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Posted on 01/11/2005 1:41:07 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann insisted on Monday night that the case of Armstrong Williams taking money from the Bush administration combined with the CBS panel finding no political bias behind CBS's hit job on President Bush, discredits the idea of any liberal media bias. Olbermann also portrayed CBS as a victim compared to the perpetrators at FNC since CBS News "played within the journalistic rules" while "you're not going to see Fox News appointing an independent investigation into its own journalistic ethics or lack thereof" for running the Swift Boat ads which were "full of distortions."
At the top of the January 10 Countdown, Olbermann trumpeted how "a vivisection co-chaired by a former Republican Attorney General of the United States found no political motivation behind the CBS decision to run the story and could not even conclusively decide whether or not the memos at the heart of the controversy were real or fake."
A few minutes later, Olbermann asserted, as taken down by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth: "There is, of course, a larger context in which the CBS flap fits politics and reporting. The presumption that if there is a story, there's a bias. The Thornburgh-Boccardi report suggested otherwise as the President and CEO of CBS was today quick to note."
Les Moonves, CBS Chairman [clip #1]: "Forget about political bent. I don't think it had anything to do with it. I think it had to do with not doing their jobs."
Moonves [clip #2]: "It is very important that people consider CBS News a fair organization that reports on stories fairly."
Olbermann then argued that the case for any liberal bias has been discredited: "For people who assume there is a liberal bias in the media, two odd things have happened Friday. First, the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams turns out to have been taking government payments to promote administration policy. Now, the former Attorney General under President Reagan and the first President Bush says the Killian memos CBS story was not politically motivated."
Turning to his guest, former New York Times reporter Alex Jones who appeared via satellite from Boston, Olbermann wondered: "How do these two stories -- Armstrong Williams and the Thornburgh findings about CBS -- fit into that matrix that insists that the media is tilted largely to the left?"
Olbermann next painted CBS as a victim and FNC as the real bad guys: "To some degree, do you think CBS got caught in this here because they had otherwise played within the journalistic rules. I mean, if you look at the Swift Boat ads last summer -- full of distortions, some demonstrably untrue content in there -- yet they were run as gospel by many news outlets even though they were by definition designed to influence the election. But you're not going to see Fox News appointing an independent investigation into its own journalistic ethics or lack thereof for those ads."
Jones basically agreed: "Well, I think that was a terrible situation, and I think, again, this is not a matter of partisan politics. This is a matter of getting things into the information news stream that looked like news when they aren't at all. This was ostensibly reporting about an ad. But the ad is a dishonest ad. And the fact that it was put on again and again and again communicated to people who were watching it on television that it was true because television wouldn't put it on if it weren't true, right? Well, that wasn't the case at all. And the people who put it on repeatedly were simply justifying themselves by saying it was about the news of the ad. That's not good enough."
Olbermann: "Right, it was true there was an ad. That was the truth contained therein."
Richard Thornburgh: "He mischaracterized the source, referred to him as 'unimpeachable,' when it's well-known in the background of this particular source was a lot of bias and a lot of reason to pause."
Richard Thornburgh, former Attorney General: "We did find, however, an insensitivity to appearances, so most of the sources for this story had a strong anti-President Bush agenda of their own."
Lisa Myers stressed on the January 10 NBC Nightly News: "The panel also said producer Mary Mapes' contact with the Kerry campaign about the story was inappropriate and created an appearance of political bias."
Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post: "It's going to take a while for the network to get over a high-profile blunder."
"CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves says Rather will not be disciplined in light of his previous decision to leave the anchor chair this March."
Can anyone say "nutcase"?
This guy doesn't know the difference between paid advertising time and editorial/reporting in the name of the news organization. Sheesh. Nuance isn't the word for it. It's outright distortion of the truth.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out Olbermann's dog in this hunt.
CBS, ABC, NBC, are going down in flames, and the voice of the monitors of Neros court are singing while the idiots of the family, (like Obermann)play the violins.
OPs4 God BLess America!
LOL, Keith. What's the difference, here? Let me explain:
The Swift Boat ads were just that, ads! The were produced and developed by private citizens, NOT journalists working for a network. They weren't attempting to masquerade their ad as a "hard news story".
What a maroon.
Yep...the MSM and their hangers on will talk about how nothing was done improperly, while the blogosphere and those who know where the better news coverage will fry CBS...and it's hurting them already.
First CBS...then which domino falls next?
How would Olbermann know there was distortion or untruth in the SwiftBoat ads ..?? Evidently, Keith was watching FNC and saw them .. or propably more correctly, he's just being his usual ULTRA LEFT-WING BIASED NEWS READER.
Tell that to your audience and you might have a molecule of journalistic credibility. Step one: Get an audience.
Double "nutcase" ~ Bump!
In my opinion he is a very confused person mentally.
As to the reason for his mental confusion of which I opine, I don't know and I won't speculate.
I will predict that his television career may hit thin ice sooner than anyone expects -- but again, that is just my opinion.
Tinfoil Keith strikes again! I think that, without realizing it of course, Olbermann has become the epitome of how liberal the media really is. He even posesses the usual tone-deafness to his own biases. No doubt he actually is dumb enough to buy into the argument that we in the "right-wing media" (also known as people with brains) set up Rather for this one.
Simple intiution is enough to refute the lib argument here. Even without the report, it was obvious that grave wrongdoing had been committed at CBS. If the Rather crew had a prayer of restoring their credibility (or at least the perception thereof), they would have done it. As it stands, Rather scrammed town before the Sheriff rode in. If he was righteous as Olbermann and the fellow tinfoilers claim he is, one would think he'd stay and fight.
Olbermann has what? 3 regular viewers?
I think I've watched maybe 2 minutes of him and that was all of his smarmyness I could take.
bttt
Olbermann is getting more and more bold in his left leading agenda......he has recently been attacking Fox news like it is a personal vendetta. I used of kind of like him cause he is funny, but after the swift boat thing I think he has been totally brainwashed.....I still channel surf all the stations just to see what these nutcases are saying. It is like he is jealous or hateful or.....god, you got me
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