Most journalistic outlets discourage or directly prohibit campaign contributions by employees.
Mr. Olbermann's contributions came to light in an article by Politico on Friday morning. He said he had donated $2,400 to the campaigns of Representatives Raúl M. Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and Attorney General Jack Conway of Kentucky, who lost his Senate race to Rand Paul. He told Politico, “I did not privately or publicly encourage anyone else to donate to these campaigns, nor to any others in this election or any previous ones, nor have I previously donated to any political campaign at any level.”
On Friday evening, no one at NBC suggested that Mr. Olbermann would be fired.
Reaction was swift and mixed, with some condemning Mr. Olbermann's donation and many others saying that they saw nothing wrong with it.
Campaign contributions are a form of activism, said Bob Steele, the director of the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. “When a journalist becomes an activist, the principle of independence is not just eroding, it's corroding from within,” he said.
Others said that thinking was outdated, and many prominent liberals and conservatives immediately called on MSNBC to reinstate Mr. Olbermann, who is normally outspoken but who had no comment on his suspension on Friday.
About 100,000 people signed a petition circulated by a progressive group. “Free Keith Olbermann!” wrote David Weigel, a Slate columnist and a contributor to MSNBC, who called cable news an “ever-evolving petri dish of political/journalistic ethics.”
In suspending Mr. Olbermann, MSNBC, a favorite of liberals, appeared to be trying to differentiate itself from the Fox News Channel, a favorite of conservatives, which does not discourage employees from making personal donations to candidates or political causes. Fox's parent company, the News Corporation, came under fire from Mr. Olbermann and others in recent months for donating $1.25 million to Republicans. One of the top hosts on Fox, Sean Hannity, contributed thousands of dollars to two Republican Congressional candidates this year.
On Friday night, the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow made the difference between the two explicit, citing Mr. Hannity's contributions, saying: “We are not a political operation. Fox is. We are a news operation. And the rules around here are part of how you know that.”
Hosts on both MSNBC and Fox News have become political actors in recent years, giving broadcast time to favored candidates and in some cases allowing those candidates to make fund-raising pitches. MSNBC's shift to the left has caused squeamishness internally, especially among sibling NBC journalists. But the shift has also increased the ratings and the profits of MSNBC.
Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, made the decision to suspend Mr. Olbermann after consulting with Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, and Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal. Early Friday afternoon, Mr. Griffin said in a statement, “Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
One NBC executive agreed with the point, suggested by senior executives at other television news divisions, that Mr. Olbermann's transgression in making the donations was compounded by the fact that he had anchored the election coverage — not simply worked as a commentator.
NBC News executives also stressed that the company policy does include exceptions on donations if an individual makes a personal request, and that there had been no request from Mr. Olbermann in this case.
Mr. Olbermann's program, “Countdown,” is the most popular hour on MSNBC, with about 1.1 million viewers a night. Years ago, Mr. Olbermann gave voice to dissenting views about the Iraq war and about Bush administration policies when few others on television would, and more recently he helped advance the Obama administration's push for a health care overhaul. Mr. Griffin has called the seven-year-old “Countdown” the tent pole of MSNBC, which has rebuilt itself as a home for liberal-minded Americans.
Mr. Olbermann has long been a volatile figure inside the network. He has repeatedly fought with Mr. Griffin and other managers over editorial decisions and has been harshly critical of his former bosses.
Still, some MSNBC employees were stunned by the suspension. Some bloggers seized on the fact that another MSNBC host, Joe Scarborough, had not been reprimanded when he made a contribution to a Republican in 2006 (although an NBC spokesman said he had asked for permission). Others said Mr. Olbermann was being held to a strange standard; a writer for the libertarian magazine Reason, Michael C. Moynihan, wondered why MSNBC had a “one-size-fits-all policy” on contributions.
“ ‘Countdown' exists to promote Democratic candidates and liberal policies, which is just fine by me,” Mr. Moynihan wrote. “So why shouldn't Olbermann, as a private citizen, be allowed to donate money to those candidates he plumps for on television?”
Some networks differentiate between anchors and reporters and those offering opinions.
The suspension comes at a particularly tricky time for MSNBC. NBC Universal is in the midst of a change of ownership, with its potential new owner, Comcast, seeking final federal approval for the sale. It hopes to conclude the deal by the end of the year.
Senator Bernard Sanders, the independent from Vermont, in a statement called Mr. Olbermann's suspension “outrageous,” adding, “This is a real threat to political discourse in America and will have a chilling impact on every commentator for MSNBC.”
