Are there more people on the extreme right or the extreme left? MSNBC found out the hard way.
MSNBC's far-left "commentator" Keith Olbermann, along with Chris Matthews, who had moved left to keep the former ESPN jock-sniffer company on the Obama "bandwagon", were sacked as the anchors of MSNBC's political coverage today.
The move was apparently in response to MSNBC's flop in the ratings books at the conventions, as MSNBC trailed both Fox and CNN by a country mile, drawing slightly more than a quarter of the viewing audience of its competitors during the Republican convention and not doing much better during the Democratic convention, while Fox News secured the top rating.
The poor chemistry between Olbermann and Matthews led Comedy Central's Jon Stewart to compare the coverage to Lindsay Lohan's fractious family ("Does MSNBC have to be the Lohans?"). Meanwhile, the far-left tilt hurt the reputation for neutrality that MSNBC's parent network, NBC, had long cultivated in its news operation -- and MSNBC's decision to give a new show to Air America talking head Rachel Maddow only emphasized the network's decision to embrace "partisan journalism."
Although Fox News pioneered "partisan journalism" on TV, its anchors such as Brit Hume and Chris Wallace have carefully nurtured a reputation for neutrality. Unfortunately, MSNBC decided to disregard this when embracing its shift to the radical left.
Sports is the playpen of journalism, and few former sports anchors have survived outside of it. Olbermann proved to be NBC's true "not ready for prime time player."
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