Glenn Greenwald exposes the many GE conflicts of interest in "news" reporting

[Dig]

Olbermann: Wolffe Won't Be On Countdown Until We Know What Else He's Doing
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/olbermann_wolffe_wont_be_on_countdown_until_we_kno.php
By Zachary Roth - August 4, 2009, 11:20AM

MSNBC may have agreed to disclose Richard Wolffe's gig with a major corporate P.R. firm -- but that's not good enough for Keith Olbermann.

The Countdown anchor -- for whom Wolffe filled in last week as a guest host -- wrote on Daily Kos yesterday evening that Wolffe would not appear on the show even as a guest "until we can clarify what else he is doing," and suggested that the former Newsweek reporter had not been straight with the network about his duties for the P.R. firm, Public Strategies.

Olbermann wrote:
As to Richard Wolffe I can offer far less insight. I honor Mr. Greenwald's insight into the coverage of GE/NewsCorp talks, and his reporting on Richard's other jobs. I must confess I was caught flat-footed. I do not know what the truth is; my executive producer and I have spent the last two months dealing with other things (see above) but what appears to be the truth here is certainly not what Richard told us about his non-news job.


I am confident his commentary to this point has not been compromised - he has been an insightful analyst and a great friend to this show - but until we can clarify what else he is doing, he will not be appearing with us. I apologize for not being able to prevent this unhappy set of circumstances from developing.


In the same post, Olbermann addressed the recent report that a deal between G.E. and the News Corp. had led to an end to the juvenile and ratings-friendly on-air feud between him and Fox News's Bill O'Reilly.

Olbermann wrote that "there is no 'deal.' I would never consent, and, fortunately, MSNBC and NBC News would never ask me to." He pledged to go after Fox on the air that night, which he later followed through on.

[Dig]

Richard Wolffe's Two Hats: MSNBC Guest Host, And Corporate Spin-Meister
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/richard_wolffes_two_hats_msnbc_guest_host_and_corp.php
By Zachary Roth - August 3, 2009, 11:48AM

Oh, that liberal MSNBC...

Last week, Richard Wolffe, the former Newsweek White House correspondent who's been a frequent commentator on MSNBC's Countdown, guest-hosted the show while Keith Olbermann was on vacation.

But as Glenn Greenwald pointed out over the weekend in a typically hard-hitting post, that's the same Richard Wolffe who earlier this year signed on as a senior strategist with the corporate communications firm Public Strategies, advising several of the firm's top clients from its Washington D.C. office.

Greenwald lays out the obvious problem with Wolffe's dual role -- which hasn't been disclosed to MSNBC viewers:
Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.


It's worth noting that Wolffe's guest hosting gig on Countdown appears to have gone smoothly last week, without generating any high-profile examples of pro-corporate bias.

Still, as Greenwald points out, Wolffe's Public Strategies bio touts his MSNBC appearances, suggesting that the firm likely sees his enviable media megaphone as a key selling point to clients.

And it's clear that those clients have major stakes in a host of issues in the news. Public Strategies, which is led by former Bush White House communications guru Dan Bartlett, boasts that its clientele includes "some of the world's largest and best-known corporations," and that "[m]uch of its practice involves managing high-stakes campaigns for corporate clients, anticipating and responding to crises."

Wolffe himself said as much when he joined the firm. "Many of Public Strategies' projects are at the center of the national dialogue and will provide a challenging new arena for me," he crowed.

As a PR firm, Public Strategies doesn't have to disclose who its clients are. But here's one example: when the Bush administration got caught using "video news releases" supporting the Medicare drug bill, which were designed to mimic real news stories and often ended up on the air, the spotlight soon fell on the companies that acted as middlemen by distributing those fake news stories to network news feeds, mixed in with legitimate news. The leading practitioner of that racket, Medialink, hired Public Strategies in 2005 to help fight off any efforts by Congress to rein in such "news laundering."

As Greenwald also notes, Wolffe has already gone on the record questioning the idea that journalists should be expected not to act as corporate shills. Politico recently reported:
"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," [Wolffe] said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers. "You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

Neither Wolffe nor an MSNBC spokesman immediately responded to our requests for comment. We'll update if they do.