MSNBC initially said that Chris Hayes, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine and an MSNBC contributor, would fill in for Mr. Olbermann. But Mr. Hayes said he did not feel comfortable doing so under the circumstances, and the channel ended up having a straightforward news anchor, Thomas Roberts, fill in Friday night.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/us/06olbermann.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
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Olbermann suspension ignites debate
Punishment of the MSNBC host over donations to Democrats has some asking if rules meant to protect journalistic objectivity apply when a channel or show lets opinions flow freely.
by Scott Collins, Los Angeles Times
November 5, 2010
The abrupt suspension of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann for making donations to Democratic candidates has ignited a national debate over journalistic objectivity and media partisanship, with many critics, including a U.S. senator, questioning the motives of network parent General Electric as it prepares to hand the No. 2 cable news outlet to new owners.
"Is this simply a 'personality conflict' within MSNBC or is one of America's major corporations cracking down on a viewpoint they may not like?" Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, asked in a statement late Friday, calling the suspension "outrageous."
The uproar comes just days after National Public Radio, another news outlet often accused of liberal leanings, landed in hot water after it fired commentator Juan Williams for making remarks deemed objectionable to Muslims.
The Olbermann affair unfolded quickly. The website Politico called MSNBC on Thursday night and began asking about Olbermann's contributions of $2,400 apiece to Democratic Reps. Raul M. Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky. NBC has rules against news employees contributing to political campaigns. Conway lost, Grijalva has declared victory, and votes in the Giffords race are still being counted.
The reaction from network management was surprisingly swift, especially considering that Olbermann has become a standard-bearer for liberal politics and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" is widely credited for helping rescue MSNBC from ratings oblivion. The network is battling CNN for second place in cable news against longtime No.1 Fox News Channel. Olbermann's contract is said to expire in 2012.
As part of NBC Universal, MSNBC will soon become part of cable giant Comcast, which is due to close its acquisition of the company before year's end.
"I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night," MSNBC President Phil Griffin said Friday in a statement. "Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."
In a statement, Olbermann said he had made the Arizona contributions on Oct. 28 after a discussion with a friend about that state's politics. "I did not privately or publicly encourage anyone to donate to these campaigns nor to any others in this election or any previous ones, nor have I previously donated to any political campaign at any level," his statement said.
An MSNBC spokesman said he had no information on when Olbermann might return to air but emphasized that the host had not been fired. However, the indefinite nature of the suspension, combined with Olbermann's high visibility, would probably make an amicable return tricky to pull off any time soon.
The Friday "Countdown" was supposed to be hosted by Chris Hayes, Washington editor for the Nation magazine and a familiar face on the show, but the network changed course after it was revealed he had also contributed to Democratic campaigns. Thomas Roberts, an anchor and correspondent for MSNBC, was tapped at the last minute to substitute.
News organizations generally frown on journalists openly supporting political candidates or causes, and Olbermann's partisanship — on full display in "Countdown" — has gotten MSNBC in trouble in the past. He anchored the network's election coverage Tuesday and was attacked in some quarters for favoring Democrats and ridiculing Republicans. When critics complained about his lack of objectivity during the 2008 election cycle, network executives ultimately brought in David Gregory as a more balanced anchoring choice.
Olbermann's fans reacted to the suspension with outrage. A Facebook page appeared urging his reinstatement. The advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee reported that a petition demanding a reversal of Griffin's decision drew 55,000 signatures by early Friday evening.
Olbermann even attracted some unlikely supporters. Conservative writer Bill Kristol, who frequently appears on Fox News Channel, wrote in a blog post: "Perhaps Olbermann violated NBC News 'policy and standards.' But NBC doesn't have real news standards for MSNBC — otherwise the channel wouldn't exist. It's a little strange to get all high and mighty now."
Many viewers pointed to apparent double standards of journalistic objectivity applied elsewhere. Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who co-hosts "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, made a political donation in 2006. But a network spokesman said that donation was made in accordance with company policy and that Scarborough had asked for permission first.
Fox News host Sean Hannity made a $5,000 donation this year to the political action committee of Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota. But a Fox News spokeswoman contended that unlike Olbermann, Hannity does not anchor coverage of news events. Also, News Corp. policy does not preclude employees from donating to political campaigns, although corporate funds may not be used to do so.
Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, wondered if there may be a disconnect between the journalistic codes of NBC, the parent company with a traditional "objective" news operation, and MSNBC, where opinion now flows freely.
"NBC's rules are saying that you can't engage in any activity that may jeopardize your standing as an impartial journalist," Rosen said. "But is impartial journalism really what MSNBC is about right now?"
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-et-olbermann-20101106,0,6796411,print.story
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Olbermann, Impartiality and MSNBC
by David Carr MSNBC, worried that its reputation as a fair broker of the news hung in the balance, sent Keith Olbermann to the woodshed on Friday for an unpaid suspension because he had donated $7,200 to some of the Democratic politicians he had championed on his hit show “Countdown.”
Golly, that ought to take care of everything.
If MSNBC were really worried about coming off as impartial, don't you think it would have chosen somebody besides Mr. Olbermann, one of the most rabidly partisan figures in national news, to anchor its election coverage? Even Fox News knows better than to do something like that.
