The Democrat Thread

[Rex Kickass]

I'm not sure I;d want to disclose that I donated to a Dem if I worked for Fox News.

Rupert Murdoch donated to Hillary's 2006 Senate campaign. You'd probably be just fine.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Rupert Murdoch donated to Hillary's 2006 Senate campaign. You'd probably be just fine.

really?? That's interesting.

[Balta1701]

I'm not sure I;d want to disclose that I donated to a Dem if I worked for Fox News.

Then you better give $199 or less, because more than that and it becomes part of the public record.

[Rex Kickass]

Joe Scarborough made donations to GOP candidates in 2006. He was not suspended.

[StrangeSox]

Joe Scarborough made donations to GOP candidates in 2006. He was not suspended.

 

Did he notify management?

[Rex Kickass]

Did he notify management?

 

Wasn't there, couldn't tell ya

[Balta1701]

By the way, the contrast between this suspension after giving money to a person immediately after they'd appeared on your show and these statements from a couple years ago is quite stark.

This week on "The View," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said he doesn't vote because "It's the only thing I can do that suggests even that I don't have a horse in the race."

 

"I know it's very idiosyncratic, but I would feel just a little hesitation, just a little drag on the airflow, if I went to criticize somebody, especially a president, for whom I had voted," Olbermann went on to say in a statement to Portfolio. "It is driven by the same thing that used to make me keep my distance from the athletes I covered. I don't want anything, even that tiny bit of symbolic connection, to stand in between me and my responsibility to be analytical and critical."

[southsider2k5]

By the way, the contrast between this suspension after giving money to a person immediately after they'd appeared on your show and these statements from a couple years ago is quite stark.

 

Yet not at all surprising.

[Balta1701]

Yet not at all surprising.

You're not allowed to comment on this one after the millions of dollars Newscorp gave to Republicans this cycle.

[BigSqwert]

[StrangeSox]

 

For anyone wondering why I had a bit of a meltdown in the Republican thread on the "$200M India Trip!" thing, that's why.

 

Because I thought this place was above that.

[lostfan]

@ebertchicago: Olberman gave a few bucks, Fox gave a million and its soul.

[StrangeSox]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2...emoirs_say.html

 

Bush thought McCain was "less of a man" choosing Palin as his VP candidate. Not for choosing a woman, but for choosing a complete incompetent.

[StrangeSox]

@ebertchicago: Olberman gave a few bucks, Fox gave a million and its soul.

 

Meh, Fox has similar policies for their newscasters/anchors. Olbermann should have notified his boss, problem solved.

[lostfan]

Meh, Fox has similar policies for their newscasters/anchors. Olbermann should have notified his boss, problem solved.

Yeah I'm not really crying for Olbermann, it was something in his contract and I bet he knew. I doubt this has any effect on his career.

[Rex Kickass]

Unnamed sources are now coming out of MSNBC saying that the NBC News ethics rules stopped applying to MSNBC a few years back, and this may have more to do with personal animosity between Olbermann and the head of MSNBC than anything else.

[lostfan]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2...emoirs_say.html

 

Bush thought McCain was "less of a man" choosing Palin as his VP candidate. Not for choosing a woman, but for choosing a complete incompetent.

Can't say I disagree with him there, although his VP happened to be a sociopath

[Balta1701]

I doubt this has any effect on his career.

I'm somewhat surprised that MSNBC would even go so far as to temporarily suspend their highest rated program over this, as opposed to a private admonition, if there wasn't something else going on behind the scenes. Much like the Juan Williams case; I wonder if they weren't wanting to discipline him for something else, and this gave them their opportunity.

[lostfan]

Who posted the Maddow video a few posts ago? Watch it

[StrangeSox]

I'm somewhat surprised that MSNBC would even go so far as to temporarily suspend their highest rated program over this, as opposed to a private admonition, if there wasn't something else going on behind the scenes. Much like the Juan Williams case; I wonder if they weren't wanting to discipline him for something else, and this gave them their opportunity.

 

 

Things that make you go hmmm...

 

edit: lol liberal media, even MSNBC is running off marginally progressive voices.

Edited November 5, 2010 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

even MSNBC is running off marginally progressive voices.

You say that like it's the first time. Am I the only one who recalls the only anti-war TV host, who also had the best ratings on that network, getting canned in 2002 because the network needed to support the President's war?

[Balta1701]

"Let this incident lay to rest forever the facile, never-true-anyway, bull-pucky, lazy conflation of Fox News and what the rest of us do for a living. I know everybody likes to say, 'Oh, that's cable news, it's all the same. Fox and MSNBC, mirror images of each other.'

 

"Let this lay that to rest forever. Hosts on Fox raise money on the air for Republican candidates. They endorse them explicitly; they use their Fox News profile to headline fund-raisers. Heck, there are multiple people being paid by Fox News now essentially to run as presidential candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you are looking at a significant portion of the whole lineup of Republican presidential contenders for 2012. They can do that because there's no rule against that at Fox. They run as a political operation. We're not.

 

"Yes, Keith's a liberal, and so am I, and there are other people on this network whose political views are shared openly with you, our beloved viewers. But 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."

 

[BigSqwert]

New York Mayor Bloomberg:

 

“If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read,” he said. “I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is."

[Balta1701]

Taibbi:

Just quickly: I just found out about the suspension of Keith Olbermann for making political contributions. NBC apparently has some policy prohibiting journalists from donating to candidates, so they suspended him indefinitely without pay.

 

I went online and read the news and found the inevitable commentary by ostensible experts on journalistic ethics, who are all lining up to whale on Olbermann. One quote I found in this Bloomberg piece:

 

"Journalists who work for a news organization have an ethical responsibility to honor their guidelines and standards,” said Bob Steele who teaches journalism ethics at Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. “If NBC and MSNBC spelled out those guidelines clearly and Olbermann violated those guidelines, then he should pay the price."

 

He should pay the price? Is Bob Steele kidding? What the hell is wrong with people?

 

We had a whole generation of journalists who sat by and did nothing while, for instance, George Bush led us into an idiotic war on a lie, plus thousands more who spent day after day collecting checks by covering Britney's hair and Tiger's text messages and other stupidities while the economy blew up and two bloody wars went on mostly unexamined... and it's Keith Olbermann who should "pay the price" for being unethical? Because, and let me get this straight, he donated money, privately, to politicians?

 

This is absurd even by GE's standards. There is no reason, not even a theoretical one, why any journalist should be prevented from having political opinions and participating in election campaigns in his spare time. The policy would be ridiculous even if we were talking about an evening news anchor -- because the only "ethical" question here is the issue of NBC wanting to preserve the appearance of impartiality and being unable to do so, because political contributions happen to be public record and impossible to hide from viewers.

[southsider2k5]

Taibbi:

 

Yeah, why would anyone listen to their employers rules? I also like the subtle change by the author of what the rules actually were to make it sound way worse.