Late Update: MSNBC tells us they'll disclose Wolffe's P.R. ties in the future.

[Dig]

MSNBC: We'll Disclose Wolffe's P.R. Ties
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/msnbc_well_disclose_wolffes_pr_ties.php
By Zachary Roth - August 3, 2009, 3:33PM

MSNBC says it will now tell viewers that Richard Wolffe -- who is a regular commentator on the network, and last week guest-hosted Countdown -- works for a corporate P.R. firm.

Network spokesman Jeremy Gaines told TPMmuckraker in an email:
We should have disclosed Richard's connection to Public Strategies. We will do so in the future.


Over the weekend, Salon's Glenn Greenwald expressed outrage about the arrangement, and the lack of disclosure. We picked up the story this morning, and told you a bit about P.S.I.'s corporate work.

[Dig]

GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/01/ge/index.html
Saturday Aug. 1, 2009 05:02 EDT
(updated below - Update II)

The New York Times this morning has a remarkable story, and incredibly, the article's author, Brian Stelter, doesn't even acknowledge, let alone examine, what makes the story so significant.  In essence, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), Rupert Murdoch, were brought into a room at a "summit meeting" for CEOs in May, where Charlie Rose tried to engineer an end to the "feud" between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly.  According to the NYT, both CEOs agreed that the dispute was bad for the interests of the corporate parents, and thus agreed to order their news employees to cease attacking each other's news organizations and employees.

Most notably, the deal wasn't engineered because of a perception that it was hurting either Olbermann or O'Reilly's show, or even that it was hurting MSNBC.  To the contrary, as Olbermann himself has acknowledged, his battles with O'Reilly have substantially boosted his ratings.  The agreement of the corporate CEOs to cease criticizing each other was motivated by the belief that such criticism was hurting the unrelated corporate interests of GE and News Corp:

The reconciliation -- not acknowledged by the parties until now -- showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations.  A G.E. shareholders' meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly's producers) last April. . . .

In late 2007, Mr. O’Reilly had a young producer, Jesse Watters, ambush Mr. Immelt and ask about G.E.'s business in Iran, which is legal, and which includes sales of energy and medical technology. G.E. says it no longer does business in Iran.

Mr. O’Reilly continued to pour pressure on its corporate leaders, even saying on one program last year that "If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt."  The resulting e-mail to G.E. from Mr. O’Reilly's viewers was scathing. . .

Over time, G.E. and the News Corporation concluded that the fighting "wasn’t good for either parent," said an NBC employee with direct knowledge of the situation.  But the session hosted by Mr. Rose provided an opportunity for a reconciliation, sealed with a handshake between Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch.

Though Olbermann denies he was part of any deal, the NYT says that there has been virtually no criticism of Fox by Olbermman, or MSNBC by O'Reilly, since June 1 when the deal took effect.  That's mostly but not entirely true.  On June 17, after President Obama accused Fox News of fomenting hostility towards his agenda, and Fox responded by saying that the "other networks" were pure pro-Obama outlets, Olbermann did voice fairly stinging criticisms of Fox as "more of a political entity than is the Republican National Committee right now, only it's fraudulently disguised as some sort of news organization."

But a review of all of Olbermann's post-June 1 shows does reveal that he has not ever criticized (or even mentioned) Bill O'Reilly since then and barely ever mentions Fox News any longer.  And on June 1 -- the last time Olbermann mentioned O'Reilly -- Olbermann claimed at the end of his broadcast that he would cease referring to O'Reilly in the future because ignoring him (and "quarantining" Fox) would supposedly help get O'Reilly off the air ("So as of this show‘s end, I will retire the name, the photograph, and the caricature").

So here we have yet another example -- perhaps the most glaring yet -- of the corporations that own our largest media outlets controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation.  In light of that, just marvel at what the supreme establishment-power-worshiper Charlie Rose said dismissively in March, 2003, when he had Amy Goodman on his show as a condescending example of someone who opposed the Iraq War, after Goodman touted the vital importance of "independent media" in America:

ROSE:  I don't know what "independent" means -- "independent" in contrast to what?

