Posted on 09/10/2008 12:19:33 PM PDT by abb
When MSNBC announced the other day that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews were being replaced as co-anchors of the cable network's nightly political broadcast, the news was widely taken as evidence that the grownups at the parent network are looking to salvage NBC News' reputation for balance. And who can doubt that Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams--who've had to squirm before the likes of Jon Stewart, pretending to be something other than appalled by the nightly goings-on at MSNBC--had a major hand in this move?
snip
Indeed, this was just the most recent signal that the network, having long refused to acknowledge the reality of liberal bias which tens of millions of Americans take as a given, was moving beyond even the pretense of objectivity. As NBC News President Steve Capus crowed to The New Yorker's Peter Boyer in a June profile of Olbermann, viewers "appreciate that we have people who are actually speaking truth to power, or being transparent in their own personal viewpoints."
Nor is NBC News alone. As the Boyer piece revealed, in the aftermath of Dan Rather's departure from CBS News, that company's brass actually twice interviewed Olbermann as a possible replacement for its flagship broadcast.
Chances are good and getting better that we will look upon this era as the final days of network news as we have known it. Olbermann, vile as he is, just happened to have been in the wrong place at the right time. As his hero Murrow said of Joe McCarthy, "he didn't create this situation ... he merely exploited it--and rather successfully."
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
"Network evening newscasts will go dark after the '08 elections and their news divisions disbanded."
Walter Abbott, (b. 1950), Media observer and commentator
Ping
GE wants to sell NBC. THey probably aren’t making much money from it, and attacks from FOX and Olbermann’s antics aren’t helping GE’s image.
Therefore, they want to upgrade, salvage what value they can, and then sell.
No one wants to buy the network while NBC and Olbermann/Maddow/Matthews are spoken in the same breath.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=90375
Magazine Ad Pages: Down 9.2% Through August
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/hard-fall-what-happened-nbc
Hard Fall: What Happened to NBC?
http://www.crosscut.com/seattle-newspapers/17552/
Will the anti-conglomerate Blethens sell newspapers to a conglomerate?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122098269319815585.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo
A Grim Sign for McClatchy Shareholders?
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/09/whats-going-on-at-mcclatchy.html
What’s going on at McClatchy?
Are there any conservatives or groups of conservatives out there that can raise the money needed to buy NBC? What fun it would be to watch such fine journalists at the network, lose their jobs. And finally, conservatives would have a chance to shape prime time tv.
That is priceless.
Just wait a few months and they'll have to pay us to take it.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2008/tc2008099_662863.htm
Media Moguls Do the Splits
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN0818958820080908
Hollywood ending unlikely for media companies in ‘09
......GE wants to sell NBC....
Just curious, but what leads you to that conclusion? Is not NBC the voice of the GE Board. Jeff Immelt declared that NBC neeeded no changes when he took the helmn.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003848262
‘Star-Ledger’ Newsroom Buyout Count Low — As Deadline Nears
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003848130
AP’s Exec. Editor: We Can Work It Out
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003848218
Could Sam Zell Really Buy The ‘San Diego Union-Tribune’?
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003848268
First Journalism School Struggles With ‘Columbia Missourian’s Future
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003848751
McClatchy CEO Pruitt: Speculation About Privatization Or Refinancing ‘Incorrect’
“looking to salvage NBC News’ reputation for balance”
“You gotta admit-that there’s funny. I don’t care who you are.” NBC goes with ‘balance’ like Madonna goes with chastity.
like Sean Hannity has been saying,
“JOURNALISM IS DEAD”.
(O)bama + (O)phra + (O)lbermann = O + O + O = O
I’m not so sure there ever was such a thing as “journalism.”
Anyone know how involved Microsoft is with MSNBC - both the TV network and website - these days? Obviously guys like Olbermann and Matthews stain NBC’s reputation, but Microsoft seems to avoid the same tarnish.
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/09/10/the-start-of-reverse-syndication-and-end-of-the-ap/
The start of reverse syndication (and end of the AP?)
