Ted Koppel on Sunday published an op-ed at the Washington Post wherein he claimed that opinionated television personalities like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann represent the death of real news.
The "Countdown" host apparently isn't taking this lying down for he tweeted the following Sunday evening:
FYI Special Comment tomorrow night: Koppel, False Equivalence, and his part in the real "death of news" [sic]
Here's what's caught Olbermann's ire this time:
To witness Keith Olbermann - the most opinionated among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts - suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.
Back then, a policy against political contributions would have aimed to avoid even the appearance of partisanship. But today, when Olbermann draws more than 1 million like-minded viewers to his program every night precisely because he is avowedly, unabashedly and monotonously partisan, it is not clear what misdemeanor his donations constituted. Consistency?
We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly - individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic.
Should be fascinating to see how the most conceited man on television tries to heal his wounded ego Monday.
Stay tuned.
