[Dialogue] Keith Olbermann Proves That Dissent Has An Audience

Sat Dec 2 20:22:25 EST 2006

AlterNet

Keith Olbermann Proves That Dissent Has An Audience

By Daphne Evitar, The Nation
Posted on December 2, 2006, Printed on December 2, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45007/

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. 

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