How online journalists and bloggers forced Keith Olbermann to respond to Richard Wolffe controversy
Jonathan Berr doesn’t know why Keith Olbermann singled him out when responding to recent online criticisms. In a statement to TVNewser, the MSNBC anchor said that Berr, “whoever he is, does not like my prioritizing caring for my mother and dealing with her death, and then doing as many shows as I could, ahead of vetting the comments of our analysts and my management team, frankly, I feel sorry for him.”
Of course the Daily Finance reporter is one of just hundreds of bloggers and online journalists that have gone after Olbermann recently after it was revealed that one of his guests hosts, Richard Wolffe, had corporate PR ties that weren’t disclosed during his broadcasts.
This isn’t the first time Olbermann has taken to the web to respond to online critics. He is a frequent Daily Kos contributor and has gone on there before to answer attacks from Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. Coincidentally, Greenwald was one of the many to lead the crusade with the Wolffe controversy.
In a piece titled, “Keith Olbermann screwed up badly,” Berr had echoed many of the points brought up by Greenwald and others, noting that Wolffe had been hired by a company called Public Strategies, which flouted his MSNBC influence. It was argued by many that the company is selling Wolffe’s access as a MSNBC journalist to its corporate clients.
I asked Berr in a phone interview if he thought it was a positive sign that Olbermann took his online critics seriously enough to respond. He said that he was encouraged by the engagement but wasn’t impressed with Olbermann’s response to the criticisms.
“It shows that he’s at least willing to engage with his audience for this issue, and I give him credit for that,” he said. “I don’t give him credit for not giving a coherent answer. All the answers he’s been giving don’t make much sense, and until he starts making some more sense, then people will continue to question whether he’s trying to hide something. The fact of the matter is that what Richard Wolffe was doing was hardly a secret. He was hired by the company, and it sent out a press release touting it … so this notion that he was doing something particularly secretive is hard to understand. I don’t get what Olbermann thought Richard Wolffe was doing, because in the press release it was pretty clear what he was doing. He was a PR consultant.”
Berr said he would have no problem with Wolffe hosting Olbermann’s show, as long as the proper disclosure is given.
“Wolffe was writing for the Daily Beast for awhile, and his affiliation with his company was disclosed on the Daily Beast, so why didn’t anyone at MSNBC notice that? I’m perplexed, I don’t understand how something so basic as knowing where someone works would slip through the cracks.”
Interesting piece Simon.
I use a strategy referred to as “adopt-a-reporter” to document the reporting of local mainstream news media journalists who have been covering the six year ramp up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
Many reporters here work for major news companies contracted directly by the IOC to tell the Olympic side of the Olympic story.
Neither the news companies or reporters consider this type of affiliation a conflict of interest, and their audiences are none the wiser until it is too late.
I called for a news media inquiry in 2006 to try and stem the tide before it escalated out of control, but to no avail.
I’ve written extensively in my blog and book about how and why the IOC hires local news media companies and reporters to influence people in Olympic Host regions – http://www.olyblog.com/f/06/ShawLeeF09282006.shtml
The good news is that the reporters involved in this type of partisan reporting are now being questioned by their colleagues. I know this because the more honest reporters have recently been approaching me in confidence to learn what their unethical colleagues have been doing.
Hopefully, the reporters with a conscience and a will to save their industry will expose the process. Unfortunately, they still seem too scared and not desperate enough to make an issue of the unethical practice.
If it was an advertiser other than the Olympics buying news media allegiance there would have been an inquiry long ago, but people still find it hard to believe an organization like the IOC would support and manage such a controversial arrangement. Patriotism tied to sports plays a huge roll in keeping this arrangement buried, but social media, and its penchant for transparency is finally starting to make it impossible to ignore.
I don’t really understand why we should care that media types are snipping at each other. This would mean that I care about either Glenn Greenwald’s opinion or Keith Olbermann’s.
I do not.