Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are finally shoved aside by the NBC brass:

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.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin. [e.a.]

So finally someone noticed that news and views don’t mix! That paying someone explicitly to provoke gets a TV network in hot water.

I’ve been hatin’ on Olbermann for a long time, ever since I read that he considers himself brave and courageous and that some people consider him knowledgeable. Here’s what I wrote in 2006:

I don’t know whom to loathe more—Olbermann or the “journalist” who is the author of this celebrity profile. He is oh-so-impressed that Olbermann throws around some WWII buzzwords:

Conservatives may hate his attacks, but no one doubts that he comes across as one of the smarter guys in the room. When he laid into then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Aug. 30, he threw in references to Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement. Let’s see NBC network anchor Brian Williams pull that off.

A long time ago, I wrote on this blog that you’ll never hear me complaining about the dumbing-down of the culture:

You will rarely hear me complain about the dumbing-down of culture. All that worried talk about the sorry state of TV, the movies, music videos, video games, hip-hop, whatever. My position on this is: that’s not culture–that’s pop culture. And it’s supposed to be dumb, or dumb enough for a mass audience to get it

In principle, someone who calls her blog Infotainment Rules shouldn’t complain about the dumbing-down of the news, either. Yeah? You think? Well, I’m complaining. But it’s not the infotainment format and packaging that’s the problem. It’s the fucking ignorance of our “journalists”—from Olbermann, who seems to be riding high (I’m doubtful) to the sycophants who profile him—that’s got me down.

Meanwhile, it appears I was wrong. I predicted it would be curtains at MSNBC for Olbermann, who was so grotesquely partisan for the Democrats. Instead, the cable network rewarded him with a seat at the anchor desk on election night. That counts as a trend I’ll have to watch.

So: I was spectacularly wrong in predicting Olbermann’s imminent demise in 2006. And I would be an idiot to predict it now. I’m sure we’ll soon be hearing about how “dissent” is being “stifled” by NBC. That will be  Olbermann’s “argument,” and he’ll have many supporters, I’m sure. But he has been shoved aside—and not a moment too soon.

I’ll keep watching his career, though, and you should too—because he’s a bellwether of the trend toward open partisanship in the newsbiz. That trend will not diminish. It will grow. But probably not at NBC.

any of the commenters at Gawker, as is their style, prefer to snark about the detention of graffiti artist James Powderly (along with many other protesters of all stripes) by the Chinese authorities for the display he mounted in Beijing:

But others understand that it’s no joke to be jailed in China,

I think this is awesome and courageous.

Really? Tiananmen Square was awesome and courageous. This is just self-aggrandizing and pointless.

Really? Going to prison in China is no joke. It gets a message out there for people to see and that is important. Would you do it?

how is this self-aggrandizing, exactly? He’s in prison, and I’m sitting on my ass in a (somewhat) comfy office chair reading about thinking “shit, I feel bad for the Muslims and non-Kool aid drinking Chinese when the Olympics are finished

There’s a lot of other reporting about this worrisome incident too, as you can see at this Google News link. But there’s nothing about this incident on Memeorandum.

Why is that? I thought the blogosphere is supposed to be much more informative than the TV newsbiz. The internet and TV are sharing news-viewer eyeballs, according to Pew.

I was hoping that the internet would be an improvement on the MSM. Right now, it’s Moe at Gawker—yep, Gawker—who’s reporting news that people should be aware of (because it’s a head-on collision between Western political culture [and freedom of expression] and Chinese “authoritarian” political culture [no freedom of expression].

So kudos to Moe at Gawker for going where the newsbiz doesn’t go.

Not that, say, the New York Times isn’t trying to cover China soberly–it most certainly seems to be.

[T]he Beijing police still sentenced the two women [in their 70s] to an
extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor” this week for
applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where
officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the
Olympic Games.

Then the NYT goes and ruins its coverage with an almost incomprehensible level of naivete about the Chinese regime [e.a.]:

It is unclear why the police have detained people who sought permission to protest. [Really? Which part of the maniacally controlling Chinese government's motives is unclear? Huh? ---ed.]
Some political analysts say the police may be refusing to enforce the government’s order, announced last month, to allow protest zones. Chinese lawyers and human rights advocates also suggested a more cynical motivation — that the authorities were using the possibility of legal demonstrations as a ploy to lure restive citizens into declaring their intention to protest, allowing the police to take action against them. [You don't say! Fancy that! ---ed.]

When it comes to a Communist (or formerly Communist) or an “authoritarian” regime, there’s no use in wondering why it does what it does. It does it (whatever outrage “it” is) because it can, because it holds total power over the people it rules. Once upon a time, the people who wrote for the New York Times assumed that their readers knew this. Now it’s unclear whether even the journalists writing these stories know these things or if they’re just playing dumb. Oh well!

