Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shamed the cable station MSNBC for indefinitely suspending its liberal host Keith Olbermann for making political donations.
Sanders, an independent who aligns himself with Democrats, called MSNBC’s decision to suspend Olbermann, who admitted to making donations to several Democratic candidates this cycle, “outrageous.”
Olberman had been suspended after Politico, the blog, narked on him for making three donations to Democratic candidates. My source on that is politico but it is the policy of this blog to not link to other blogs that being with the letter “p.”
Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Olbermann, who acknowledged the contributions in a statement to POLITICO, made the maximum legal donations of $2,400 apiece to Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. He donated to the Arizona pair on Oct. 28 — the same day that Grijalva appeared as a guest on Olbermann’s “Countdown” show.
Apparently NBC has a rule against this sort of thing, which is common but not ubiquitous in news organizations. It is considered a breach of journalist ethics. It might give the appearance of a bias.
OK, I’ll let you laugh for a while …
Shall we continue?
It turns out that this is not so much Olbermann breaking a rule as politics inside MSNBC, most likely, with centrist or conservative forces trying to reign in liberal attitudes.
Insiders were stunned that Griffin moved so swiftly to yank one of the network’s true stars off the air, and some suspected that the recent tensions with NBC News, which has grown increasingly uneasy with its sister network’s more ideological stance, contributed to the swift decision. Some have even speculated that Comcast’s coming merger with NBC Universal has heightened sensitivities about MSNBC’s ideological profile.
Just as I thought.
Bernie Sanders made the following statement regarding this affair:
