Pathetic: NBC/MSNBC caved to Republicans’ bitching (UPDATED)

AMERICAblog:

McCain and the Republicans got to NBC and MSNBC. They pulled Keith Olbermann out of the anchor chair. Probably because we were all sooooooooo “sexist” last week. Really pathetic of NBC/MSNBC. They actually fell for the Republicans’ crap about “bias.” But I’m sure that now that NBC/MSNBC has caved to the Republicans, the GOP will never say another mean thing about the network. Yeah, ask the Democrats how well the “cave just this once and they’ll leave us alone” strategy has worked. Not to mention, how many people at the Republican convention do you honestly believe watch NBC or MSNBC? They watch FOX, you morons. We watch NBC and MSNBC. At least we did. You people are idiots.

This is such a tired story — the media asks Republicans a couple of hard questions for once and/or calls them on their bullshit, then the Republicans have a whiny fucking hissy fit, FOX pipes in, laughably, about “bias,” and a network caves. America loses. Every single fucking time.

Hey, guess what? There is no fair and balanced media coverage! It’s a myth! Even the Associated fucking Press is shilling for McCain this election cycle. And David Gregory? Hack. Tom Brokaw? Sorry to say, but there’s a reason his former career consisted of reading from a teleprompter. Brian Williams? Same. Part of the reason Keith Olbermann’s coverage was good is that he did his best to be objective, but he didn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t. You see, when you focus on being “unbiased,” you lose focus on pursuing the truth. Why? Because there simply aren’t two sides to every story! When your focus on being “fair and balanced” causes you to bring a dipshit fundamentalist Christian activist on to give the “conservative viewpoint” on the HPV vaccine, you are not doing “unbiased” reporting, you’re spotlighting batshit insanity. When your Sunday morning panel includes right-wingers Brit Hume and Bill Kristol, right-of-center to moderate Mara Liasson, and the sorta-liberal black-guy-at-the-end Juan Williams, you’re not being “unbiased,” you’re pandering to the fact that most of your target demographic (racist retards) will indeed dismiss the opinions of the black guy at the end. (Why Juan Williams doesn’t seem to realize this, I don’t understand.)

Keith Olbermann’s coverage was good because he focused more on telling the truth than appearing “unbiased.” The same can be said of Rachel Maddow, who is also completely qualified to anchor election coverage. Look, if viewers want stale bullshit, they’ll turn on CNN. If they want stale, tired right-wing bullshit, they’ll watch FOX. Finally, in MSNBC, we were starting to have a refreshing alternative, one that didn’t pick up Republican talking points quite so easily, that wasn’t afraid to call bullshit on politicians. Apparently the fucking goons at GE, or the goons in the McCain campaign, or the taunting of Bill O’Reilly got to them.

Pathetic. I was actually looking forward to election night coverage this year. Not anymore!

UPDATE: Read Glenn Greenwald’s scathing take on all of this, immediately. He’ll set your ass right. One teeny tiny excerpt:

This decision by MSNBC is as alarming as it is illustrative. They just implicitly chided and overtly demoted their most popular and valuable news personality because the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right demanded that they do so. It’s fine for Brit Hume to host a “news program” and for hard-core right-wing ideologues to dominate cable news. The fact that Dick Cheney (understandably) viewed Tim Russert’s Meet the Press as the ideal forum to allow the White House to “control the message” bothered nobody outside of a few online critics, and didn’t remotely impede the perception of Russert as the Beacon of Tough and Objective Journalism. But MSNBC’s ratings-based decision to feature Keith Olbermann is a grave threat to modern journalism and must be stopped. So decrees the White House and the McCain campaign, and so the GE-owned MSNBC complies.

Okay, two excerpts.  He also tears down the dumbassed myth that the media is “liberal”:

The single dumbest claim in our political culture is that the huge corporations which own our establishment media outlets promote a “liberal” ideology. Why would General Electric ever use NBC and its other media assets to promote political liberalism? They lavishly benefit from the whole panoply of right-wing policies — from endlessly expanding defense spending to deregulation. Their multiple businesses depend upon maintaining good relations with the right-wing ideologues who run our Government. Even ignoring all of the above-documented empirical facts, the very idea that a corporation like GE — or Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC) and Time Warner (CNN) — would actively promote a left-wing agenda in its news divisions and undermine the very Government power centers on which they rely has been the most self-evidently moronic premise one can imagine.

Yes, read it all.