New Jersey’s Star-Ledger today put out an entire edition without anything from the Associated Press within. The sharp-eyed reader will notice lots of local news by staff plus articles from other papers–Washington Post, LA Times, McClatchy, the Glouceseter County Times–and content from online services such as Sportsticker.
It’s one more nail in the heart of the AP as other papers cancel their contracts and more threaten to.
snip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC
Although Microsoft and NBC shared operations of MSNBC cable at its founding, it was announced on December 23, 2005, that NBC Universal would purchase a majority stake in the television network, which left Microsoft with 18%. The two companies remain 50-50 partners in msnbc.com.
Speaking of the AP, apparently they have redacted the story about Obamma's Lipstick on A Pig Comments. They have removed the reference to the audience's apparent glee to obamma's sly comment- according to Hannity.
It doesn't matter. They don't control the distribution of information any more. Used to, they could paper over any faux pas uttered by their anointed politician. Rush mentioned that today also.
The Post-Dispatch is shedding news pages and slashing editorial staff – and there’s no end in sight
By Kristen Hinman
Published on September 10, 2008
On the morning of August 28, unwelcome news began circulating through the newsroom at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: layoffs were imminent. By the end of that day, five editors — two with almost 30 years of service at the daily — were asked to collect their belongings and leave the building on North Tucker Boulevard.
snip
I’m not so sure there ever was such a thing as “journalism.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>”>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Maybe not but I remember the Huntley/Brinkley report and it towered over anything seen today. They reported the news without commenting on it. Who does that today? Shep Smith on fox is one of the worst, he can’t present anything without all kinds of facial expressions and personal opinion comments.
I remember Huntley/Brinkley on NBC and Douglas Edwards on CBS. At the time, they seemed unbiased. Or were they just able to camouflage their biases more effectively?
I wonder what over the past hundred years of the Drive-By Media monopoly they DIDN’T tell us because they chose not to.
Are there any conservatives or groups of conservatives out there that can raise the money needed to buy NBC? What fun it would be to watch such fine journalists at the network, lose their jobs. And finally, conservatives would have a chance to shape prime time tv.
To raise that question is to imply that although there is no example of conservative journalism (Fox is basically middle-of-the-road), journalism could be and should be objective. That is an error to which, I dare say, none of the framers of the constitution would have subscribed. Hamilton and Jefferson waged their battles with each other in newspapers which they sponsored, openly.In effect, newspapers of the early Nineteenth Century were more like the National Review or The Nation than they were like what The New York Times purports to be. Most newspapers were weeklies.
Journalism in those days didn't claim to be unbiased, because journalism was not a single entity which could enforce the discipline which it has exerted over individual journalists since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary.
The advent of the telegraph and the founding of the AP is the explanation for the difference between early "newspapers" and modern journalism. I put "newspapers" in scare quotes because they were called that but they didn't generally have any source of news to which the general public could not in principle be privy. Newspapers weren't dailies for that reason. The AP is and always has been monopolistic; it was even found by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman Antitust Act in 1945. Members of the AP are in the business of cutting and pasting reports from the AP newswire and solemnly assuring us that it is "objective journalism," and for that reason no journalist can afford to admit that any other journalist is "biased."
The only means of support for the vagrant assumption of the "objectivity" of journalism is the monopoly journalism propaganda campaign which promotes it. I am aware of no philosophical logic which would suggest it. What would "objectivity" look like? Would it be a faithful representation of the public interest? Journalism's rules are designed to interest the public - and that is quite a different thing.
The bottom line to me is that there cannot be a commercial journalism which is conservative or objective.
Days before his announced retirement from regular news coverage, Brinkley made a rare on-air mistake on election night 1996, at a moment when he thought they were on commercial break. One of his colleagues asked him what he thought of Bill Clinton’s re-election. His answer was, “The next four years will be filled with pretty words, and pretty music, and a lot of goddamn nonsense!” One of his team pointed out that they were still on the air. Brinkley said, “Really? Well, I’m leaving anyway!”
Remember Sam The Sham Donaldson....he was the biggest leftie around.....but tame compared to Matthews and Olbermann
Check out the Jeff Jarvis blog today. Link at post 16. Comments from some AP big.
Correction, post 18.
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