GOODMAN:  It means not being sponsored by the corporations, the networks -- like NBC, CBS, ABC:  NBC owned by General Electric, CBS owned by Viacom, or ABC owned by Disney --

ROSE:  My point in response to that would be that we do need you . . . . Having said that, I promise you, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News are not influenced by the corporations that may own those companies.  Since I know one of them very well and worked for one of them.

That's the very same Charlie Rose who sat there with the CEO of GE and the CEO of News Corp. as an agreement was reached to order their news employees to stop criticizing the activities of Fox and GE in order to protect the corporate interests of those parents.

It makes no difference what one thinks of O'Reilly's attacks on the corporate activities of GE or Olbermann's criticisms of O'Reilly and Fox News.  Whatever one's views on that are -- and I watch neither show very often -- those are perfectly legitimate subjects for news reporting and commentary, and the corporate decree to stop commenting on those topics is nothing less than corporate censorship.  A reader last night put it this way by email:

It's interesting and somewhat shocking to me that a NYT article wouldn't even mention the effect on the hosts' journalistic freedom. . . . I assume that both Olbermann and O'Reilly would not have agreed to the truce, as the battle is ratings gold for both of them, and I'm sure they frankly hate each other and enjoy it.

The sad truth is that what Olbermann and O'Reilly were doing in this particular instance was one of the rare examples of good journalism on these types of shows. Olbermann was holding O'Reilly's feet to the fire about his repeated falsehoods and embarrassing positions. In turn, O'Reilly was giving the public accurate and disturbing information about General Electric, including extensive technology dealings with Iran. In my personal opinion, this was one of the rare useful pieces of information O'Reilly ever presented to his audience, and Olbermann was there to show how lousy the rest of O'Reilly's information was.  Though it was in the context of a bitter feud, the two men were actually engaging in real journalism, at least in this case.

So now GE is using its control of NBC and MSNBC to ensure that there is no more reporting by Fox of its business activities in Iran or other embarrassing corporate activities, while News Corp. is ensuring that the lies spewed regularly by its top-rated commodity on Fox News are no longer reported by MSNBC.  You don't have to agree with the reader's view of the value of this reporting to be highly disturbed that it is being censored.

This is hardly the first time evidence of corporate control over the content of NBC and MSNBC has surfaced.  Last May, CNN's Jessica Yellin said that when she was at MSNBC, "the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this [the Iraq War] was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation"; "the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives ... to put on positive stories about the president"; and "they would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive."  Katie Couric said that when she was at NBC, "there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations" not to be too critical of the Bush administration.  MSNBC's rising star, Ashleigh Banfield, was demoted and then fired after she criticized news media organizations generally, and Fox News specifically, for distorting their war coverage to appear more pro-government.  And, of course, when MSNBC canceled Phil Donahue's show in the run-up to the Iraq war despite its being that network's highest-rated program, a corporate memo surfaced indicating that the company had fears of being associated with an anti-war and anti-government message.

And now we have an example of GE's forcibly silencing the top-rated commentator on MSNBC -- ordering him not to hold Fox News accountable any longer -- because, in return, News Corp. has agreed to silence its own commentators from criticizing GE.  The corporations that own our largest news organizations have extensive relationships with the federal government.  Anyone (like Charlie Rose) who denies that those relationships influence how these news organizations "report" on the government -- driven by the desire which corporate executives have to avoid alienating the government officials on whom their corporate interests depend, or avoid alienating potential customer bases for their products -- is completely delusional.  GE's forcing Keith Olbermann to cease his criticism of Fox News and Bill O'Reilly is a clear and vivid example of how that works.

