This week I would like you to help me learn something about journalism ethics - about your attitude toward journalism ethics. Some people will say that is a contradiction in terms and end the discussion there, but I hope you will take this a little more seriously than that.
Keith Olbermann was suspended Friday from MSNBC's highest-rated evening show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. It has been announced that the host will return tomorrow.
"Highest rated," of course, is a relative term. On a good night, Countdown will have has many viewers as The Daily Show. But Countdown is in prime time, when audiences are supposed to be bigger.
The night before Olbermann was suspended, his show had 1.1 million viewers. That is a little more than a fourth of Bill O'Reilly's audience in the same time slot. To put that in perspective, Olbermann and O'Reilly together had fewer viewers than AMC's Walking Dead. In fact, the talking heads' combined ratings were lower than a Sunday morning episode of SpongeBob Square Pants. Combine Olbermann, O'Reilly, Dead and SpongeBob and you are still about 2 million short of the audience for the Giants and Cowboys on Monday Night Football.
Olbermann's offense was contributing to political campaigns.
NBC News has a rule about that sort of thing, reported in a number of places to be this: Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns or groups that espouse controversial positions. You should report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the president of NBC News or his designee.
But when Joe Scarborough, a former congressman and another MSNBC host, contributed to a friend's campaign a few years ago, he was not suspended. Some reports say Scarborough asked his boss's permission first, but their official response was "Joe hosts an opinion program and is not a news reporter."
That would seem to be true of Olbermann, too.
Over at Fox News, Sean Hannity, another host of an opinion show, made political contributions and wasn't reprimanded for it. Of course, some folks on the Fox payroll - Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee for two - have political action committees, entities that exist to collect and distribute political money. News Corp., the company that owns Fox, gave a couple million dollars to Republican organizations this election cycle. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, General Electric - MSNBC's parent company - gave more than $2 million to candidates this cycle. (The top money-getter was a Republican, by the way). That does not count what the company spent lobbying on various issues and fighting against a California ballot initiative.
It is common for news gathering organizations to have rules against people who work in their newsrooms contributing to political campaigns or doing other things that might make it appear that they are not unbiased and objective. Those rules generally do not apply to the company itself or its executives or employees who work outside the newsroom. Many argue that these restraints preserve the organization's claim to objectivity. Others argue that these restraints preserve only the appearance of objectivity.
Contributing to political campaigns is verboten, but apparently working for them is not. One of the people who have written in Olbermann's defense is The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. He is a Fox News commentator, former Dan Quayle chief-of-staff and a former adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign. Columnist George Will once helped Ronald Reagan prepare for a debate during his presidential campaign. After the debate, he offered an analysis of what a good job the former California governor had done. Olbermann and the rest of it has been a big topic among some of my Facebook friends and on a journalism listserv I am on.
What I want to know is this: What do you think? As someone who consumes media, what do you think the rules should be? Does the politics ban make sense for reporters? Are the talking heads of MSNBC and Fox - people paid to have and share opinions - reporters? Should the rules be different for those folks? Are all alleged news organizations moving in the direction of The Daily Show, which promises to "bring you the news like you've never seen it before - unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity or even accuracy?" Do you care about these things at all? Or are you like the person who commented online that it does not really matter because there is no such thing as an unbiased organization anyway?
Tim Thornton is the ombudsman for The Cavalier Daily.
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