For those impressed by Keith Olbermann's recent speeches decrying the Bush administration, this interview with him is really worth a read. It reveals the sort of approach to newscasting that always stood implicit in the words of Murrow, and Cronkite, and the other great anchors of yesteryear. I was particularly struck by this:
I had gathered for a while that [liberals] had felt themselves very underserved in the media, and a reasonable analysis would suggest that's true overall. But you can go out and, I think, find a certain kind of person who wants to sit there and be told what to think by the television. These tend to be authoritarian personalities, as John Dean has suggested in his book. I don't know if it's true for other political people. I don't think you can get a bunch of liberals to watch one television network, because they'd be sitting there arguing the nuance of it. So I'm not courting the liberals.
I also, I don't think in these issues that I'm a liberal; I think that I'm an American. I think I'm acting almost as a historian on these particular things, with the Rumsfeld commentary and now the Bush commentary. I get nauseated when I see someone perpetually wrap themselves in the flag -- which is the logo that appears on Fox, that's what they're doing, and many other people do it.
I fall under the category of folks who find cable news too slow-moving and timid to be worth my time, but whenever I've caught Olbermann, I've never noticed a liberal mission, as opposed to independent spirit, animating his commentary. While I've no doubt the guy's sympathies lie with the left, he's always struck me as more of a gadfly, a natural skeptic with a bit of a superiority complex: All traits that lead to pugilistic and interesting programming.
