http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20061218&s=eviatar
The Nation
Olbermann's Hot News
by DAPHNE EVIATAR
[from the December 18, 2006 issue]
If you picked up the New York Times on October 18, you'd have had little
reason to think it was a particularly significant day in American
history. While the front page featured a photo of George W. Bush signing
a new law at the White House the previous day, the story about the
Military Commissions Act -- which the Times never named -- was buried in
a 750-word piece on page A20. "It is a rare occasion when a President
can sign a bill he knows will save American lives" was the first of
several quotes of praise from the President that were high up in the
article. Further down, a few Democrats objected to the bill, but from
the article's limited explanation of the law it was hard to understand
why.
But if you happened to catch MSNBC the evening before, you'd have heard
a different story. It, too, began with a laudatory statement from the
President: "These military commissions are lawful. They are fair. And
they are necessary." Cut to MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann: "And they also
permit the detention of any American in jail without trial if the
President does not like him."
What? Did the Times, and most other outlets, just miss that?
Indeed, they did. Olbermann, who decried the new law as a shameful
moment in American history, went on to proclaim that the Military
Commissions Act -- which he did name -- will be the American
embarrassment of our time, akin to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
or the 1942 executive order interning Japanese-Americans.
It was a perfect story for the bold and eccentric host of Countdown With
Keith Olbermann, which airs weeknights on MSNBC. A former anchor for
ESPN's SportsCenter, Olbermann likes to call the news as he sees it --
especially when almost everyone else in the media seems to be ignoring a
critical play. As it turns out, that tack on the news is increasingly
popular these days, upending the conventional wisdom that incisive
analysis and intelligent critiques don't win viewers on mainstream
television.
Olbermann first cast off the traditional reporter's role in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, delivering a powerful indictment of the
government's handling of the rescue effort. "These are leaders who won
re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable
of keeping this country safe," he said bitterly. The government "has
just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon
called standing water."
At the time, other newscasters, most famously CNN's Anderson Cooper,
also unleashed their outrage, spawning speculation that the natural
disaster might also become a watershed event for broadcast news. But
most anchors quickly returned to business as usual, censoring their own
criticisms no matter how bad the news continued to be. Not Olbermann.
Encouraged by rising ratings, he's since turned his distinctive take on
the government's incompetence into a regular part of his show.
Last August he took the tone up a notch when he aired the first of his
hard-hitting Special Comments. Regularly invoking some of the most
shameful examples of American history to frame the Bush Administration
in historical perspective, he's likened the President's recent acts to
John Adams's jailing of American newspaper editors, Woodrow Wilson's use
of the Espionage Act to prosecute "hyphenated Americans" for "advocating
peace in a time of war" and FDR's internment of 110,000 Americans
because of their Japanese descent. Ours is "a government more dangerous
to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from," declared
Olbermann the day after the President signed the Military Commissions
Act.
Since his first Special Comment ripped into Donald Rumsfeld for
attacking Americans who question their government, video clips and
transcripts of Olberman's commentaries have been zipping around the
Internet, a favorite on sites like Crooks and Liars, Truthout and
YouTube. (The Rumsfeld commentary was watched more than 100,000 times in
the month after it appeared on Countdown.) But it's not just a niche
following: Since late August Olbermann's ratings have shot up 55
percent. In November he was named a GQ Man of the Year. When MSNBC
teamed him with Chris Matthews to cover the midterms, the network's
ratings were up 111 percent from the 2002 election in the coveted
25-to-54 demographic. And certain fifteen-minute segments on Olbermann's
show have edged out his nemesis, Bill O'Reilly. (Olbermann deems
O'Reilly the "Worst Person in the World" on his popular nightly contest
for the newsmaker who's committed the most despicable act of the day.)
Unlike O'Reilly, Olbermann doesn't shout over his guests, condescend to
his opponents or deliver empty diatribes. Instead, his show -- which
attracts guests ranging from Frank Rich to John Ashcroft -- features
in-depth interviews with prominent academics, public officials and
journalists on serious, often overlooked events of the day.
"Keith is a refreshing change from most of the coverage of civil
liberties since 9/11," says Jonathan Turley, a George Washington
University law professor and frequent guest on Olbermann's show.
"Reporters tend to view these fights in purely political terms, so the
public gets virtually no substantive analysis. As long as two people
disagree, reporters treat it as an even debate. They won't say that the
overwhelming number of constitutional and national security experts say
this is an unlawful program -- they'll just say experts disagree. It's
extremely misleading."
Olbermann, who denies any partisan leanings and whose background doesn't
suggest any, insists his job is to report on what's really going on --
even if the public is loath to believe it. "We are still fundamentally
raised in this country to be very confident in the preservation of our
freedoms," he said in a recent interview. "It's very tough to get
yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or
abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live." Olbermann
credits sportscasting for his candid and historical-minded approach. "In
sports, if a center-fielder drops the fly ball, you can't pretend he
didn't," he says. "There's also an awareness of patterns, a relationship
between what has gone before and what is to come that is so strong in
sports coverage that doesn't seem to be there in news reporting."
If history lessons in prime time seem an unlikely sell, it helps that
Olbermann's show is also witty, quirky and fast-paced, covering
everything from the Iraq War to Madonna's adoption fiasco to
pumpkin-smashing elephants -- one of his nightly fifteen-second Oddball
segments. With a growing number of TV viewers saying they get their news
from Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, it's no
wonder Olbermann -- who's sort of a cross between Edward R. Murrow and
Jon Stewart -- has a growing audience.
MSNBC seems to be egging him on. "The only issues I've had with my
employers is to calm them down and say 'doing this every night won't
work,' " says Olbermann, referring to his Special Comments. "I have to
do it only when I feel moved to."
"The rise of Keith's skeptical or pointed comments are the mood of the
country," says Bill Wolff, MSNBC's vice president for prime-time
programming. "He has given voice to a large part of the country that is
frustrated with the Administration's policies."
In a pre-election Special Comment about the Republican National
Committee's campaign ads featuring menacing images of Osama bin Laden
and associated terrorists, for example, Olbermann declared: "You have
adopted bin Laden and Zawahiri as spokesmen for the Republican National
Committee." Invoking FDR for contrast, he added: "Eleven Presidents ago,
a chief executive reassured us that we have nothing to fear but fear
itself. His distant successor has wasted his Administration insisting
that there is nothing we can have but fear itself."
Not surprisingly, Olbermann has his critics. National Review recently
lambasted him for his "angry and increasingly bizarre attacks on the
Bush administration," claiming that he offers nothing in the way of hard
news. But the author didn't cite a single fact that Olbermann had wrong.
Meanwhile, as the Review acknowledged, O'Reilly's numbers are trending
downward as Olbermann's are shooting up.
While his views may seem radical for mainstream television news, they
turn out to be a pretty safe bet for him and his network. Which may
prove that the American public does have a taste for serious, even
high-minded, news -- particularly when peppered with a sharp sense of
humor. It's another unexpected Olbermann news flash: Dissent sells.
"My country right or wrong"