I Want My Keith TV

I've been seeing black fireworks against red sky since I opened the email announcement this afternoon. I've spent the following six hours peering through that haze while exploring angles of the story online.

Keith Olbermann was suspended without pay indefinitely by MSNBC today. Ostensibly for donating to three Democratic political campaigns this year without getting prior approval from his boss. I don't believe for a second that is the true reason.

For one thing the rule he supposedly violated is one that hasn't been applied to MSNBC pundits for years. It is meant for those journalists at NBC who need to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest or bias as objective reporters of the news. It has long been obvious that no MSNBC anchor (or other talking heads on there for that matter) are unbiased. They are all pundits/editorialists. Opinion is the product MSNBC has been selling.

The very fact the personalities on MSNBC are up front and even in your face about their biases is why I watch. I'm not watching for the news. By the time they are talking about it I've already seen some version of the story online and attempted to follow it as close to its primary source as possible and if I'm interested enough, followed discussions about it in a number of blogs or other online sources whose integrity I trust. Let me be clear, that does not include any of the networks on or off cable TV.

There's a lot of speculation out there that it has something to do with the imminent acquisition of NBC/MSNBC/Universal by Comcast. Though Comcast denies it currently has any role in policy or decision-making at the organizations.

Me I'm having de ja vu from when they dumped Donahue in the lead up to the wars and I'm wondering if GE, the parent company, is going to start banging the drums again and is acting proactively to free their soap box of opposition voices.

But it doesn't need to be about war. There are any number of agendas the corporate media might want to silence opposition about. Net Neutrality say. The privatization of social security. The repeal of the health care bill and the Wall Street reform. The tax cuts for the top 2%. Attempts to bring back the rules against media monopolies that would prohibit deals like the Comcast acquisition of NBC et al and Murdoch's acquisition of The Wall Street Journal . The fallout of the Supreme Court ruling equating corporate donations to political campaigns with free speech that resulted in massive untraceable money flowing into this year's election efforts for the first time.

I could go on and on. In fact it has surprised me how long the corporate kings had been putting up with their court jesters like Keith--those willing to speak truth to power from a core of integrity and wisdom that those in power have often forfeited.

After Donahue's dismissal I stopped watching MSNBC until late 2006 after I caught a clip of one of Keith's early special comments. I'm stopping again until he returns. Sorry Rach, I'll follow your blog and maybe scavenge clips off the blogsphere but you must realize that if it is either Comcast or GE behind this, they won't stop with Keith. You, Ed, and Lawrence will follow like falling dominoes. The voices with large audience share, like you four, advocating for the common man, the vulnerable, and the voiceless are dwindling alarmingly. What happens when they are all gone?