Dear Keith Olbermann, What Part of the Recent Juan Williams Incident Did You NOT Understand?

Update - Keith Olbermann has returned to broadcasting on MSNBC.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”
Wendell Phillips
American Abolitionist and Orator
1811-1884

“I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.”
(and)
"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome."
Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell
English Journalist, and Author of 1984 and Animal Farm (among other works)
1903 -1950

“Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate, more important far than they all.”
Thomas Carlyle quotes
Scottish Historian and Essayist,
1795-1881

Keith Olbermann has been suspended, indefinitely, without pay from his broadcasting duties on cable news network MSNBC.  Olbermann made political donations to three democratic candidates in the recent election: Senate contender Jack Conway in Kentucky (who lost to Rand Paul), and Congressional candidates from Arizona Raul Grijalva (who won in a narrow election still contested, by some 6,300 votes) and Gabrielle Gifford (who as of this morning, 11/6, announced she won by a similarly contested election by some 3,000 votes).

Olbermann released this statement to Politico regarding his conduct:

"One week ago, on the night of Thursday October 28 2010, after a discussion with a friend about the state of politics in Arizona, I donated $2,400 each to the re-election campaigns of Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. I also donated the same amount to the campaign of Democratic Senatorial candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky.  I did not privately or publicly encourage anyone else to donate to these campaigns nor to any others in this election or any previous ones, nor have I previously donated to any political campaign at any level."

MSNBC has a policy for its employees that permit donations to political candidates with prior approval.  Mr. Olbermann did not seek or receive that approval before making those three legal donations.  In contrast, morning news host Joe Scarborough donated to a Republican candidate in the 2006 election WITH prior approval; MSNBC was at the time under different management, but the policy has remained the same.

Olbermann's reference in his statement that he did not publicly encourage anyone else to donate - in other words, he did not publicly fund raise for these candidates, publicly or privately, is significantly in contrast to any number of comparable individuals at Fox (NOT REALLY the) News. So, in that respect he was better, but still wrong.

Where Fox NOT the News is noted for their right wing rant and slant, MSNBC is sometimes considered their left wing opposite.  Which is both correct.........and incorrect.

Fixed News on-air personnel routinely engage in political fund raising - some of it effectively on-air.  They regularly with the apparent endorsement of Faux News promote political candidates and political movements.  The parent company to Fake News, under the direction of Rupert Murdoch has donated upwards of a reported $2 million dollars to the Republican party and Republican causes.  Employee Karl Rove operates a Super PAC which funded multiple millions of campaign ads, some of which are slated to continue post-election.

In contrast, presumably with permission since there has been no suspension or other discipline of Ed Schultz of MSNBC, Schultz promoted a progressive rally on both his MSNBC television show and his radio show through Dial Global; he appeared as one of the featured speakers.  While Schultz promoted a point of view, and encouraged political awareness and action, so far as I have been able to discern at this point, Schultz still differs from the Not-the-News crowd over at Fox in  not directly fund-raising for left wing candidates or causes, in personal appearances or on his broadcasts.  If he has himself made political donations, I haven't yet learned of it; but IF he did so, he appears to have gone through the appropriate channels with his various employers first, including MSNBC, based on the absence of any disciplinary action against him like the discipline of Olbermann.

So.......why does this matter?  I don't think the average person who has come out in defence of Juan Williams, opposing his firing, or now coming out in defence of Keith Olbermann, objecting to his suspension, quite understand.  All they seem to see is that someone has been faulted, and penalized, for simply expressing a feeling or an opinion, or for engaging in legal political donations, and that strikes many people as mean or unfair.

There is an important point being missed.  Actually - several important points are being missed.

Fox uses the motto 'fair and balanced'; they are neither, they aren't even news to the extent that they routinely promote and disseminate factually flawed reports pretty much 24/7. 
They are in effect nothing but the full time media mouthpiece for conservatives of various stripes who wish to avoid any challenging questions.  You WILL see Fox promote stories like the recent misrepresentation of the costs of President Obama's trip to India; you WILL see Fox promote the complete misrepresentation of the accusations of free ice cream bribes to multiple busloads Cincinnati Ohio High School Students; you will see factually utterly inaccurate stories like the one that claimed academic studies showed felons committing voter fraud to steal elections, including featuring our own Minnesota Governor Pawlenty and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann; you WILL see massive coverage of the scam ACORN story by James O'Keefe, along with the notion that he is some sort of journalist when he is the anti-Christ to what journalism is.

What you will NOT see on Fox Cable Nuisance is corrections when they get the facts wrong, or the slightest attempt to discern and present the facts of these stories at any stage in the news cycle of them.  On the rare occasions when the wider media coverage embarrasses them into reporting something, it is given the most minimal coverage possible. 

I don't claim that any media gives their corrections the same promotion that they give their original error, but most media - and in this I would include MSNBC, to give them their due - there is a far better effort than FOX Not-News manages to provide.  On MSNBC they DO discipline people like Olbermann; they DO challenge false or inaccurate statements made by fellow commenters and contributors; and they do correct themselves when an error is brought to their attention rather than ignore it and continue to promote the errors.

