Monday, November 15, 2010

Media Catfight: Olbermann vs. Koppel, hilarity will ensue

Via Newsbusters.org

imageimage The Washington Post ran an op-ed penned by Ted Koppel yesterday, in which he bemoaned the transformation of television news into “a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of [Keith] Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.”

The overarching message of Koppel’s opinions is that “news for profit” does not bode well for the future of the republic, because the drive for ratings and profitability drives Fox, MSNBC and other broadcast media outlets to produce news programming that informs less and instead simply reinforces the partisan opinions and beliefs of the audience.

Only one of those mentioned however, has decided to hunker down and return fire: Keith Olbermann.  As Noel Sheppard reports in his Newsbusters.org article last night Olbermann posted the following to his Twitter account:

FYI Special Comment tomorrow night: Koppel, False Equivalence, and his part in the real "death of news" [sic]

What’s more hilarious—a legacy journalist mourning the death of “objective news,” a death he and his generation helped to bring about, or a new media “journalist” castigating the legacy journalist for fingering new media journalists?

Koppel and his crew steered this ship to the left from the 1970’s through the early 1990’s.  When Fox News was founded and launched in 1996, the center-right majority of the viewership had options that previous generations did not.  They did what any fed-up television audience would do—they changed channels.

The left’s domination of the media is coming to an end.  They are being forced to compete in an open marketplace of ideas, and they’re losing badly.  The Olbermann-Koppel catfight is a finger-pointing blame game between those who caused the death of objective journalism and those who thought they could profit from it.

0 comments :

Post a Comment

You must have a Google Account to post a comment.

WARNING: Posting on this blog is a privilege. You have no First Amendment rights here. I am the sole, supreme and benevolent dictator. This blog commenting system also has a patented Dumbass Detector. Don't set it off.