But even if the NYT were to give it to us straight up, the paper just doesn’t have a big enough megaphone among those who live online. Which, these days, is a lot of us. And the appetite for news doesn’t seem to be too large either.

Here are some more findings from that Pew survey:

• In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the
  proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has
  increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those
  younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from
  25% in 1998.
• A slim majority of Americans (51%) now say they check in on the
  news from time to time during the day, rather than get the news at
  regular times. This marks the first time since the question was first
  asked in 2002 that most Americans consider themselves “news grazers.”
• Social networking sites are very popular with young people, but
  they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with
  social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites.

For months and months the John Edwards affair was relegated to beyond Siberia at the New York Times. (Siberia is defined for you hicks here.)

Only six days ago, a bunch of Times guys explained to ombudsman Clark Hoyt why this was not a story for the NYT:

“I’m not going to recycle a supermarket tabloid’s anonymously sourced story,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor.

Then yesterday, a bruising Edwards story turned up on page one of the New York Times:

Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair

The Edwardses’ old-fashioned attempt to cover up the “mistake” of the golden boy by paying off both the mother of the child (usually a “bad girl” from the wrong side of the tracks) and the hapless guy who “volunteers” to take the hit for the golden boy reminds me of a whole lot of bad movies from the 1960s, or of Peyton Place.

This non-performance of their duties is beyond pathetic from the entire MSM.

Kaus has more, as always. He’s got ‘tude, too.

Meanwhile, MSM reporters–having deemed it unnecessary to report on whether a leading, active Democratic pol, third-place presidential candidate and likely cabinet official cheated on his ill wife while making a big show of his loyalty and then lied about it to the public –have found an angle sufficiently tedious to be worth discussing with their readers: a possible campaign finance violation!

Fierce MSM competition to see who can sit on a story for longer:

Romenesko:

Reflections of a Newsosaur | Charlotte Observer | TV Barn

Alan Mutter says the mainstream media “look foolishly out of touch by continuing to remain silent about the allegation that John Edwards fathered the girl recently born to a former campaign aide.” || Aaron Barnhart: “The Enquirer, along with my employer, McClatchy, is actually working the story, while most of the MSM claims to be keeping its hands clean.”

Kaus is still hot on the trail, of course. Yesterday, he quoted Kinsley [e.a.]:

the MSM told a story about Edwards—they told it often and loud—it was probably one of the best-known and totally accepted stories of the 2008 campaign: John loyally standing by his loyal wife as she deals with cancer. If the story isn’t true, they should run a correction. My god, look at the things they run corrections over—the spelling of people’s names, and so on. Yet they’re leaving this huge story uncorrected, and leaving their readers misinformed.

Kinsley is shocked, shocked that his formerly respected and respectable colleagues who are running the MSM show don’t bother to correct the record (which they establish to begin with, using showbiz techniques)

There’s rather a more pointed critique from across the Pond:

Indeed.

If the MSM is hiding this obvious story, what else are they hiding?

Stuff that actually matters, that’s what!

And that is why it’s important for them to report the distasteful stuff, too—in order to win our trust that they will report, as the NY Times once prided itself on doing,

Without Fear or Favor

That ethos for journalists—to report the truth—was a long time coming. Now it’s a long time gone.

Always! Isn’t that the iron rule of the MSM—make sure that people tune in for the bad news that will surely follow the good news?

Oil prices are falling sharply, and that’s good news. But not nearly as good as you might think.

No doubt the drop, down to $120 by mid-day Monday, gives strapped consumers relief at the gas pump. Prices have dropped below $4 a gallon and could be headed toward $3.50, going by trading in wholesale futures markets. Any decline will be welcomed by Americans struggling under the burden of falling house prices, rising layoffs and stagnant wages.

But falling oil prices also suggest that the recession the U.S. has so far avoided is well on its way, as consumers pull back from the spending spree that drove economic growth earlier this decade. A weakening economy will mean more layoffs, further pressuring already reduced spending.

The Edwards story takes another step up the ladder to the MSM from the undernews.

(via Kaus, your source for paranoia and for tabloid truth)

Faster Comics–Jay Leno Beats NBC News: Charlotte’s WCNC airs a hostile, smart, doomy segment on the “scandal brewing.” Pegged to Edwards “ducking reporters,” plus the suggestive birth certificate. … Leno, Conan jokes featured. Leno’s is even funny. … Resonant clip from campaign “webisode.” … Reporter Stuart Watson says Edwards is in danger of “disappearing from the national stage … unless he finds a way to squelch this story fast.” … Maybe he did: It would be paranoid to notice that the segment isn’t featured on the station’s Web site. … Update: Strangely, I am paranoid! Video is on main WCNC video playlist and on the “Investigators” page. … 12:18 P.M.

Once upon a time the alleged John Edwards love child story was undernews.

Now it’s burbling to the surface of the MSM.

Yesterday it made Memeorandum.

Rachel Sklar wrote up the story and provided lots and lots of links to bring you up to speed.