They are not perfect at MSNBC; but they are head and shoulders better.

That is a fine distinction, but a real one.  However, personally, I believe that Ed Schultz should NOT have appeared at the rally or promoted it as he did.  Olbermann and Schultz and the other 'talking heads' are supposed to ask hard questions.  Yes, they clearly have a political position; talking heads for example like afternoon host Dylan Ratigan openly admit to being liberal in moderating a panel discussion, for example.

But when you cross that line of political donation, either in money, or in kind services, you are actively participating in politics, not just actively observing them any longer.  You lose a very important distinction of being outside of those activities, a position which despite any innate biases, news personnel should avoid, whether in front of or behind the camera.  That active participation colors what you do beyond merely having a position somewhere in the political spectrum.  At that point you are no longer an observer any more, you are attempting directly to affect the outcome of the events on which you comment.

When you do not inform your audience that you are participating, that you are attempting to change the outcome of those events, you deprive your audience in important ways of the opportunity to critically evaluate what you say or write.  That is why serious news organizations prohibited their NEWS staff from participating in the recent Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert combined rallies.

Stewart and Colbert are featured on the COMEDY CENTRAL cable network; they are clearly primarily intended to be entertainers.  It is in their NAME, they make reference to it, joking about it, in nearly every single episode, self-describing their 'senior correspondents' as performing on a fake news show.  You can't be more obvious than that, short of having a giant neon outline of a hand swinging down from the catwalk above them, index finger pointing at each, with a flashing label 'fake' across it, in an arch parody of Monty Python.

And yet, Jon Stewart IS the most trusted news source in America, DESPITE being a comedian.  He holds that distinction, and Colbert has been similarly awarded a couple of the distinguished Peabody awards, precisely BECAUSE of being more factual, more accurate, and more fair and balanced in the actual information they present as humor, than Fox Nuisance is in presenting news.  They are more objective and clearly label their biases better than MSNBC, and while MSNBC manages to be more factual - the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are better.

Juan Williams was properly kicked to the curb by NPR for repeatedly and willfully violating the prohibitions that were essential to his employment with them.  He used his NPR credentials to give credence to his appearances in Faux News, and he expressed not just a bias, but an offensive and discrediting bias against Muslims.  The point is not and never has been about having personal fears.  The misunderstood point is that such a bias against an important group of people is wrong, it is wrong for many reasons not the least of which is that being Muslim is the wrong criteria for identifying terrorists. There are billions of Muslims in the world who pose no terrorist threat; it is NOT being Muslim which defines anyone as a terrorist.  It is adherence to an extreme view, a willingness to commit violence and use fear and intimidation to coerce others to conform to those views, which makes someone a terrorist, whatever the religion or politics that are the pretext.  Keith Olbermann was wrong for similarly violating the expressed policy of MSNBC, a policy in place because journalists are expected and required by serious news organization to be observers, not participants - which doesn't by that criteria include Fox as a news source.  Whether it be reporting, or just subjective commenting, it is substantively different from attempting to influence or affect the outcome of those events at issue.  For that reason I believe MSNBC and Global Dial seriously erred in giving permission to Ed Schultz to appear at the progressive rally or to promote it on their air waves.

We need to understand and embrace these distinctions. 

We need to hold our news sources and our opinion shapers to these higher standards, but most especially to factual accuracy.  We need ethical prohibitions that are backed up by suspensions, or if repeatedly flouted, by firings.  No more taking those sanctions back with apologies because of misguided public pressure.

We need, desperately need, better to appreciate the distinction of people who profit from provocation under the guise of entertainment or opinion.  This would include figures like Rush Limbaugh, who generates heat rather than light with his consistent daily pattern of a factually flawed right-wing message, much like a giant pile of rotting manure, and with a similar stink.  Figures on the left, like Bill Maher, operate in a similar fashion.  It's been a while since I watched Maher, but at least his pile of dung is slightly smaller to the extent that he has been more sensitive to criticism when he makes factual errors, but it is still excrement to profit by pure provocation.

When I watch them, I fact check Fox, I fact check MSNBC, I fact check Stewart and Colbert and Rush and Maher.  In the 2010 election of a few days ago, I was appalled at the number of voters I encountered who knew nothing about the candidates, and who were operating on false and erroneous information about the issues.  Instead of having MORE accurate information about local and state races, they tended to know less, when that information should have been the most directly accessible to voters.

Blind ideology is not only insufficient for participation in elections and government, it is pernicious when it is coupled with inaccuracies and outright intentional lies.  We need to hold those who straddle the line of entertainment and the fourth estate of news to the same higher standard to the extent they use a connection with reporting events as the substance of that entertainment, and to the extent they profit from it.  It is the essence, part of the foundation of representative government to have an informed electorate.  We do not at the moment appear to have that nearly as much as we need it --- but we can change that if we choose to do so.  Make that choice, make the effort.