Mann Bites Dog

Or Fox, to be specific–Keith Olbermann trashes Fox’s entire Monday morning coverage of Tim Russert’s death, because of remarks made (quite accurately, from our perspective) by one guest, Andrew Breitbart:

The final segment included Breitbart as a guest. “He was the last of an old breed of journalists who came from the Democratic party who felt incumbent of them to be fair to both sides,” he said of Russert, although acknowledging Russert was a liberal. Kilmeade and Breitbart discussed some possible options, and Breitbart called out Matthews and Olbermann by name for a “leftward lurch.” Then, Breitbart described how Matthews brought up the Iraq war in his initial tribute to Russert, calling it “classless.”

Fast forward to Countdown at 8:45pmET last night on MSNBC. Olbermann gave the “Worst Person in the World,” award to Fox & Friends. He didn’t mention what segment of Fox & Friends he is referring to, or quote any part of what was said, but he seems to take offense to the Breitbart interview.

“You want to do a segment dismissing the late Tim Russert as a member of the liberal media?” he said. “You want to continue to feed the delusions of your viewers that the failures of their lives are the fault of somebody else, like TV news, and not their own responsibility?”

This from a man whose entire Joe Pyne meets Howard Beale routine is built on whipping up a frenzy amongst a couple of hundred thousand hardcore lefties whose entire lives revolve around BDS. (And yet, sometimes even they see through Keith’s shtick.)

Andrew of course, runs the great Breitbart.com news aggregation site, and its affiliated Breitbart.tv video aggregation site (and full disclosure, we’ve met and interviewed all of the players there on several occasions). Between his affiliations with Matt Drudge and the Huffington Post, he’s building the successors to a very shopworn legacy media. As Michael Crichton noted 15 years ago:

The American media produce a product of very poor quality,” he lectured. “Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it’s sold without warranty. It’s flashy but it’s basically junk.

Much more on that topic in a bit.

Meanwhile, this: “Brokaw says he sometimes feels that he has been cast in the role of hall monitor at NBC News; if so, his charges have kept him busy.” Heh.

Remember when television news anchors weren’t being compared to unruly high school brats? Yes, I can too, but it’s a period of time increasingly in the rearview mirror.