But Fox is fair and balanced! How do we know? They say they are!!

I have a lot of trouble understanding David Gregory. While in the White House press corps he seemed to be trying out for something bigger and better by asking long verbose challenging questions. Now that he has his own show, he is a disappointment to anyone who may have enjoyed the tryouts.

Maybe they were both just bad at covering the convention? Or more actuartly, the two of them just do not mix well on camera.
I love countdown, watch tweety most nights, but they were so bad I had to leave the room when they were on.

Perhaps a better "balance" can be reached to keep Olberman on MSNBC and put Limbaugh on Fox! (grin)

Bill Kristol shouldn't be allowed to cover dog-sick on the sidewalk. He's a walking talking slice of pure idiot.

Will Faux News be shaking up it's lineup, also, canning O'Reilly, Hannity and the rest, in response to years' worth of completely legitimate complaints from Democrats that the "network" is an unabashed propaganda arm of the Republican Party which treats Democrats with utter contempt and bias? I didn't think so.

We have all the leveredge and hold all the cards this year. If MSNBC is kowtowing to losers like the GOP, then we aren't doing our jobs. They need to threaten these cable stations with busting up their monopolies and bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, and legislation needs to start being crafted to hurt the pocketbooks of those who cower at the GOP.

I'm looking at the bright side - Maddow premieres her new show tonight, can't wait.

Can Bill Kristol be removed from television just for being so very consistently wrong? I swear, a chimp could provide more insightful analysis, especially if he were allowed to fling poo at the other Fox hosts.

I wonder if a small part of the decision to elevate Gregory to the #1 for political coverage is his possible future status as host of Meet the Press? I put money on him (in office pool) on getting the Meet the Press job after the election and this could be the first step.

...evidence suggests the right complained enough to make the network act.
I suspect that it had to do more with corporate ownership and their peers.

We are being warned, over and over, about what will happen to our great nation, to its Constitution and its democracy, if McCain and Palin are elected.

For example, police chiefs and public safety commissioners who do not serve the ruling party will be fired.

The corporate media will be intimidated and will quickly fall into line.

I could go on and on.

We won't be able to say we didn't know.

What is the fuss here? MSNBC still has Countdown and the Rachel Maddow show which has received a lot of support here. Keith will still get to present his commentary during the Gregory show.
You can be little objective here, no?

Why is it that when liberals are "outraged" or "incensed" over something we are called whiney and petty but, when conservatives are in the same state, they are just being righteous and manly?
That's not fairness I can believe in. Ooops. Being whiney again. Sorry

This is lousy news, but I have mixed feelings since I never liked Chris Matthews and although I was interested to see Olbermann at first, it worried me that he seemed to become a mirror image of Bill O'Reilly.

My wish is that there would actually be a news network that reported and INVESTIGATED things that happened. Right now we have an abundance of "news" catered to what people want to hear. There should be no difference between R-news and D-news.

The bat signal has gone out. Liberals are to shut up or lose their jobs. Does this remind anyone of the runup to the Iraq war? The free press is being stifled in the same way in order to throw the election. I doubt that we will see too many stories or editorials about it though because everyone will be afraid for their jobs.

Also, to "Orwell", after this years outing of the Pentagon Propaganda Corps and White House News Scripts provided to the obedient networks, this move to replace Obermann with David Gregory should put the "liberal media" myth in its grave forever.

I suspect that it had to do more with corporate ownership and their peers.

You act as if "the corporate ownership and their peers" and "the Right" are two unrelated groups. "The corporate ownership and their peers" are "the Right".

"I'll take follow the money for $500 Alex."

1) Big money is right wing.
2) Big money makes phone call to media executives threatening to pull advertising revenue.
3) Media caves.

Since Fox is big money and right wing already, no problemo there.

So, David Gregory was perceived as sufficiently "deferential"?

And Chris Matthews is biased toward DEMOCRATS?!? He has such a mancrush on John McCain he can barely stand up!

I love countdown, watch tweety most nights, but they were so bad I had to leave the room when they were on.

What a delicate flower you are!

Countdown's unwatchable with Olberman's finger-wagging and tut-tutting he's like an unironic Colbert. And the Tweety show's a hot mess.

But the two of them together commenting in real-time during the conventions was actually something novel and useful. Where else would you see an anchor call out a major political party on their excerable, shameless exploitation of the Sept 11th attacks?

That the network would decide to make some kind of change is not a huge surprise. There were some high-profile, on-air squabbles over the last couple of weeks.

How about it just being a total lack of professionalism on the part of Olbermann and Mathews?

No need to bring in some vast RWC on this one. Their egos got the best of them (or worst).

What's the difference, really? Is it just that Gregory might be seen for ten or so minutes more than Matthews and Olbermann? Will he introduce each hour, and then be joined at a roundtable by those two guys, who will be analysts? If that's the case, this strikes me as more of a PR move than anything else.

Honestly, Tom Brokaw looked mortified most of the time. If he has sway, and I'm sure he does, he had a lot to do with it.

I don't like David Gregory though. Ugh. But with everyone still in the mix it won't completely alter the coverage.

In defense of MSNBC, which is a strange way to have to start, they had to shake up their political coverage. The coverage of the conventions was incredibly unprofessional. I love Keith Olbermann and watch his show several times a week. I think he is perfect as a commentator and a disaster as an anchor. I have no love for Joe Scarborough, but his telling Scarborough to "get a shovel" on air was just wrong. And the constant sniping between Olbermann and Matthews (whom I do not enjoy so much as Olbermann) was tiresome.

I swear, a chimp could provide more insightful analysis, especially if he were allowed to fling poo at the other Fox hosts.Posted by: Diogenes on September 8, 2008 at 10:10 AM | PERMALINK

That's probably the only thing that could get me to watch Fox.

