September
2006
Olberman Emerges as Our Generation’s Edward R. Murrow
Here at Watchdog Milwaukee we try to stay true to the hard edge that legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow loved to report on.
Over the past few years the corporate media has become corrupted and blinded to what news is and to what Murrow would have demanded had he been running the show. The media has given Republicans a pass and gifted years of positive coverage honeymoon periods to the GOP.
Keith Olbermann finally said no. Olbermann had a Murrow moment recently that was shockingly honest. Like Murrow, who took to the airwaves to expose Senator Joe McCarthy as a fraud and called McCarthy's witch hunts exactly what they were, Olbermann has taken President Bush to task for his incompetence handling 9/11 and the wars that followed.
Olberman is now like the boy who said the Emporer has no clothes — a truth sayer who said what he saw and was unafraid to express himself.
Olbermann exposed the Fox News snipe against President Clinton for what it was — a shameless right wing attack on a man who tried to do his best and was more successful that the current President, who hasn't even tried.
Olbermann could be our generation's Murrow.
Hopefully Olbermann is not silenced by MSNBC. I don't watch much cable television news, but after hearing the passionate and articulate Olbermann, I can see setting the TV to MSNBC more often.
Link: A textbook definition of cowardice – Keith Olbermann comments on Bill Clinton's Fox News interview
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Watchdogging the Media
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Keith Olbermann reprises himself in his 09-10-08 “Special Comment” titled, “Republicans have hijacked 9/11″.
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I love the way you try to give yourself the pat on the back there: “Here at Watchdog Milwaukee we try to stay true to the hard edge that legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow loved to report on.” Yes, here at Watchdog where you post about tom reynolds anal probing his children, where Jack jerks off one profanity after the next, and where Les likes to pretent he’s not a socialist. Here at watchdog, where 99% of the issues and candidates you back are on the left. Murrow loved the truth and the power of language; he managed to speak the truth without turning himself into a talking head because he was mostly neutral–one of the last in the once great tradition of journalism.
I wonder why you think Obermann is so brave? Is it beacuse he might challenge the beliefs of his lefty audience? How does he push them? What Murrow could do was speak to a broad and diverse audience which trusted him. Does Obermann do this? Murrow never demonstrated the ego or self-posessed nature of Obermann. Like Limbaugh, Hanity, Belling, Sykes and the rest, Obermann’s great flaw is that while each has the words to speak to their audience, they are sorely unable to gain the trust of the larger American mind. Murrow is legend and myth, Oberman, like Hanity and the rest, is transient, like dust.
And while we’re all thinking of the great one–whose voice we sorely need today–I wonder what he might have made of the fairness doctrine? Now there’s a point I’m sure Obermann and Mc Carthy would agree on.
Reynolds hoisted himself as being the moral pinnacle that others should aspire to — much like Palin has presented herself. And like Palin whose problems with Troopergate and her own daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock despite her preaching about abstinence training, Reynolds has his own twisted sense of right and wrong.
I cannot speak to Jack’s choice of words but I share his belief that the most egregious profanity is the deception that the Republican party has pulled on the American public.