Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiMSNBC and Fox: Posing Divided, United They Stand
There are days when one's reminded why one works in independent media. August 1st was one of those days, when the New York Times ran a front page media story that might as well have been headlined: GE and Fox Hush Hosts For Profits.
In a nutshell, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Bill O'Reilly of Fox have been going at it. For months, Olbermann's called the Fox host out for his lies and smears, regularly dubbing him "Worst Person in the World," while O'Reilly's raised questions about MSNBC's corporate owners, General Electric.
The on-air feud was good for ratings. It wasn't even bad journalism, for these kind of programs. Olbermann held Fox's O'Reilly to account for dubbing Dr. George Tiller "baby killer" in the run up to Tiller's assassination. O'Reilly sent a producer to a GE shareholder's meeting to raise questions about company business in Iran.
The feud wasn't bad for ratings, but it was perceived as a potential threat to other corporate interests. And so it was that some time this May, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), were brought into a "summit meeting" for CEOs where Charlie Rose played peacemaker.
Said one General Electric employee quoted by the Times, calling the two into line meant, "Fewer headaches on the corporate side.”
The sniping's stopped. There's been virtually none of it since the deal took effect on June 1. When Glenn Beck called the President a racist, for example, commentators criticized Beck, but they obediently avoided going after the network that pays him.
It's just another reminder why we don't see stinging reporting, say, of General Electric's investment in the weapons trade, or the healthcare business, or News Corp's dealings with the Chinese government.
Posing divided, united they stand. In the all-about profits media business, ideological rifts are fine for the purposes of gaining notoriety and building audience. Stir things up and deepen divisions among parties, politicians, workers, little people. But go after business interests -- and that's another story. Then, the same media moguls who profit off our social divides sing corporate Kumbaya when their profits are in peril.
Making independent media's tough. It's hard to fund and it's tempting to think there must be a better way. Wouldn't it be easier if some corporation paid the bills?
Not exactly.
11 Comments so far
Show AllMainstream media plays both sides off against the middle. Like every other industry in America, it’s amoral. A trollop; a woman no better than she should have been. FOX News brings you Sean Hannity and that great modern moral arbiter, Bill O’Reilly, bearing aloft the Loofah of Righteous Indignation and damning the “liberal media” with endless breathy gusto, while the FOX entertainment channel delivers “Temptation Island.” Simple.
more here....
http://nosuppertonight.com/longer-essays/winning-the-culture-war-losing-the-class-war/
michael horan
Another way this headline can be interpeted: Congress posing as for the people; united they stand, against the people.
After being publicly humiliated by his bosses, Olbermann, continuing as if nothing has happened, lays waste to his own credibility, and his self respect, if he had any.
I remember the interview Amy Goodman had with Charlie Rose, it is still on the net, I think. Rose looks incredulously on as Amy tells him that the corporations that own the big "news" companies in the US don't need to tell the "reporters" what to do, they simply hire those that share their views. Here we have an example in Olbermann, where if he wasn't being told what to do before, he is now. How is that for an example, Charlie Rose?
charlie rose? has he done or said in his entire useless parasitic life anything worth talking about?
Jim Shea
On Monday night Olberman attacked both O'Reilly and Fox.
He also blisteringly attacked congressional Republicans and "blue dog" Democrats for their positions on health care.
Yes.
Reporting like this and particularly Greenwald's pieces likely freed him to do this.
People who would do journalism but work for sharks game the system for what little they may get and give, somewhat like corporations who would sell ostensible news and sell themselves and their agendas as news provide some information in the act of pretending to provide information.
Any point about Olberman's character can remain between him and the mother superior: GE owns the news.
bardamu August 4th, 2009 6:22 pm....Maybe I misunderstand your post; Olby has been reporting like this for years. He was calling Bush a liar and calling him out when no one else dared. Although I have not been watching TV for months, according to Olby last night, he shut up about O'Reilly and Faux News on his own around June 1st. If your meaning is that Greenwald's article spurred him to this particular maneuver as a defensive move, I guess that's possible. But, Greenwald was not there to motivate all his past "Special Comments". Many far surpassed any critical remarks from other commentators...including a couple about Obama. It will be interesting to see what Olby has to say tonight. Of course, nothing surprises me about TV, since it's 99% smoke and mirrors. Countdown is still loaded with spin. And Olby, showman that he is (but still a damn good commentator) could be milking this for all the publicity he can get. Who would blame him, being up against the biggest spin doctor/ liar on TV..Bill O'Reilly?
I failed to be clear.
I have no gripe with Olberman, who must have some brights to say what he does and stay on a network. I do not mean that his zings of O'Reilly or Fox are less than sincere.
Also, in terms of whatever compromise there be, let do what he has to to stay on the air until he decides himself to throw it in and start a blog or whatever.
Moreover, let him milk O'Really for all the publicity that's worth and get the Foxvolkken watching him instead of the Moron Revue!
What I do mean is that he has to work for MSNBC and NBC & ergo for GE, as per Greenwald's posts and Jeff Cohen's recent CABLE NEWS CONFIDENTIAL. (Cohen writes of his own years with MSNBC and Fox, including how MSNBC canned Donahue for saying less inflammatory things than Olberman.)
GE's politics are maybe a half-stroke off those of Blackwater-Xe. Or maybe not.
These guys may have decided they have a ratings pump in Olby or that the momentary ambience requires it. But theirs is a tactical decision that could change tomorrow.
What keeps him on?
I'm guessing not only public support for Olberman, but public recognition that commercial broadcast and paper news lie almost invariably. Besides cleavage, a lot of what a news program has to sell is credibility.
How much credibility have these guys lost?
Well, the most respected and trusted broadcast newsman in America is apparently John Stewart: The Daily Show is a comedy; news programs are (usually) a joke.
I think people like Greenwald keep Olberman on the air because they create a standard for truth. I suspect Olberman's happy as a duck in a pond with any fire he might get from the left, and working out just how he's going to play with the space it gives him.
Think of any time you ever worked for an antediluvian boss, and just how ripe and ready Olberman must be to let loose anything he might know about GE himself. It's not like he represents the or even a GE point of view in any way, shape, or form.
What a party Olberman must be having! He zings O'Really. O'Really zings GE. Olberman's ratings go up from the scandal, and out of purely selfish desperation O'Reilly goes on like a punch-drunk gibbon dissing his own ideological allies, the very ones hardest for Olberman to hit directly.
No, I have this suspicion he goes to some bar with some trusted confrere some time after work, knocks back a couple in celebration, tries not to laugh too hard and wonders how long how long can we keep this up.
"Posing divided, united they stand."
- This catchy title/slogan describes the alleged distinction between Democrats & Republicans, as well.
Fox, after all, is not "exactly" the same as MSNBC. It's cosmetically different; a slightly different flavor of the same basic sh*t.
Faux News includes anyone who offers an apologetic for the duopoly including Flanders. While it is true there are some authentic progressives on CD, Flanders is not one of them.
Do I hear an amen from Quickstepper or one of her alter ego's: Annabelle, Hamster, or Gee Golly?
You have made an interesting distinction. Olby did get on O'Orally's case last night and Beck's, but I do not remember if he mentioned the Faux News...does anyone?