which is worse? Richard Wolffe PR whore situation or the Olbermann/Billo censorship?

I am literally and non-ironically shocked by the Wolffe thing. The corporate censoring story doesn't quite have the power that this does. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something. You can't be a trusted political analyst AND get paid by corporations (and politicians) to sling their spin. Who's picking up Chuck Todd's tab, I wonder.

The Olbermann-Billo censoring is disgusting, but somehow it's not as egregious-seeming to me. It's really kinda sad though, because Billo is the real threat in this tussle. It's Billo's calling out of GE they want to silence. They want Keith to shut up about Billo so Billo will shut up about GE. That's really fucked up.

This is from Glen Greenwald's Salon piece that also reports on the GEMSNBC/FOX/Charlie Rose summit:

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

"... Wolffe left Newsweek last March in order to join "Public Strategies, Inc.," the corporate communications firm run by former Bush White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, its President and CEO. According to the Press Release they issued to announce Wolffe's joining the company:

Wolffe, most recently Newsweek's senior White House correspondent, officially assumes his new position as a senior strategist on April 13, 2009. He will be based in the firm's Washington office, where he will advise several of its top clients. . . .

Public Strategies, Inc. is a business advisory firm that serves a diverse clientele including some of the world's largest and best-known corporations, nonprofit organizations, associations and professional firms. Public Strategies helps forward-thinking organizations assess public opinion and risk, and develops strategies for managing corporate reputation and uncertainty. Much of its practice involves managing high-stakes campaigns for corporate clients, anticipating and responding to crises.

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover. Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows. What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.

This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators? But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and "news reporting" in the United States. ..."

more at link...

I listen to him all the time and he seems like a pretty straight guy to me.

He got a better job as a non-journalist, so now he's a whore.

Get on board with that concept ... unless.... you're a whore, too.

he should not be commenting on -- nevertheless HOSTING!!!! -- a news/commentary program without stating that outright every single time he appears.

KO calls him an MSNBC contributor and author. The fact that this firm is cutting him a weekly check -- and probably a big one -- needs to be disclosed.

This is the first I've heard of it and it's not cool.

between spin and news, let alone 'truth,' when they see it.

If you want journalism rather than opinion, you must go elsewhere.

Why would Wolffe go on Countdown if he were an objective journalist? Olbermann isn't interested in balance at all.

and has a "partnership" with Newsweek.....so I don't see this as anymore than the same for Wolffe. He's always been in it for himself, and whomever pays him. He can go from truth telling (which he isn't even famous for) to Shilling for Corp from one segment to the next.

public face of the DONAHUE execution.

his couple of nights hosting Countdown showed his liberal slant. This is strange.

to find anything that said he left

but, it would be nice if this wasn't true.

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