BREAKING: Keith Olbermann Proved Liberal

[cynatnite]

This just in: MSNBC host Keith Olbermann supports Democrats. According to a report in Politico this morning, Olbermann made the maximum legal donations to three Democratic candidates last month, one of them immediately after he appeared on Olbermann's show.

This is potentially a problem for Olbermann, because it looks as though he violated an NBC News policy prohibiting its staff from making political contributions. Which is an issue for NBC management and their human resources department. (Update: MSNBC has suspended him indefinitely for the donations.) But for the rest of us, how exactly does it change the perception of a partisan opinion host and commentator when we find that he makes political contributions that support the political opinions he regularly gives on air?

snip:
I think journalists should be free to be politically active, to contribute and to disclose their votes, as long as it's done with transparency.

If there's an issue here, I suppose it's that Olbermann (to my knowledge) did not publicly announce the contributions. But on the other hand, come on; this makes Olbermann look not one bit more or less opinionated or objective (or not) than he already did. Even from the "perception of objectivity" standpoint this doesn't much make sense, as a policy or controversy, for a professional opinionator. And yes—though this should go without saying—this goes for conservatives, libertarians, Whigs, Free-Silverites or anyone else as well.

If Olbermann were using his show to fundraise for candidates, that would seem to implicate MSNBC at large, but that's an entirely different issue from making legal donations as an individual.

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/11/05/breaking-keith-olbermann-proved-liberal/?xid=rss-topstories

[ProfessionalLeftist]

1. sounds a bit like a witchhunt to me. n/t

[valerief]

2. As I understand it, some states have laws that prohibit a corporation from doing business

in that state unless they can provide a list of all campaign donations. I read that somewhere. Not sure of the specifics.

NBC is still full of very, very, very RED red tape.