But Mickey Kaus owns it, and continues to track it.

Some people just can’t get over how unfair it was to Obama to call Wesley Clark’s idiotic comments about John McCain’s service to his country an “attack.”

Someone over at the Columbia Journalism Review gets on his high horse:

It’s crucially important that we have a political debate in this country that’s at least sophisticated enough to be able to handle the following rather basic idea: Arguing that a person’s record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute “attacking” their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.

That’s not a very high bar for sophistication. But right now it’s one the press isn’t capable of clearing.

No shit, Sherlock.

But what I want to know is why it’s so “crucially important” that we have a “sophisticated” political debate in this country.

Politics is not a debating society! It ain’t bean bag, either. It’s about power struggles!

Wesley Clark is an asshole, an Obama supporter, and he is trying to torpedo John McCain’s image by belittling his wartime experience. You bet it was an attack.

The other day, Stanley Fish mourned the passing of the primaries, because things have become unbearably dull on cable “news” [e.a.]:

From early February through the beginning of June, the lament one heard from the political pundits (echoing Cicero’s first oration against Catiline) went this way: How long shall we have to endure the ordeal of the Democratic primary? How long before we get to the real thing?

But now it turns out that the primary season – extended, it was said, beyond expectation or reason – was the real thing. And I say that because, at least to date, the current season – the season that was to bring a once-in-a-century contest between two men of different generations and clearly opposed ideologies – has been totally uninteresting. …

I cite in evidence the desperate efforts of cable-news commentators to fill out an hour or even 15 minutes arguing about whether Bill Clinton’s statement of support for Barack Obama was so brief and pro forma that it amounted to a slap in the face, or about whether Obama (or a staff member) was wise to banish women wearing head scarfs from photo-ops, or whether Michelle Obama came across as a regular – that is, all-American and not angry – person on “The View,” or whether John McCain could or should separate himself from George Bush.

Fish was amusing but wrong. The gossip that passes for commentary on cable “news” is the main event, not the sideshow. Look no further than this for evidence:

Clark Attack On McCain Upstages Obama Speech

The fallout from retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark’s Sunday comment that “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down” is not “a qualification to be president,” dominated campaign coverage yesterday. In today’s coverage, Clark is widely seen as having hurt Sen. Barack Obama by seeming to belittle Sen. John McCain’s well known record of service in the Navy and his experience as a POW. Moreover, the controversy distracted media attention from Obama’s speech on patriotism.

The main event was supposed to be Obama’s big patriotism speech. It was kicked off the air—and along with it Obama’s carefuly crafted speech and carefully staged photo op in Independence, Missouri [get it? huh?]—by breaking gossip.

One pseudo-event was upstaged by some smart-alecks who dissect, parse, deconstruct, and beat it to death on television (for a handsome living).

That’s the inextricable link between American politics and the newsbiz, 2008-style!

That’s infotainment!

See? I told you that infotainment rules!

Glenn Reynolds:

OUCH: In ’survival mode,’ newspapers slashing jobs. …

No wonder they’ve been telling us we’re in the midst of a second Great Depression. For them, it’s been true.

Later, Glenn explains his attitude:

It’s not “glee.” And, in fact — as I’ve said repeatedly — I think the reason that newspapers are tubing is that they’re replaced the kind of hard-news reporting described above with editorializing and “attitude,” often in support of political positions that many people don’t agree with. I’d much rather see them flourish while doing a good job, but they’ve been cutting budgets for actual reporting for decades.

I like it when newspapers do a good job, too. For example, when I read this straightforward piece in today’s NYT about the situation between Israel and her many enemies, I thought: Huh! Why can’t the NYT report like this (factually and straightforwardly) every day?

I reprint a few paragraphs to mark it as a sort of baseline of respectable, neutral MSM reporting on the Middle East.

Hezbollah seized the two Israeli soldiers shortly after the Palestinian group Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in southern Israel, and it was the one-two punch of such actions that partly pushed Mr. Olmert to order such a fierce response against Hezbollah in 2006.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are armed and supported by Iran, which has repeatedly urged that Israel be forced out of existence.

Nevertheless, apart from the prisoner deal with Hezbollah, negotiated through a German mediator, Israel also agreed with Hamas on a six-month truce that started June 19. The deal, mediated by Egypt, has been violated by dissident Palestinian groups that have fired rockets or mortar shells at Israel.

But so far, both sides seem committed to the truce, which involves Israel opening border crossings and reducing its siege of Gaza. On Sunday, about a third more goods were let through than had previously been, according to Hamas officials in Gaza. The goods included animal feed, diesel fuel, fruit, vegetables and frozen meat.

The acting Hamas interior minister, Said Siam, said in an interview that he had formed an emergency group to monitor truce violations by various factions. Clerics associated with Hamas spoke at Friday Prayer in favor of the truce, saying it was in the interest of the people that it not be violated.