What’s next in the cable news wars

Three quick hits on the continued fallout over Keith Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC:

1. It looks like MSNBC’s response has been to give promotions to everyone rather than consider what might work best. The network is feeding Lawrence O’Donnell to the wolf (i.e., Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly) at 8 p.m. And Ed Schultz at 10? Really? Aren’t all his viewers in bed by then?

If I were MSNBC honcho Phil Griffin, I’d move Chris Matthews to 8. Matthews is much maligned (I’ve maligned him myself), but he’s still weirdly compelling after all these years. His energy and passion are likely to hold Olbermann’s losses to a minimum. Let Schultz have the 7 o’clock hour and see what he can do with it.

I agree with Griffin’s decision to keep Rachel Maddow at 9. I realize she would do better against O’Reilly than anyone else, but she’s now the franchise, and protecting the franchise is important. If her ratings were to drop below Olbermann’s, it would demoralize the whole operation. And I’d keep O’Donnell at 10, too.

2. CNN, which has slipped behind MSNBC in the prime-time ratings, has an opportunity to take advantage of the Olbermann mess. I’ll confess I haven’t seen Piers Morgan’s new talk show yet, but the clips look very promising — a huge step up from Larry King.

I’ve always liked Anderson Cooper better than “Anderson Cooper 360.” Whatever’s wrong with the show can be fixed. And here’s what’s wrong: inconsistency (you never know whether you’re going to get a solid newscast or tabloid trash) and the two-hour length, which has led CNN to use much of the 10 o’clock hour to flog what’s coming at 11.

The solutions are fairly simple. Cut the newscast to an hour, rebroadcasting Piers Morgan at 11; and up the intelligence quotient.

CNN executives will still need to deal with the toxic-waste pit that is “Parker Spitzer” at 8. I’d move John King’s politically oriented newscast to that slot and cross my fingers.

3. Barring any unexpected bombshells, Bill Carter and Brian Stelter’s take on why Olbermann left seems pretty definitive. But though Comcast, the incoming owner of NBC Universal, appears to have its corporate hands clean, my expectation is that at some point the company will blow up MSNBC.

Maybe it will happen soon. Maybe it won’t happen until Comcast wants to curry favor with a new Republican administration in the White House. But it will happen.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

One final word (I hope) on Olbermann

One thing I could have made clearer in what has proved to be a fascinating discussion about Keith Olbermann’s political donations is that my support for the principle of journalistic independence should not be confused with support for the specific NBC News policy that tripped him up.

The policy, as reported by Politico, is absurd, as it cites the need to remain an “impartial journalist” as its justification, and states that employees may make contributions if they seek permission:

Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns or groups that espouse controversial positions. You should report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the president of NBC News or his designee.

No one would consider Olbermann to be an impartial journalist, and I can easily believe he had no idea he was violating policy when he donated to three Democratic politicians. Not to be belabor the point, but the principle that I think matters is independence, not impartiality. Check out the nine principles in Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s “Elements of Journalism.” You will note that two of them deal with independence, but objectivity isn’t even mentioned.

In his commentary last night, Olbermann implicitly described himself as a journalist by saying that the policy needs to be reconsidered in light of “21st-century journalism.” He is doing journalism of a sort. If you can find a meaningful difference between one of Olbermann’s “special comments” and Frank Rich’s Sunday column in the New York Times (one of my favorite reads), then you’re able to draw distinctions that elude me. And I don’t think anyone would argue that Rich isn’t a journalist.

Olbermann last night not only admitted he should have changed a “Worst Person” segment because of one of his donations, but he also quite properly pointed out the problems that would have ensued if he had contributed to Arizona congressman Raul Grijalva before having him on the show rather than after. That strikes me as a pretty good summation of why even opinionated hosts shouldn’t write checks to politicians.

A final observation: A number of people have criticized me and others for obsessing over Olbermann’s small contributions when Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity routinely donate to politicians, and when Fox News major domo Rupert Murdoch has no scruples about giving $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.

They’re right, of course. Fox News is strictly a talk-show operation — the video equivalent of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. MSNBC aspires to something higher than that. To say that MSNBC is a mirror image of Fox News is akin to arguing that the Nation is just like the Drudge Report. Rachel Maddow explained the difference quite well on Friday. But I don’t think it’s necessary to say “of course, Fox is worse” every time I write about MSNBC.

NBC handled the Olbermann matter badly right from the start, though the final result — a two-day suspension — strikes me as fitting the offense rather well. I’m glad Olbermann is back. And I agree with him that NBC ought to take another look at its policy. I’d make it tougher and clearer.

Maddow on Olbermann and the Fox money machine

Let Rachel explain it to you. Brilliant stuff.

Rachel Maddow breaks liberal hearts

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow, whose network recently took out a full-page ad so that she could tell U.S. Sen. Scott Brown that she’s not running for his seat, would actually be the best candidate the Democrats could put up in 2012.

It’s not that Maddow is so wonderful, although she’s pretty good. Rather, it’s that the death of Ted Kennedy exposed the hollowed-out core of a party that dominates state government, but that has failed to develop any new talent in a generation. The one exception: Gov. Deval Patrick. And he’ll be lucky to get re-elected.