* * * * *

On a very related note:  this week, former Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe was a guest-host on MSNBC's Countdown while Keith Olbermann is on vacation.  When Olbermann is there, Wolffe is a very frequent guest on Countdown, where he is called an "MSNBC political analyst" and comments on political news.  All of this, despite the fact that Wolffe left Newsweek last March in order to join "Public Strategies, Inc.," the corporate communications firm run by former Bush White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, its President and CEO.  According to the Press Release they issued to announce Wolffe's joining the company:

Wolffe, most recently Newsweek's senior White House correspondent, officially assumes his new position as a senior strategist on April 13, 2009. He will be based in the firm's Washington office, where he will advise several of its top clients. . . .

Public Strategies, Inc. is a business advisory firm that serves a diverse clientele including some of the world's largest and best-known corporations, nonprofit organizations, associations and professional firms. Public Strategies helps forward-thinking organizations assess public opinion and risk, and develops strategies for managing corporate reputation and uncertainty. Much of its practice involves managing high-stakes campaigns for corporate clients, anticipating and responding to crises.

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" --  is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist.  Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.  Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows.  What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this. 

This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure:  who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators?  But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and "news reporting" in the United States.  Then again, Wolffe himself -- when it was previously revealed that he was exploiting his position as a Newsweek reporter covering the Obama campaign to leverage access to Obama in order to write a glowing book about him -- said this:

And [Wolffe] suggested he’s not that different from other reporters in an era in which the business and the profession of journalism have gotten closer and closer.

"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on.  Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," he said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers.

"You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

That's who MSNBC is presenting as a host and "political analyst" on one of its news commentary programs:  someone who is paid by large corporations to propagandize the public and who explicitly says that "journalists are engaged in corporate activities."  Then again, MSNBC itself is censored by its corporate executives to ensure that the parent company's corporate interests are advanced by its "news reporting," so in many ways, Wolffe's sleaze and corporate whoredom are the perfect face for this network.

These dual stories of GE/Olbermann and Wolffe reveal what NBC and MSNBC really are about as vividly as anything since the "military analyst" scandal.  Remember that indescribably informative NBC News/MSNBC scandal:  when it was revealed that both news outlets (along with most other major television outlets) were presenting as "independent military analysts" a whole slew of former Generals with substantial, undisclosed corporate interests in the policies they were promoting and doing so in coordination with a secret Pentagon propaganda program?  Despite front-page NYT promotion, Congressional investigations, and even a Pulitzer Prize awarded to the NYT's David Barstow for uncovering all of that, NBC's Brian Williams (like virtually every other news outlet) to this day has never so much as informed his viewers of this story, and they continue to use some of those very same former generals as "analysts."

There are many reasons why our establishment press exists to do little other than serve the interests of the political and financial establishment and to mindlessly amplify government claims.  The virtual disapparance of the line between large corporate interests and journalism (as Richard Wolffe himself noted) is certainly one of the leading factors.

 

UPDATE:  On Richard Wolffe's bio page at Public Strategies, Inc., the role he plays on MSNBC and NBC News is actually touted to the firm's corporate clients and potential clients:

In addition, Wolffe is an NBC political analyst. He provides political commentary on several MSNBC programs, Meet The Press, and TODAY.

They're basically telling their clients and prospective clients:  if you hire us to control and disseminate your political messaging, you'll have someone working for you -- Richard Wolffe -- who has a regular platform on MSNBC and NBC News, where he's presented as an independent "political analyst."  And this is how they describe what he does for the firm:  "Wolffe provides high-level counsel and insight to our clients on how to manage their reputations in a complex public environment."  How much more blatantly sleazy could that be?

 

UPDATE II:  More on GE's control of MSNBC and NBC here.

[Dig]

The scope -- and dangers -- of GE's control of NBC and MSNBC
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/03/general_electric/index.html
Monday Aug. 3, 2009 08:04 EDT
(updated below - Update II - Update III)

I want to return to the subject of GE's silencing of Keith Olbermann both because there are new facts I've obtained that shed light on what happened here and because this is one of the most blatant examples yet of pernicious corporate control over America's journalism.  The most striking aspect of this episode is that GE isn't even bothering any longer to deny the fact that they exert control over MSNBC's journalism.  They've brazenly dispensed with the long-held fiction of the sanctity of journalistic independence from interference by the corporate parents that own America's largest news organizations. 

