NBC Agrees to Muzzle Journalists Following Fox News Pressure

Friday, July 31, 2009 20:45 EDT
Report: Olbermann, O'Reilly forced to declare truce

The feud between Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann had gotten pretty heated over the years, eventually dragging in the parent companies of both networks. Now, the New York Times' Brian Stelter reports, those companies have stepped in to call an end to the fighting.

Stelter writes:

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the two networks. Then — even though the feud had increased the viewing audience of both programs — they instructed lieutenants to arrange a cease-fire, according to three people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and the anchors for the most part found other targets for their verbal missiles.

For his part, Olbermann told the Times, "I am party to no deal," and Fox News wouldn't comment. But Stelter has details on MSNBC President Phil Griffin telling network producers to refrain from direct criticism of their rival, and he reports that at Fox, staff members were told to "be fair" to MSNBC's parent company, General Electric.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/31/olbermann_oreilly/

...Here's what happened. Olbermann attacks Bill O'Reilly's media practices. He does this for years and gets under his skin. O'Reilly isn't stupid--whatever else me may be--and attacks the business side of the corporate parent GE. Some of the attacks are clearly below the belt. But this is all part and parcel of Fox's way of reporting the news. Fox doesn't have a corporate parent to answer to like GE. It's a full-blown, vertically integrated news organization and can weather anything Olbermann brings.

Finally, Immelt cries uncle. That's the only conclusion I can come to, although the way the article is written, in that soi disant news-style which presents both sides as being equal and both as valid, makes it out to have been a two way war. But it wasn't. Olbermann attacked O'Reilly's politics and news persona. O'Reilly attack the parent. And when the parent had enough Olbermann was muzzled. It would be like two boxers in the ring, one trying to make head shots (Olbermann) and the other (O'Reilly) hitting below the belt and in the kidneys. The refs just look the other way. Or wring their hands at how violent boxing is, while enjoying the spectacle.

Our media is fucked. And it will not change until the news organizations are ripped away from their corporate parents in an anti-trust action.

http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20090731/fox_wins

...But it's last chapter is all too predictable: A powerful, suited overlord got embarrassed by all the boat-rocking and called things to a halt. The suit, in this case, would be GE's Jeffrey Immelt, a frequent target of Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly and his professional stalker Jesse Waters; according to the Times, Immelt sealed a deal with News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch this past May, "with a handshake" at Microsoft headquarters.

Details were left to underlings Jeff Zucker, at NBC, and Gary Ginsberg, at News Corp:

agreed that hosts on Fox and MSNBC would resist lobbing mortars at each
other or their parent companies, according to an employee with direct knowledge of the agreement.... "For this war to stop, it meant fewer headaches on the corporate side," the employee said...

http://gawker.com/5327673/nbc-agrees-to-muzzle-journalists-following-fox-news-pressure

...Then, the day after MSNBC aired the Countdown segment above (a segment in which, after detailing the 28 times that Bill-O accused the murdered Dr. Tiller of being a “baby killer,” Keith calls on viewers to quarantine Bill-O, to refuse to watch, to boycott establishments that show O’Reilly on their TVs, and then announces he will make the first gesture by retiring the nickname and caricature), this:

O’Reilly made the extraordinary claim that “federal authorities have developed information about General Electric doing business with Iran, deadly business” and published Mr. Immelt’s e-mail address and mailing address, repeating it slowly for emphasis.

The next day, according to the New York Times, the attacks stopped.

Now, I have not done a careful catalogue of Countdowns since then. Olbermann, currently on vacation, told the Times, “I am party to no deal.” We will see what happens on air now that this story is public when Keith returns. But it does make for a high eyebrow raise.

But if Olbermann was pressured, he should not be the focus of our disgust. As they say, don’t hate the player, hate the game. And, in this case, the game is corporate-owned, overly consolidated media, and the guys who make the game’s rules are Rupert Murdoch and Jeffrey Immelt.

...clip...

So, here’s what we have in tonight’s media circus: two ostensibly Republican ring masters—supposedly in competition—collude (with the help of Microsoft and Charlie Rose—wtf?) to silence one side of the debate in order to make the world safe for parent company profit.

In fact, I should go a little further: It is not that one side of a debate was silenced, it is that the only side in the debate was silenced. O’Reilly stoked a climate of hatred against a man that was eventually murdered for providing a necessary and legal service. Olbermann attacked O’Reilly for that. In return, Bill-O attacked Immelt and G.E., and, as a result, it seems, Immelt directed Olbermann to STFU.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/31/late-night-elephants-on-parade-16/

...But a review of all of Olbermann's post-June 1 shows does reveal that he has not ever criticized (or even mentioned) Bill O'Reilly since then and barely ever mentions Fox News any longer. And on June 1 -- the last time Olbermann mentioned O'Reilly -- Olbermann claimed at the end of his broadcast that he would cease referring to O'Reilly in the future because ignoring him (and "quarantining" Fox) would supposedly help get O'Reilly off the air ("So as of this show‘s end, I will retire the name, the photograph, and the caricature").

So here we have yet another example -- perhaps the most glaring yet -- of the corporations that own our largest media outlets controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation. In light of that, just marvel at what the supreme establishment-power-worshiper Charlie Rose said dismissively in March, 2003, when he had Amy Goodman on his show as a condescending example of someone who opposed the Iraq War, after Goodman touted the vital importance of "independent media" in America:

ROSE: I don't know what "independent" means -- "independent" in contrast to what?

GOODMAN: It means not being sponsored by the corporations, the networks -- like NBC, CBS, ABC: NBC owned by General Electric, CBS owned by Viacom, or ABC owned by Disney --

ROSE: My point in response to that would be that we do need you . . . . Having said that, I promise you, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News are not influenced by the corporations that may own those companies. Since I know one of them very well and worked for one of them.

That's the very same Charlie Rose who sat there with the CEO of GE and the CEO of News Corp. as an agreement was reached to order their news employees to stop criticizing the activities of Fox and GE in order to protect the corporate interests of those parents.

It makes no difference what one thinks of O'Reilly's attacks on the corporate activities of GE or Olbermann's criticisms of O'Reilly and Fox News. Whatever one's views on that are -- and I watch neither show very often -- those are perfectly legitimate subjects for news reporting and commentary, and the corporate decree to stop commenting on those topics is nothing less than corporate censorship. A reader last night put it this way by email:

It's interesting and somewhat shocking to me that a NYT article wouldn't even mention the effect on the hosts' journalistic freedom. . . . I assume that both Olbermann and O'Reilly would not have agreed to the truce, as the battle is ratings gold for both of them, and I'm sure they frankly hate each other and enjoy it.

The sad truth is that what Olbermann and O'Reilly were doing in this particular instance was one of the rare examples of good journalism on these types of shows. Olbermann was holding O'Reilly's feet to the fire about his repeated falsehoods and embarrassing positions. In turn, O'Reilly was giving the public accurate and disturbing information about General Electric, including extensive technology dealings with Iran. In my personal opinion, this was one of the rare useful pieces of information O'Reilly ever presented to his audience, and Olbermann was there to show how lousy the rest of O'Reilly's information was. Though it was in the context of a bitter feud, the two men were actually engaging in real journalism, at least in this case.

So now GE is using its control of NBC and MSNBC to ensure that there is no more reporting by Fox of its business activities in Iran or other embarrassing corporate activities, while News Corp. is ensuring that the lies spewed regularly by its top-rated commodity on Fox News are no longer reported by MSNBC. You don't have to agree with the reader's view of the value of this reporting to be highly disturbed that it is being censored....

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/01/ge/