MSNBC is new to the network-as-political-identity game, and its parent company, NBC, is far less comfortable with pure play political programming than the News Corporation -- and it shows. MSNBC backed into its current identity, driven by the outsize ratings of Mr. Olbermann, and the success of Rachel Maddow's frankly liberal take on the world.
So what message is being sent by the suspension, which will end on Tuesday? Apparently, Mr. Olbermann is supposed to fire up the base like a convention keynote speaker at 8 p.m., but conduct himself like Brian Williams the rest of the time.
The lines separating politics, entertainment and news were already fading. This election obliterated them. Both Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart held well-attended and well-received rallies on the Mall in Washington, and Fox News had three Republican presidential hopefuls -- Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin -- on the payroll as commentators.
And Mr. Olbermann not only gave airtime on Oct. 28 to Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, he engaged in a new version of checkbook journalism that same day, contributing $2,400 to Mr. Grijalva's campaign, according to Politico, which broke the original story on Mr. Olbermann's contributions.
The shift of audiences toward cable news outlets — with their manifest agendas — as sources of truth and transparency may have something to do with a credibility gap that now confronts more mainstream news outfits. Lately, the idea of objective journalism has been on a pretty rough ride (that means you, CNN), with viewers deciding to align themselves with outlets that share their points of view — warts, agendas and all.
On election night, that shift was outlined, oddly enough, by Tom Brokaw, the éminence grise of the network anchor desk, who sat in on NBC's coverage. Mr. Brokaw wasn't explicitly talking about mainstream media, but he might as well have been: he described how a war that was sold under false circumstances was still being fought, how people encouraged to buy homes now found themselves underwater, how globalization had buried the hopes of many.
“So almost nothing is going the way that most people have been told that it will. And every time they're told in Washington that they have it figured out, it turns out not to be true. And you see a manifestation of that tonight,” he said, pointing to the pushback from the electorate.
And elsewhere on the dial, it was obvious that people were voting with their remotes. Fox News had seven million viewers on election night, lapping not only its cable brethren, but besting network coverage as well.
The sidelines, which is where American journalism and news used to live, have become a far less interesting place. Why merely annotate events when you can tilt the playing field?
In news operations, opinion used to have a separate address. In newspapers, the publisher or his surrogates would toss around lightning bolts in a walled off section at the back of the paper, and on television, some odd guy (usually the owner) whose tie was a little tight would come on at the end of the broadcast and make Olympian pronouncements on monetary policy or the importance of the coming school board elections.
Sounds quaint, doesn't it? Now news anchors lecture the federal government on its response to disasters, cable networks function as propaganda machines for political parties and newspaper writers throw aside neutrality to tell readers what is really going on behind the headlines.
On television, the news business is increasingly living in a world fostered by Fox News and its audacious success. Fox News personalities give money to candidates without consequence — the Fox host Sean Hannity donated to the political action committee of Michele Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota — and Rupert Murdoch, ever the savvy pragmatist, saw which ways the winds were blowing and dropped $1 million on the Republican Governors Association, explaining that he did so “in the best interest of the country.”
The Foxification of the cable universe has created significant collateral damage in the last few weeks. Juan Williams was paid to spout opinions on NPR, but when he spouted the wrong one on the wrong outlet — he acknowledged during an interview on Fox News to having a personal fear of occupying the same airspace as people in traditional Muslim garb — NPR gave him the gate.
Never mind that Mr. Williams was actually suggesting that fear leads to bad policy decisions and that we all need to be on guard against bigoted impulses: that got lost in the rush to oust him. (Rick Sanchez, a CNN anchor, was canned after making bigoted statements.)
Keith Olbermann was suspended for writing a check to support candidates. That was really dumb on Mr. Olbermann's part. As a die-hard partisan, he had to know that his willingness to provide untrammeled airtime to liberal candidates was a form of in-kind contribution that his measly $7,200, given to three campaigns, could never match.
Then again, the man who suspended him, Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC News, threw down a gauntlet before the election in an interview with The New York Times: “Show me an example of us fund-raising.” Conservative bloggers happily obliged and came up with numerous examples, including Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, pitching for dollars on MSNBC.
MSNBC is enforcing a set of standards meant to apply either to another entity — NBC News — or another era, when news people had to act as if they didn't have political rooting interests. The game has changed, but the rules remain the same, at least at some media outlets.
MSNBC ended up in a fight that resembled nothing so much as a brawl within a political party, with the base — in this case the audience — pushing back against the leadership. While Mr. Olbermann is not talking to the media, he is using Twitter to reach his supporters: “Greetings From Exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug & obviously left me tweetless. XO.”
Before its decision, there were more than 275,000 signatures on a petition demanding the return of Mr. Olbermann. The language seems less like the keening of a group of television viewers and more like an outcry from the progressive wing of the MSNBC Party.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/business/media/08carr.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
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