Instead, GE is now openly and proudly boasting of their editorial control over the news organizations they own, and publicly rubbing it in the faces of NBC News journalists that they're subservient to GE's corporate agenda.  Look at this smug, creepy quote from GE executive spokesman Gary Sheffer explaining in The New York Times why GE issued its gag order preventing Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly, all but mocking NBC and MSNBC journalists as nothing more than GE's office of corporate spokespeople:

"We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion," Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. "We’re happy that has happened."

Why is GE even speaking for MSNBC's editorial decisions at all?  Needless to say, GE doesn't care in the slightest about "civility" in general.  Mika Brzezinski can spout that people who dislike Sarah Palin aren't "real Americans" and Chris Matthews can say about George Bush that "everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs," and GE executives won't (and didn't) bat an eye.  What they mean by "civility" is:  "thou shalt not criticize anyone who can harm GE's business interests or who will report on our actions."  Thus:  GE's journalists will stop reporting critically on Fox and its top assets because Fox can expose actions of GE that we want to keep concealed.

Does anyone need it explained to them why it is so dangerous and destructive to have our political debates controlled by GE executives, sitting in their offices censoring the journalism of our leading media outlets in the name of "civility," code for:  you will respect those who can harm us?  Our entire political culture is already designed to ensure corporate control of our political institutions.  Their lobbyists literally write the laws enacted by Congress and control their implementation.  The reason the journalism industry insisted for so long on the ludicrous fiction that corporate parents never violated the sanctity of journalistic independence is precisely because everyone understood why that would be so dangerous.  Apparently, they no longer feel a need to maintain that fiction.

* * * * *

GE's control over two major American news outlets -- NBC, which uses our public airways, and MSNBC -- is inherently dangerous even without evidence of its editorial interference.  GE's corporate interests in the outcome of our political process is vast and impossible to overstate.  In 2006, The Boston Globe reported:

General Electric Co. spent $21.5 million last year trying to influence the US government, the most of any corporation, as total lobbying costs rose even as Congress began looking at ways to rein in such activities.

GE's relationship with the U.S. Government is a vital aspect of its business:

Federal contracts for General Electric, based in Fairfield, Conn., rose to $3.8 billion during the two years ending Sept. 30, 2004, the last period for which figures are available.

In June of this year, in an article headlined "General Electric is Once Again the Lobbying Champion," The Washington Times reported:

General Electric spent more on lobbying in this year's first quarter than any other company, newly filed federal lobbying reports show. The company shelled out $7.2 million for lobbyists in April, May, and June--that's $160,000 each day Congress was in session.

The only other company to spend more than $6 million was Chevron, and GE almost equaled the Chamber of Commerce's lobbying budget.

GE is perenially atop this list, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The company has spent $187 million on lobbying over the past decade, 44% more than runner-up Northrup Grumman.

Why? Because no other company is so intimately tied up with government -- a dynamic that has only intensified in the Obama administration.

And just today, by sweet coincidence, Fred Hiatt turned over his Washington Post Editorial Page to GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, along with Silicon Valley investor John Doerr, to argue that the U.S. government must spend more on wind power technology.  Why?  Because GE is the only American company in the world's top six largest wind technology manufacturers and had a major stake in the use of such technology by governments.  GE constantly manipulates our political process and institutions for its own self-interest.  And it now manipulates our political debates, through its control over our leading news outlets, for the same purposes.  Who wouldn't be seriously disturbed by GE's control over substantial aspects of America's journalism?

* * * * *

Critically, GE's decree to silence Olbermann is only the most recent incident of GE's interference with the journalism decisions of NBC and MSNBC -- interference that has been triggering increasing (though largely impotent) anger and resentment among NBC employees.  Much of the tension goes back to last year when GE executives directed MSNBC to remove Olbermman and Chris Matthews as election show anchors, according to an MSNBC source with management responsibilities, who insisted on anonymity because he is divulging information adverse to his bosses and because having his name attached to these leaks would jeopardize his job security (exactly the circumstances I've always argued renders anonymity appropriate). 

