Reading these emails between MSNBC executives attempting to spin the Barry McCaffrey scandal that Glenn Greenwald posted one gets another perspective on the myth that MSNBC is an ideologically liberal network. In a sense, FOX News has shown more accountability in the sense that it often responds to criticisms of its biased coverage — the networks personalities regularly defend its reputation on air.
But despite the fact that MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, two of the most popular liberal pundits in broadcasting, there has been no acknowledgment of the McCaffrey scandal on air. At this point we get a clearer picture of the corporate leash restraining Maddow and Olbermann — it may be long enough for them to express a liberal points of view on air, but their silence on this issue indicates that they are nonetheless restrained by their employers’ financial interests. It seems naive to think they remain unaware of this controversy, and if McCaffrey had been employed at say, FOX News he would have certainly been one of the “worst people in the world” by now.
But looking back at Olbermann’s coverage of the original military analyst scandal, we get this (via Nexis):
First Armstrong Williams and video news releases and Jeff Gannon. Now the “New York Times” report yesterday that so many of the supposedly ex-military figures you were seeing on this network and CBS and ABC CNN and Fox in `03 and `04 and `05 still had business relationships with the Pentagon and were still being wined and dined by DOD brass.
The headline here is not that the administration was trying to corrupt the free press. It`s, A, how courageous were the likes of Barry McCaffrey, Monty Miggs (ph) and Jack Jacobs when they came on here and said, this is crack. The Pentagon misled everybody B, what makes anybody think this still isn`t going on at Fox.
Of course, MSNBC had its share of “military analysts” doing the Pentagon’s bidding. But it deployed Olbermann to defend itself from liberal outrage.
MSNBC has ever been only as “liberal” as advertising revenues will let it get, which is to say not really that liberal at all. It seems bizarre to write this, but at least FOX acknowledges criticisms of bias openly by virtue of its public responses, while the executives at MSNBC have refused even the minimal accountability of admitting that there is an ethical dilemma worth arguing about at all. Not that there’s much they could say to defend themselves.
— A. Serwer
