With Comcast/NBC merger is MSNBC About to Make a Right Turn?

[ook]

UPDATE: The word out of MSNBC is that Keith Olbermann, who'd been negotiating his severance with one year left on his contract, can't move to another cable/broadcast news channel right away, so he may be "on ice" for some time. On the other hand, he could go back into sports talk

Comments

Mod note.

[rex_dart]

Please put more than the sources after the cut.

[mollywobbles867]

B-b-but liberal news media bias!

[porcelain72]

Olbermann will find another outlet soon, I have no doubt about it. His fan base is too large for someone to not figure out a way around his contract restrictions with MSNBC.

That being said, I'm finding it kind of amusing how people are carrying on over this. One person on my FB feed wrote a post making it sound like he died, saying "a liberal voice has been silenced" and "you're survived by our dear Rachel." Comcast fired him, they didn't take him out back and shoot him.

[mollywobbles867]

I can see him writing a book. It's an entirely different medium and therefore won't break the non-compete clause.

[chaya]

Could he still vidblog?

[mollywobbles867]

I have no idea. A lawyer would have to examine the contract to see if that was a loophole.

[vanillakokakola]

semi-OT question, but does anyone know of an add-on for chrome that blocks comment sections of news websites (e.g. MSNBC)? because sometimes i lose self-control and read the comments on news websites WHICH YOU SHOULD NEVER DO, and it makes me go ballistic.

just ignorant assholes asking ~when is this gabby giffords soap opera going to be over~ and accusing the woman who brought the 9-year-old to meet gabby of being an attention whore for doing an interview about the shooting, for example. i cannot with those fuckers.

[rex_dart]

It's goddamn ludicrous that all the sick fucks on Fox are still on the air, but Olbermann is considered a "loose cannon" and fired, and I don't want to hear any false equivalence bullshit about it. The fact that Olbermann was the farthest left and the Fox News blowhards are the farthest right doesn't make them equivalent by any stretch of the imagination. Olbermann fucked up sometimes, and it's good to call him on it the way it's good to call anyone else, but I'd like to see someone prove that he lied, incited violence, and deliberately and maliciously spoke out against minorities the way Fox does. He was privileged, and sometimes it certainly showed and I was disappointed and hurt by it as a woman. Intent is no excuse, but in this case it does fucking matter.

[wemblee]

Also it's sad that KeithO, who, while a liberal, was definitely to the right of me and probably much of this comm (or at least its frequently posting members), is still considered too much of a "loose cannon" by his right wing masters. I'd love to see someone with Keith's rage and Amy Goodman's politics on a basic cable news show... the right wing would shit their pants. Never gonna happen, though.

[freebacon]

that's my dream to do that, actually

where doing this bro

where making this happen