Last year's GE/MSNBC controversy occurred because the McCain campaign -- which had been constantly complaining about MSNBC -- threatened to pull out of a presidential debate to be hosted by NBC's Tom Brokaw if Olbermann and Matthews continued anchoring election coverage.  Brokaw then went to GE 's CEO Jeffrey Immelt -- not to NBC executives -- to demand that Olbermann and Matthews be removed as anchors in order to preserve his prestigious status as debate moderator.  In fact, as The New York Observer reported at the time, Andrea Mitchell also wanted Olbermann and Matthews removed as anchors and thus raised the issue at a dinner for a handful of NBC stars hosted by Immelt.

Though MSNBC denied it at the time, it was GE -- just as they're doing now in barring Olbermann from talking about O'Reilly -- which capitulated to the Right's demands by instructing MSNBC to remove Olbermann and Matthews as election anchors.  When it happened, I wrote about the removal of Olbermann/Matthews as anchors under the headline:  "The Right dictates MSNBC's programming decisions."

That it is GE which controls the editorial decisions of NBC and MSNBC is an open secret in Washington.  Just today, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote about Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's actions after learning that the news networks were reluctant to broadcast Obama's most recent press conference on health care.  Did Emanuel attempt to pressure NBC executives to capitulate to White House demands to broadcast that event?  No; he obviously knew who really makes editorial decisions for those networks:

In the days before President Obama's last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.

Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom.

Apparently, Rahm Emanuel isn't confused about who the real bosses are at America's major news networks.  Although Kurtz claims that Immelt -- who was named by Obama as a member of his Economics Advisory Board -- told Emanuel that this would be a decision for NBC's Jeff Zucker to make, all networks ultimately acceded to Emanuel's demands, directed to the CEOs of the parent corporations, and broadcast Obama's press conference, just as the White House demanded they do.

* * * * *

GE -- deeply concerned about Fox's reporting of its actions in Iran and other potential disclosures -- has long been discussing a quid pro quo with Rupert Murdoch, whereby GE would give in to O'Reilly's demands that Olbermann be barred from criticizing him in exchange for O'Reilly's agreement to cease reporting on GE's dubious corporate activities. More than a year ago, Howard Kurtz noted:

Asked about O'Reilly's motivation [in criticizing GE], [GE's] Sheffer said that executives at Murdoch's News Corp. "tell us if the attacks on O'Reilly end, the attacks on GE will end. They've had conversations with our news executives saying, 'If you stop, we'll stop' " . . . .

Early last year, the sources say, [NBC President Steve] Capus called [Fox's Roger] Ailes to say that O'Reilly had gone over the line with reckless attacks on Engel. But, the sources recounted, Ailes said he agreed that NBC was against the war and had aligned itself with Olbermann's mockery. Capus, he said, had the power to shut down the situation by telling Olbermann to back off.

Immelt was essentially being blackmailed by News Corp.:  we will continue to report on GE's corporate activities unless you bar Keith Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly.  And now, Immelt has succumbed to those threats and ordered Olbermann to cease reporting on Fox.  There is simply no doubt -- none -- that this happened.  That is the reason that O'Reilly's name has not passed Olbermann's lips since June 1 -- because GE, petrified of further reporting by Fox of its corporate activities, has barred Olbermann from doing so.  Another source who regularly appears on MSNBC -- demanding anonymity for fear of jeopardizing further appearances -- was recently told by a segment producer that explicit mentions of Fox News were prohibited.

According to the above-referenced MSNBC management source, there has been talk among MSNBC employees ever since the GE edict was issued about ways to protest it and to stand up for their journalistic freedom.  Many are afraid that their journalistic reputations will suffer by being so publicly humiliated by GE, while others are concerned that they are no longer allowed to alienate the Right since GE has made clear that they will censor editorial content and publicy embarrass even highly profitable stars like Olbermann whenever the Right targets GE with grievances over NBC's reporting.  Since the GE/Olbermann decree was issued, everything has been discussed at MSNBC from joint defiance of this edict to mini-strikes in the form of prolonged vacations and absences.  Although Olbermann did take an unusually long vacation in the ratings-important month of July, there is little evidence yet that any genuine pushback has occurred or has been effective.

