So apparently Keith Olbermann supports Democrats. Fancy that.
A little more than a week ago, the MSNBC talk-show host was suspended because he violated NBC guidelines about giving campaign donations. The punishment for this was an “indefinite suspension,” a phrase we know all too well in Gainesville. Right, Chris Rainey?
Fortunately for Olbermann, the reaction of bleeding blue hearts across the country, plus the horrific thought of what would happen to MSNBC ratings without him, resulted in his suspension lasting for a horrifyingly anxiety-invoking two business days.
You can’t really blame Olbermann’s bosses, though. Technically, he did break the rule by donating the maximum legal amount to three Democrat candidates.
But did he really break the spirit of the rule? The rule was designed to protect the journalistic integrity of those working for NBC’s non-biased hard-news shows. That makes sense, and it’s actually a pretty good rule that exists for all The New York Times and The Washington Post journalists.
But is anyone not dying from a bleeding heart really going to sit there and tell me “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” is a non-biased, hard-news show? That same person would also probably be quick to tell me Glenn Beck hands out hugs to Democrats walking down the street. Truth is we all know where Olbermann’s loyalties lie, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t like his opinions, change the channel to Fox News. But as the face of an opinionated show, should he really be held accountable to the same rules as the journalists who work for the hard-news shows of NBC?
There is precedent for news companies allowing its hosts to donate money. In fact, all we have to do is look to Olbermann’s favorite conversation piece to find an example of this. Fox News does, in fact, allow its employees to donate to campaign funds, a rule its hosts take advantage of quite often. This past campaign cycle Fox’s parent company, News Corp., dished out $1.25 million in campaign donations. Of course, Olbermann did publicly make fun of Fox for that, which is all-too-ironic now.
There is another way of looking at this, though. The amount of face time opinionated shows give candidates running for office is worth a lot more to them than the $2,400 Olbermann was legally allowed to donate. On shows like “Countdown,” you don’t see many non-liberal faces very often, if ever. Meaning, all of the time they allocate on their shows to doing interviews is basically one long, free advertisement for the candidates. So, in that case, everyone hosting an opinionated show is donating to a campaign by means of saving them money. If MSNBC took that route, it’d be running a lot of reruns during prime time.
The real question here is why doesn’t MSNBC just remove the rule and take the Fox approach? For once, surprisingly, I think Fox got something right. How does it make any sense to punish a TV broadcast journalist for giving contributions when, in reality, he or she is doing the same thing every time he or she has a guest on his or her show?
Somehow, though, I don’t think Olbermann will admit Fox got this one right — at least not in as many words.
Chris Dodson is a first-year finance and journalism student. His column appears every Monday.
