Bill Simmons, Keith Olbermann and ESPN etiquette.

What the three-week suspension looks like, then, is an effort to silence a loud voice of dissent to appease ESPN’s most important business partner. It’s true that ESPN likely felt some pressure to please the NFL, given that the network has invested billions in a league that’s headed up by a guy Simmons won’t stop calling a liar. But one of ESPN’s biggest names, Keith Olbermann, has said loudly, repeatedly, and not all that politely that Goodell needs to go—that he is “an enabler of men who beat women.” What Olbermann has not done is dared his paymasters to shut him up.

The above paragraph comes from Josh Levin's article on ESPN's three-week timeout called on GRANTLAND majordomo Bill Simmons: 

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/09/bill_simmons_suspended_yes_he_called_roger_goodell_a_liar_but_here_s_the.html

Levin didn't mention it, but Keith Olbermann's opening comments on OLBERMANN have switched from the NFL to safer ground: days of opinionating about retiring New York Yankee Derek Jeter not being All That.

David Carr abandons journalistic objectivity in latest Keith Olbermann article.

David Carr of THE NEW YORK TIMES, is a good writer/reporter--and a good Company Man too.

Here's his latest piece on the Keith Olbermann firing, which comes down squarely on the side of the Al Gore-fronted Current TV channel:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/keith-olbermann-machine-gun-for-hire/

Key passage from the article:
"No, the mistake that the executives at Current made was to think that by giving Mr. Olbermann a stake in the enterprise and a title of chief news officer, he would forgo the drama that has characterized his stints at CNN, Fox, ESPN and MSNBC. After all, you can’t rail against the Man when you are the Man.


But Mr. Olbermann is talent, and a big baby to boot — any reporter who has covered him could tell you all about that — so the idea that he would default to the good of the many over the needs of the one is just not in his nature. The title was used as leverage, nothing more, when Mr. Olbermann became dissatisfied and starting communicating with his employers through lawyer letters months ago. Mr. Olbermann is a ferocious fan of team sports, but that’s not how he plays the game."

Having said the above, Carr does own up to the problems of the Current channel (i.e. attempting to compete with left-to-center MSNBC with supercheap programming--now including amateur-video-level commercials for national-brand products).

But to me, it seems like the major problem is that--like Olbermann or not--Current hired him and promised him autonomy in terms of how the channel's news/political programming would evolve.  Then, Al Gore, Joel Hyatt and David Bohrman (currently having himself spun as a genius in the media for selling Current on simulcasting radio shows of Bill Press and Stephanie Miller--plus arranging the MSNBC TV simulcast of Don Imus, who, for reasons not to be mentioned here, was terminated from the network) apparently said, "No Keith, we have the autonomy, you don't."

In short, the Olbermann/Current situation is probably a bit more complex--with pluses and minuses on both sides--than you'll read in most media coverage.

And perhaps Olbermann now feels like a participant in THE HUNGER GAMES, where he's expected to play a game by agreed-upon rules, only to find management changes the rules to suit them and not their $10 million-a-year star player..

David Carr of THE NEW YORK TIMES on Keith Olbermann.

Two Keith Olbermann profiles by David Carr--the first post-MSNBC, the second during Olbermann's Current tenure:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/magazine/olbermanns-rage-is-all-the-rage.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/business/media/at-current-tv-keith-olbermann-is-trapped-inside-his-show.html?pagewanted=all

Keith Olbermann fired by Current.

This was just announced a few minutes ago, so very little is known about the reasons for Current's decision.  My theory is that the channel wants to be more centrist Democrat, so I'm thinking that Cenk Uygur of THE YOUNG TURKS--someone not afraid to disagree with President Obama--may be vulnerable to pressures from above.
In Keith Olbermann's case, he allegedly tends to fight Authority until Authority shows him the door.
[UPDATE] Via THE NEW YORK TIMES, Current TV's side of the story:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/current-tv-dismisses-keith-olbermann/
Here's a post from the entertainment site THE WRAP:
http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/keith-olbermann-fired-current-tv-36679?page=0,0
[UPDATE]  Olbermann, via Twitter, tells his side of the story:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/olbermann-to-take-legal-action-against-current-tv

Cenk Uygur given the Phil Donahue treatment by MSNBC.

