Donnell incantations for good measure*
Boy, sorry I missed The Site back in the 90s. It was riveting. I especially liked the part when the hostess scrolled through the discography and showed the other high tech parts of the website.
Although hosts who read tweets and keep looking at their laptop screens prove we haven’t come that far.
Let me get this straight! MSNBC not only tolerates but gleefully promotes Olbermann during his nightly character assasinations where he loudly, lustily and slanderously equates conservatives, Tea Party adherents and Republicans with every species of sub-human pond scum. BUT they draw the line when Keith actually follows through on his convictions and donates a few bucks to fellow Democrats.(Which in the MSNBC universe should be followed by the phrase “blessings and peace be upon them”.)
I gotta tell you I’m with Olbermann on this one. Keith can be forgiven for believing that everyone was, well, pretty cool with everything he was doing and that the “ethics policy” described by Mr. Griffin was at best advisory. This is sort of like the police ignoring the assorted murders committed by a Gambino crew boss but sending him to prison for unpaid parking tickets.
I have to agree with others here that this is all undoubtedly related to Olbermann’s horrid ratings and the generally horrid quality of MSNBC. After all, idealogical purity is all well and good but sponsors actually expect someone to watch us damn it! Mr. Griffin obviously had his eye on that last seat in the lifeboat and threw Olbermann under the surging mob to give him time to get into it. Looks like its sauve qui peut for the management at MSNBC. If I was Chris Matthews, I’d worry that the tingle in my leg is really a gunshot in the femoral artery.
The progressive movement wants to shut KO up after the election debacle. KO has been criticizing progressives, and that, SIR, cannot be tolerated.
Keith has worn out his welcome at every oasis he’s stumbled in to.
Hysterical! The ‘GOP’ is responsible for K.O. KO’ing himself! That’s rich!
“I am a socialist,” O’Donnell said. This is even more hysterical! This elitist wants people to think he is a “socialist.” HA!
Maybe he wants ‘citizens’ to be ‘Ruled’ under a “socialist” regime. But in NO WAY is O’Donnell a “socialist”, except in rudimentary philosophy. He isn’t giving up all of his ‘worldy’ possessions or his income. Which all of the rest of US, would be required to do. He isn’t giving up his property, either.
What a load of H.S.!
MSNBC must have been looking for an excuse to save money for their sale to Comcast. No one seriously considered Mr. Olbermann a journalist. How could he be in violation of an ethical standard when almost every newsperson in NBC & MSNBC advocated President Obama’s election in most days preceding the 2008 elections? Is this just some red herring to draw attention away from NBC’s political affiliation?