Is this the same group whose parent network decided the right co-host for political analysis on Election Night 2000 in prime time was Rush Limbaugh?

If they want to cave to pressure, that's their business, we can make our own judgments of their actions. But to claim that this sister network is tarnishing the integrity of the great and glorious NBC news department is a fairy tale, and fairy tales are for children.

Tom Brokaw was "mortified"? Is this the same Tom Brokaw who wasted precious minutes of his interview with Biden by asking him about Sarah Palin being banned from The Oprah Winfrey Show and whether that was "elitist"?

After watching never-ending fluff pieces about the "down home greatness" of Palin and the "POW maverickness" on McCain across the cable spectrum this past weekend, I sincerely feel we are all doomed.

MSNBC- "Caved iunto the right" How about the Joe Scarborough, Republican racist, flammable and arrogant on air. His shoe is always much better when he isn't there. The tension between the everyday characters on air with him totally changes when he is not there. It is a much more pleasant early morning experience without him.

MSNBC- "Caved iunto the right" How about the Joe Scarborough, Republican racist, flammable and arrogant on air. His shoe is always much better when he isn't there. The tension between the everyday characters on air with him totally changes when he is not there. It is a much more pleasant early morning experience without him.

Notice that the GOP started screaming NBC when Palin was talking about the mean-old press. This is as concerted an effort to shut up dissent as any others. The rounding up of the indy media as a preemptive strike, the quashing of protesters (while the GOP nazi brethern cheered on), the heavy handed hatred which spewed from the television set into millions of homes, the propaganda of the 9/11 tribute.

I mean, seriously, there were US citizens tortured at the Republican National Convention! Watch the video! Listen to this kid. Read the story.

It is OK for Fox to be completely partisan and that is perfectly alright with the GOP. Bush Sr. goes on Limbaugh and while thinking he is off mic asks, “How’s our man Ailes?”

This is all a very concerted effort to get dissenting voices off of the air. And they are going to show how to do it by making sure Palin doesn’t speak to anyone at NBC or MSNBC. They are laying down rules for talking to Palin and gave the first interview to a very friendly Gibson.

Ultimately, though, it appears Republicans were incensed by a perceived ideological balance, and outraged by the presence of perceived liberals on television, and MSNBC felt compelled to respond to the complaints.
**************************
ANYTHING that is not Reich Wing butt-licking is 'liberal bias'. Such total and complete BS. 95% of the news is either neutral ("Old man yells at cloud") or supports the fRight wing directly or indirectly via framing, the way questions are posed, selective use of adjectives to support the party line and degrade the opposition, etc. The flying-monkey right has done an outstanding job, yet again, in convincing most Americans that UP is Down, and White is black. The Republi-Corp News is everywhere, journalistic integrity is dead, and any utterance that questions the Party is labeled and marginalized. Yet they can say, with a straight face, that they love Democracy and the founding principles of this once great country (such as a free and independent press). In fact, they love Democracy so much that they are willing to send our children to fight and die in oil rich countries to spread it!

Take action people. Join the drive to get as many voters registered as possible. Take action. The time is now! Go to http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/vfchome and type in your zip code. We must join the fight, or be crushed. As someone noted above, if we don't take action and we lose, we can't say that we didn't see it coming.

Someone is surprised that General Electric TV (the corporate owner of NBC/MSNBC) caved in to complaints from the right?

I'm shocked - shocked! - that there is gambling going on in this establishment!

"Simultaneously, Fox News announced over the weekend that it, too, was shaking up its coverage, and, in response to complaints from Democrats, would no longer allow Brit Hume and Bill Kristol to anchor the network's coverage of major political events.

No, no, I'm just kidding. MSNBC doesn't want those perceived as biased anchoring its coverage, but Fox News remains unconcerned about charges of a Republican bias."

Sooo Exactly how can you say that Fox News is unconcerned since they are also shaking up their coverage???????

That's funny. Now watch MSNBCs ratings tank.

They were growing only because they were appealing to moderates by having Keith (Chris Mathews is just crazy, not ideological) but its not about ratings, its about controlling the coverage.

Good Glenn Greenwald piece about this subject at today's Salon.com

I can never forget the video clip I saw of David Gregory "dancing" and "bouncing hips" with Karl Rove at the White House Correspondents dinner a couple of years back.

Looks like this election is beginning to slip through the Democrats fingers again. Who would have believed it with all the mess we are in?

"...the available evidence suggests the right complained enough to make the network act."
_________________

And we are to make nothing about the fact that the ratings showed MSNBC to be dead last in viewer preference.

Are you kidding me? This is what media is in this country I suppose.

Does Fox news has fair coverage? Are there any reassignments for the campaign coverage.

Once again the rich minority continues to show that our system is really a control mechanism for those that cant not think for themselves.

I love Countdown, but Olbermann has been getting unhinged lately, and he may have just jumped the shark.

That said, he was the only leftwing counterpart to Fox (a whole friggin' network for Jeebus' sake) on TV.

Oops made a dumb mistake.
Didn't read the Just Kidding part.

"Simultaneously, Fox News announced over the weekend that it, too, was shaking up its coverage, and, in response to complaints from Democrats, would no longer allow Brit Hume and Bill Kristol to anchor the network's coverage of major political events.

No, no, I'm just kidding. MSNBC doesn't want those perceived as biased anchoring its coverage, but Fox News remains unconcerned about charges of a Republican bias."

Sooo Exactly how can you say that Fox News is unconcerned since they are also shaking up their coverage???????

when Barack spoke, Matthews had a tingle up his leg. when Palin spoke, he had a trickle down his leg.