RIP COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/21/keith-olbermann-countdown-over_n_812506.html?igoogle=1
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/olbermanns-msnbc-exit-was-weeks-in-the-making/?hp

So, as with Phil Donahue before him, Keith Olbermann finds himself a victim of changes in American politics (including a temporary false-equivalency form of discourse etiquette which will let the likes of Beck, O'Reilly, Coulter, Hannity, Palin, Malkin off the hook) and what looks to be ill winds blowing onto NBCUniversal from its soon-to-be-new-owner Comcast (or Kabletown, as 30 ROCK euphemistically calls it).

Sidebar #1: Early in 1975, the Smothers Brothers began a short-lived comeback variety series on NBC.  In their opening monologue, they joked about how they were evicted from television when Richard Nixon became President--and then were re-hired after Nixon's resignation.

Sidebar #2: It's really difficult to perpetuate an opinions-and-commentary show when your network is part of a too-sensitive-to-controversy corporate empire.  Just ask Bill Maher, dropkicked by Disney/ABC from POLITICALLY INCORRECT in 2001 when he made the statement about the 9/11 hijackers not being cowards

Sidebar #3: Keith Olbermann's show probably peaked when he, along with the rest of the mild-to-moderate progressives making up the audience, could rail in unison at the perfidies of the George Butch Jr. administration.  I'm presuming Olbermann felt squeezed by the NBC brass when the "change we can believe in" incense of 2008 Barack Obama wafted away to be replaced by the acquiescent, "demonize the Left" Republicratism of 2011 Barack Obama.  And, very likely, the temptation of NBC to dispose of Olbermann (attempted late last year when he was harassed for, as a host of a "commentary" show, making donations to political candidates--including the recently-wounded Gabrielle Giffords) and claim a victory for "civility" was huge.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC gets Griffined.

In the wake of Keith Olbermann's suspension for making small campaign donations to Democrats (seemingly not too ethically challenging for a clearly partisan newsertainer/commenter), one wonders what MSNBC majordomo Phil Griffin (let's pass over the channel's top Republican Joe Scarborough's GOP/Democratic donations for now) has in mind.

My guess is that MSNBC may either rebrand itself as:
1. The channel of the cautious, mild-liberal Center, with Rachel Maddow becoming the only capital-L Liberal safe for Prime Time and Chris Matthews dethroning Olbermann to become the Face of the Channel.
or
2. The channel's re-embrace of its former Republican, shadow-of-Fox News, phase, with former MSNBC anchors Tucker Carlson and John Gibson maybe being asked to return--with a new show called.....COUNTDOWN WITH PAT BUCHANAN.

UPDATE 11/8/10: Here's a link I did for a YouTube video commenting on the suspension and reinstatement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eB6Udqqpo

When corporations run network news, corporations exempt themselves (and each other) from news coverage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/01/ge/index.html
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/04/olbermann/index.html

Something interesting I read in the last link above. Glenn Greenwald links to David Sirota's article re the "Keith Olbermann told to stop criticizing Bill O'Reilly so Fox News can quit reporting on General Electric" mess. In the comments section of Sirota's piece, one gets the idea that some people are okay with Olbermann standing down in this matter as long as he has an opportunity to be a "progressive" voice on a cable news channel.

Question is: How progressive can you be if you work for a news organization that has no firewall between its operations and edicts from the corporation that owns it?

Glenn Greenwald explains "access" jounalism and "adversarial" journalism.

Here's a column by Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald which takes a probing look at uncritical "access" journalism and advocates more conversation between political opposites: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/27/debate/