Following up on Jon Stewart's take down on cable news when speaking with Rachel Maddow last week, legendary newsman Ted Koppel, now reporting for BBC America, blasted cablecasters like Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck & Bill O'Reilly in an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post.
Koppel began his op-ed by using the news about Olbermann's short two day suspension from MSNBC last week for giving campaign contributions to three Democrats (which he did not tell his bosses before doing so) to pivot into writing how the success of Fox News, and to a lesser extent, MSNBC, has made him "sad."
And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.
It is also part of a pervasive ethos that eschews facts in favor of an idealized reality. The fashion industry has apparently known this for years: Esquire magazine recently found that men's jeans from a variety of name-brand manufacturers are cut large but labeled small. The actual waist sizes are anywhere from three to six inches roomier than their labels insist.
Well, one thing we've learned about Keith Olberman: dude's got really thin skin. Forget if it's a conservative criticizing him; even if you're a liberal icon like Stewart or a revered media figure like Ted Koppel, if you cross KO, he will devote at least a tweet, a blog post, or perhaps an entire 12 minute "Special Comment" to go after you.
Olbermann does make a solid point about the facile comparisons that Stewart and Koppel and others have made that Fox & MSNBC are to be considered the equivalent in terms of its cheerleading for one political party.
Look below (if you've got time to kill) to watch Olbermann's response to the former Nightline Anchor, which merited him being billed by New York magazine in 1984 as "the smartest man on television."
