Stewart vs Cramer was liberal porn. Widely carried on AP and Reuters syndication, and plenty of coverage in any rag or blog of note.
Even MSNBC.com ran the story, and it sat atop their most viewed and emailed lists on Friday.
The world waited with bated breath. What would Olbermann say regarding this story, that a fair-sized portion of the world was talking about Friday morning?
Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zero.
We kossacks get a little.. irritated. 1200 comments worth of irritated.
I'm a big fan of Olbermann. I watch Countdown pretty much every night.
I recognize criticism of "our guy" is verbotten but this just had some aspect that felt.. 'wrong'
- photo credit, Chester Higgins Jr./NYT
The five stages of Keith Olbermann:
1) Denial
The assumption that we would automatically do a story on a story Jon Stewart did is not a good one.
There is no interaction between his show and mine, and while it's possible that we did some significant segments on any of his previous smackdowns or vivisections (as good as they might have been), I don't remember when that would've been. So it's either not happened, or it hasn't happened in a long time.
-Keith Olbermann
So... there is an embargo on covering an interview on the Daily Show? even if its newsworthy enough to be widely covered (mostly) everywhere else
I can understand not wanting to cover comedic opinion about other peoples news stories, but the interview WAS a story, and one intensely interesting to the very audience that Keith serves.
I can't help but think, that if this had been a Fox journalist, Keith would have been on this like white on rice.
2) Irrelevant reference to old news
I threw Santelli in twice to Worst Persons, played clips, and called him "Sick Rantelli" - an internet nickname bestowed upon him from way before his Marie Antoinette moment... and I never heard a word of criticism from management.
And yes, I know Marie didn't really say "Let them eat cake"... it's just analogy shorthand.
-Keith Olbermann
While its admirable that Keith did in fact call Santelli on his off-key rant, that doesn't excuse him not mentioning the on-key critique of Cramer. The two are separate news events, and the latter had much more meat on the bone for commentary.
Does this "prove" that there was a directive about covering or not covering the story after it was such a clear knock on the credibility of a "sister network" star? No. There is simply not enough evidence to know either way.
3) When in doubt attack Fox
I was at the Mets game all day, so I'm reading the TVNewser post for the first time.
Frankly, the guy who posted this, the site's Associate Editor, Steve Krakauer ("SteveK"), is well known around the industry as being entirely in Fox's pocket.
His "MSNBC producers have been told" not to mention this, is, frankly, bullshit.
Have a look at his posts on this otherwise successfully neutral site: they are Fox News and Fox Business Channel press release rewrites, and anonymous criticisms from "industry sources" of people at CNN and MSNBC.
The Fox Business stuff is particularly egregious and particularly relevant to this. If a newspaper with a circulation of 500 people runs a feature on somebody on that channel, SteveK summarizes it, posts a picture from it, posts a link to it. I mean, seriously, if there's been any publicity for this channel that has yet to get a measurable audience after a year on the air (that means they're under 15,000 viewers), that hasn't gotten a link on TVNewser courtesy SteveK, it'd be a shocking upset.
Rachel could get the cover of Newsweek and he wouldn't link to it.
So, did Stewart do a good job? Obviously. Did we get ordered not to run it? Nope. Was stirring up rumors about a ban in the interest of a Foxophilic blogger with the credibility of a bush league Drudge? You bet.
Keith Olbermann
I'm not a fan of Fox: I don't think they are credible, and enjoy seeing moments of their schadenfreude. I can, however stand back and see that occasionally Olbermann's obsession with anything Fox is a little.. stalkerish
Its true to say that there isn't much love lost either way, and yes.. a tipster might have had an ulterior motive in pushing this story. I really don't jump on any rumor as news without multiple sources or some kind of corroboration. I think there was a lesson in the Sarah Palin "Downs baby" issue.
Keith Olbermann however.. happy to jump on the rumor that Sy Hersh was investigating 'Dick Cheney Death Squads', without any prompting whatsoever.
So... I agree, don't give the guy ink over the tip. The tip was not the story, and a rumor is not reason not to report news. Properly reporting the story is, in fact the best way to refute the rumor.
4. I don't want to justify my coverage
I'm not going to spend part of a show, for fear of having to spend part of every show, explaining why I gate-kept on a particular story.
-Keith Olbermann
Keith's best point here. I agree that you can't provide good informative television if you are second guessing yourself on the air all the time. There was however a story here thought to be widely newsworthy. Don't justify the "conspiracy theory," and move forward with it as freestanding news.
The best treatment here would be to talk about the wider issue with a member of the press, or a professor of journalism.
5. If its too newsworthy, I won't cover it
D) Back to one of my original points: we do in fact give weight to stories based on how much they are covered by the older newscasts and organizations. In other words, if it's going to be on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, etc., that brings it down a notch in our evaluation of its worthiness in our show. Our show is primarily about trying to give airtime to stories that are not on ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox.
E) There is more in "D" than just seeking novelty. I truly believe in the marketplace of ideas. If two network newscasts with a combined 10 times my audience are doing this story, the thing is being yelled about adequately in the marketplace.
-Keith Olbermann
So.. if a story is felt to be important enough to be widely covered, Countdown SHOULDN'T COVER IT?
Firstly, Countdown usually picks the lowest hanging liberal fruit available that news cycle.. regardless of coverage elsewhere. If Countdown did not cover most of the "Joe the Plumber" stories, Countdown would not keep its audience very long.
Secondly, Countdown sometimes has weak or repetitive news days. Friday wasn't the strongest news day. Its often the practice of newsmakers to release news that they don't want to get the most attention on fridays to "bury" the story.
The Cramer/Stewart interview and the issues surrounding it are highly pertinent and timely. I just do not understand why the liberal news show "of record" would not cover this, even if it was in an oblique manner.
Update: As Bush once said.. "rarely is the question asked 'is our children learning?'" I guess he meant me.