The Warren invitation: Wise, clever or neither?

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I thought we’d begin this morning with Rachel Maddow’s scorching commentary about President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to ask the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation on Inauguration Day. It’s long, but some righteous anger is called for, as Obama — like so many politicians before him — has chosen to make gay and lesbian Americans the targets of his desire for political expedience.

Here’s part of what U.S. Rep. Barney Frank has to say:

Religious leaders obviously have every right to speak out in opposition to anti-discrimination measures, even in the degrading terms that Rev. Warren has used with regard to same-sex marriage. But that does not confer upon them the right to a place of honor in the inauguration ceremony of a president whose stated commitment to LGBT rights won him the strong support of the great majority of those who support that cause.

Obama shouldn’t have invited Warren. That said, there are some layers and complexities to this that are worth thinking about. In an open letter to Obama, the Human Rights Campaign asserts: “Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian James Dobson disagree on.” And, indeed, Warren was a leader in the fight to pass the loathsome Proposition 8 in California.

But to assert that Warren, therefore, is no different from Dobson is to overlook some inconvenient facts. Obama himself opposes same-sex marriage, though, to his credit, he also opposed Proposition 8. We can’t know what Obama is thinking beyond what he tells us. But I suspect his religious view of the world is rather more conservative than that of your typical secular liberal. In any case, I imagine that most of the very few evangelicals who voted for Obama hold Warren in higher esteem than Dobson, who isn’t just a hate-monger, but who’s genuinely weird.

What makes Warren interesting is that he may be on a journey of his own. (Or he may be talking out of both sides of his mouth. Or he may just be confused.) Earlier this week, Beliefnet.com posted an interview with Warren whose lowlights have gotten a lot of attention — that is, he compares same-sex marriage to pedophila and incest. Ugh.

Yet, at the beginning of the interview, when Beliefnet’s Steve Waldman asks Warren whether divorce or gay marriage “is a greater threat to the American family,” Warren calls the answer a “no-brainer” and says “divorce, no doubt about it.” And, as Waldman notes in the blog entry accompanying the interview, Warren appears to endorse civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, a stance for which a lesser-known evangelical leader just got cast out into wilderness.

But wait. As you’ll see, having seemed to stake out reasonably progressive ground, Warren backtracked (or clarified; take your pick), writing to Waldman that he meant no such thing:

I now see you asked about civil UNIONS -and I responded by talking about civil RIGHTS. Sorry. They are two different issues. No American should ever be discriminated against because of their beliefs. Period. But a civil union is not a civil right.

It gets worse.

Still, I’m reminded of something the late Molly Ivins once said about Ross Perot: “He’s the best right-wing populist billionaire we’ve got in Texas, so if you don’t like him, you’re out of luck.” Warren may be the best conservative evangelical minister we’ve got. So, on a certain level, it makes sense for Obama to have a relationship with Warren, who, as we’ve been told over and over, is fairly progressive on issues such as global warming, poverty and AIDS.

But you can see where this goes, can’t you? All I’m doing here is discussing the politics of it — that is, I’m taking the line that perhaps it makes sense for Obama to disappoint his gay and lesbian supporters and their allies momentarily in order to reach out to an evangelical leader, and perhaps even to push him to the center (or at least to less hurtful rhetoric) on cultural issues. Fine.

And, actually, no, it’s not fine. The problem is that it’s hard to make the case that Obama is taking a principled stand. The danger is that Obama’s outreach to Warren will be seen not as a wise move, but merely as a clever one. If Warren genuinely evolves over time, we may look back at this moment as an example of Obama’s wisdom.

If not, then it will only stand out as a moment that Obama outsmarted himself, and let down some of his most ardent supporters.

Warren photo (cc) by Kevin Cheng and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Maddow targets Buchanan’s homophobia

If you didn’t catch this on MSNBC last night, you should watch. Rachel Maddow goes off on that old homophobe Pat Buchanan for his 1992 “culture war” speech — the one that the late, great Molly Ivins said “sounded better in the original German.”

Scroll ahead to 3:30 if you’re in a hurry. Here’s Maddow:

I hadn’t planned on talking about this, but I was thinking about 1992, when I was 19 years old. And Pat, that was the year of your famous culture-war speech at the Houston convention.

And when Bill Clinton got elected that year, I remember, as not a very political person, feeling a visceral sense that, you know, I like the idea of the Clinton family being around for the next four years. I like the idea of them being on TV all the time, in the news all the time, them just being around. Because they seem likable, and, more importantly, I think that they don’t hate me.

I think if they knew me, they wouldn’t hate me, and they don’t want an America that doesn’t want me in it. I believe that they would respect me. And after the 1992 convention that year, I didn’t feel that way about the incumbent president or his party.

Buchanan chose to ignore the genuine hurt and emotion behind Maddow’s words, and Maddow wisely didn’t push it any farther. But good for Maddow for calling Buchanan out on his hateful words aimed at gay men and lesbians — words he’s never disavowed, and that he no doubt believes to this day.