It's worth underscoring that these incidents of overt GE control over NBC and MSNBC are merely the ones that have been publicly described (David Sirota, who first raised concerns about corporate flack Richard Wolffe's guest-hosting Countdown, today documents similar examples of corporate interference at other networks).  It is highly likely there are other undisclosed examples at NBC, but more important, corporate employees don't need to be told what their bosses want.  They know without being told.  GE's business vitally depends on favorable relationships with the Government, and they have signaled that they are unwilling to alienate the Right generally or News Corp. and Fox News specifically.  It takes no effort to see how profoundly those corporate interests affect the "journalism" of NBC and MSNBC.  Given GE's insistence that NBC advance its corporate agenda, do you think Brian Williams, earning $10 million a year, would ever do anything contrary to GE's corporate interests?

If corporations that own media outlets engage in quid pro quos to prevent critical reporting about one another, then large corporations -- which own the Congress and control regulatory agencies -- have no checks imposed on them at all.  By law, the "public airwaves" are required to be used for the "public interest."  Clearly, NBC News -- which depends on use of the public airwaves -- is used for GE's interests.  They assume that they don't need to hide this any longer because nobody is willing to do anything about it.

 

UPDATE:  Also regarding yesterday's column here about MSNBC:  TPM today front-pages and headlines MSNBC's use of "corporate strategist" Richard Wolffe as a "political analyst" and guest-host, and TPM's Zachary Roth has an excellent analysis of why that relationship is so profoundly sleazy and how it further blurs the lines between corporate interests and "journalism."

 

UPDATE II:  TPM's Roth reports that MSNBC, in response to inquiries about Richard Wolffe, now says it  "should have disclosed Richard's connection to public strategies. We will do so in the future."

That solves nothing.  It's better for them to disclose Wolffe's employment at Public Strategies than to conceal it as they've been doing.  But for reasons too obvious to require explaining, it's completely inappropriate to employ a paid corporate propagandist as a "political analyst."  Worse, the fact that they'll merely be disclosing Wolffe's employment at Public Strategies, but not the identity of the corporations that pay that firm and/or Wolffe to disseminate propaganda, makes the disclosure next to meaningless.  How can a viewer possibly assess whether Wolffe is carrying out his corporate clients' agenda if the identity of those clients remains entirely concealed? 

Is it OK to have a news organization employ a corporate lobbyist as a host of a news program as long as they disclose that the person is a lobbyist without disclosing on whose behalf they lobby?  To ask the question is to answer it, at least for an organization with the most minimal division between corporate activities and real journalism.

 

UPDATE III:  Mediaite notes that Olbermann has decided that Richard Wolffe will no longer be on Countdown.  At Daily Kos today, Olbermann wrote:

As to Richard Wolffe I can offer far less insight. I honor Mr. Greenwald's insight into the coverage of GE/NewsCorp talks, and his reporting on Richard's other jobs. I must confess I was caught flat-footed. I do not know what the truth is; my executive producer and I have spent the last two months dealing with other things (see above) but what appears to be the truth here is certainly not what Richard told us about his non-news job.

I am confident his commentary to this point has not been compromised - he has been an insightful analyst and a great friend to this show - but until we can clarify what else he is doing, he will not be appearing with us. I apologize for not being able to prevent this unhappy set of circumstances from developing.

Good for Olbermann for doing the right thing there, at least provisionally.  As for the comments Olbermann made tonight on Countdown -- in which he denied that GE barred him from mentioning O'Reilly and even mocked O'Reilly for working at a place (Fox) where corporate pressures restrict editorial freedom (claiming that such a thing would never, ever happen at MSNBC) -- for the moment, I will simply note what I wrote on Twitter:  "Really surprised by the Olbermann denial -- there's lots and lots of evidence that the NYT's description about what GE did is 100% accurate."