I, too, am fascinated by the NYT’s tale of the détente organized between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann by their corporate overlords. Glenn Greenwald has two of the best takes on why this is important and frightening, exposing in particular the danger of “GE’s silencing of Keith Olbermann” as “one of the most blatant examples yet of pernicious corporate control over America’s journalism.” I also found the Gawker pick-up of Greenwald’s piece about “The Secret Sleaze of Richard Wolffe” particularly telling — and particularly bizarre, coming from the increasingly corporate Gawker enterprise.
What’s interesting is that this isn’t a cut-and-dried case of censorship, at least not of the kind we usually scream about. What’s forgotten within Greenwald’s screeds is that neither Olbermann nor O’Reilly began their campaigns against each other with the intent of actually revealing or making news. O’Reilly isn’t running pieces about G.E. because he’s discovered new things about the company — he’s doing it to get at Olbermann. Likewise, though I am on record as enjoying Keith Olbermann’s increasingly gimicky show, even I knew that the nightly attacks on O’Reilly weren’t really drawn from a desire to better inform the audience, but just from a desire to, well, preach to an already Bill O-hating choir about the dastardly methods of his closest competitor. Both men found ways to trumpet themselves through the contest as the more honest, more reliable, and more popular alternative. Both benefitted from ratings boosts. This wasn’t a news fight — this was an ego fight, and all the better for news consumers if that part of it is ended.
That it’s been ended by corporate decree, however, is the worst case scenario. O’Reilly should be free to report on G.E., just as Olbermann and his MSNBC colleagues shouldn’t be restricted from criticizing FOX coverage and commentary, which is often newsworthy. What should have happened — and oh, how I wish it had — was that ratings would have eventually demanded a cessation to the hostilities, as viewers got fed up with the mutually assured promotion plan that the two shows seemed to have. Yet we live in a country where fighting is still the most popular kind of drama to watch on TV. If we think of these shows in terms of entertainment instead of news — which is often a perfectly fair frame for both — then it’s pretty easy to see that Bill O’Reilly fighting Keith Olbermann to the televised death would get ratings second only to Bill O’Reilly marrying Keith Olbermann in a sweeps-week surprise crossover.
Which frames this entire deal differently — why would networks willingly give up ratings? I accept Greenwald’s position on this, that for G.E., the decision was based on a need to shore up their corporate reputation, and that FOX was reacting to Olbermann’s slowly rising ratings (and O’Reilly’s slightly declining numbers) in making their decision. But what I wonder is if the ban won’t be lifted when both sides see that achieving a peaceful balance is actually counterproductive to their real goal: higher ratings and higher ad shares.
This brings me to a bit of hopeful news: PBS is looking forward to a funding increase from the government this year. PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger told a gathering of TV critics that PBS is hopeful it will receive a $20 million raise this year to $450 million, after eight years of budget cuts under President Bush. The AP says 15 percent of PBS’s budget comes from the government, meaning it raises 85 percent elsewhere, including from state governments and “from viewers like you”). Here’s the beautiful part about PBS’s charter: it says explicitly (Sec. 438 (a)) that no:
The same language appears again in Part C, barring the government from exercising any control over content or distribution, despite its financial contributions.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all news organizations had similar conventions behind them?
To start my own war of contentiousness within the media: There’s something delicious about linking to an AP story (that corporation of news that would rather no one linked to any of their content) when discussing PBS (that corporation open to all viewers), particularly when the AP story seems to have no original content. I just couldn’t resist.
SATURN SMITH 