Did MSNBC Go Too Far, Or Not Far Enough?

From The New York Times:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left. * * *

I have mixed feelings about this. I watched MSNBC most of the time for convention coverage this year, and it did seem a bit odd to me when Olbermann and Matthews were literally gushing with praise after Obama's convention speech (it was, of course, a great speech and some level of praise would certainly have been appropriate, but the Olbermann/Matthews reaction did seem a bit over-the-top to me). Also, Olbermann's criticism of the use of 9-11 images at the GOP convention did seem a bit out-of-place -- it was a valid criticism, but it might have been better had one of MSNBC's political analysts made the comment as opposed to the anchor.

But then again, FoxNews has been doing this stuff for years, and MSNBC did have a lot to make up for after its bullshit decision back in 2003 to cancel the Phil Donohue Show, its highest rated show at the time, simply because Donohue was against the impending clusterfuck in Iraq. Back then, MSNBC executives took the fascist position that it wouldn't be good to provide "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

Nowadays, MSNBC has learned that being anti-Bush can be profitable (no doubt due to the fact that 70% of the country hates Bush), and that is undoubtedly why it chose Olbermann, its most successful on-air personality, to anchor some of the major political events this year along with Matthews. But now it appears that elements of the Extreme Right have successfully taken control of MSNBC's programming. As Glenn Greenwald notes:

There is no question whatsoever that the Bush administration, the McCain campaign, and the Right generally have recently made it a top priority to force MSNBC to remove Olbermann (and Chris Matthews) from playing a prominent role in its election coverage, and MSNBC has now complied with the Right's demands. Does it need to be explained why it is disturbing in the extreme that the White House and the McCain campaign can so transparently dictate MSNBC's programming choices?

So, as I mentioned above, I'm torn. The naive part of me that wants our media to truly be "fair and balanced" definitely sees the downside to having Keith Olbermann anchor major political events. But the part of me that is tired of the fact that extreme right-wing conservatives have taken over talk radio and (except for Alan Colmes and the occasionally fair and balanced Chris Wallace) permeate FoxNews -- that part of me wants MSNBC to stay the course.

Assholes like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity share a large part of the responsibility for the disaster of the last eight years, and MSNBC's turn to the left certainly provides an alternative voice in this time of "change" and partially makes up for the fact that the Corporate Media were basically asleep at the wheel during late 2002 through early 2003, when Bush was lying his way into Iraq.

Maybe the best way to resolve this is simply for MSNBC to announce that, due to popular demand, it will now officially assume the role of providing a political counterweight to FoxNews. MSNBC, in order to promote this announcement, could adopt the motto "balanced and fair."