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Olbermann Fails to Credit Mediaite While Slamming Drudge for Thievery

by Tommy Christopher | 8:12 am, December 15th, 2009

» 13 comments

breitbart_olbermann On last night’s Countdown, host Keith Olbermann included a quote by Andrew Breitbart that sounded rather familiar to me. I waited a few seconds to see if there would be any attribution, but the onscreen graphic simply said “Andrew Breitbart – Dec. 10.”

Maybe I was mistaken, maybe the source of Breitbart’s quote was something directly overheard by a Countdown staffer, or a Breitbart utterance in some public forum. Maybe Countdown didn’t lift the quote from an exclusive interview and fail to credit the source, in the very same segment in which they accused the Drudge Report of thievery.

In running down the conservative echo chamber, Olbermann cited many of the players involved, and made this claim: “…or get Matt Drudge to steal somebody else’s column in which somebody else will insist conservatives have no voice in the media.”

Here’s the video. The quote in question is at the 7:19 mark, but watch the whole thing. It’s pretty good.

The full quote is from a December 10 Mediaite article by Colby Hall. It was called “Exclusive Interview: Andrew Breitbart Announces Launch of New ‘Big’ Sites,” and also featured a little red “Exclusive” banner, in case you missed the headline.

In a phone interview with Mediaite, Breitbart says that his new sites will continue to “fight the mainstream media – New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN — who have repeatedly, and under the guise of objectivity and political neutrality, promoted a blatantly left-of-center, pro-Democratic party agenda.”

Breitbart didn’t make that comment into the void of space, he made it in response to a Mediaite editor who had gone to the trouble of securing the interview and preparing questions for it. He deserved to be credited. How would Keith like it if we all got to tune in to “Countdown with Blank Spaces and a Dateline?”

The segment was about reactions, by Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, to a line spoken by a fictional character on NBC’s Law and Order: SVU. Olbermann doesn’t make the heavy lift that the pair are “inciting violence,” a charge that carries a high burden of proof. I’m sure we’ve all said or done things that would look equally bad posted on the web page of some killer.

He does, however, provide support for that SVU character’s assertion that they are “spreading ignorance and hate,” and eviscerates the notion of a gaggle of people who claim no objectivity accusing mainstream journalists of bias. Keith would have been better served sticking to those points.

Andrew Breitbart, Bill O'Reilly, Drudge Report, Glenn Beck, keith olbermann, Law & Order, Law and Order: SVU, Matt Drudge, Tommy Christopher

rmbltmbl

Is it surprising, though?
http://www.nukethefridge.com MartiniShark

Is this not the same dolt who had a piece that was critical of a news outlet’s spurious video editing in a piece and then edited the accompying video without notification himself?

Also, I do not think Brietbart claims no objectivity, he has set up his news service as a response to the left-leaning news services and to provide another perspective that either goes ignored or is misrepresented.
StewartIII

NewsBusters — Olbermann’s Conniption: ‘There is No Liberal Media’; Insists Corporate Ownership Absolves Media of ‘Liberal’ Designation
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2009/12/15/olbermann-s-conniption-there-no-liberal-media-insists-corporate-ownership
Pat Doherty

I always get a kick when Keith Olbermann puts on his Edward R. Murrow face and purports to defend journalism from these right-wing interlopers. This is a guy who owes his career to the fact he could amusingly describe a Ken Griffey Jr. home run, not because he broke any stories. Unlike his bete noire O’Reilly, Keith has no background in ostensibly “serious” journalism. He was hired as a personality. Olbermann doesn’t do any original reporting, he simply rips stories from various blue blogs. Countdown appears to be a program designed more than anything else to massage Keith’s ego: no dissenting opinions; a small group of reliably left-wing personalities to affirm his views; entire segments devoted not to the news, but what Limbaugh/Beck/O’Reilly have said about the news so he can feel like he’s taking them on; “Special Comments” that run 10-15, sometimes 20 minutes long, that are nothing but exercises in self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual vanity, notable only for the “is this guy serious?” feeling one gets and utterly wrong-headed literary allusions that must have come from some last-minute skim of Wikipedia.
germ

Olbermann’s #1 last night was laughable. By, at first connecting murders by independent actions by deranged killers and creatively editing videos by Beck and O’Reilly to support his claims (which if you watched those shows as well would know how badly his edits were) then actually defending the nastiness of Garafalo’s comments “racist, teabagging rednecks”.

I guess Olberdouche’s ego doesn’t understand hypocracy..
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-Jones/1384303476 Chris Jones

You assume Olbermann gives a rat’s ass about being honest.
m

I think that he didn’t credit Mediaite was probably intentional. “Liberal biased DURRR” Mediaite obviously has great relations with Olbermann.
ImNotBlue

m says:
December 15, 2009 at 1:03 pm

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

Oh… and the only reason Olbermann might have an “issue” with Mediaite is because of Dan Abrams and Rachel Sklar. Olbermann bragged about getting Abrams “removed” from MSNBC, and Rachel was “removed” from HuffPo for writing something mildly critical of KO.
WriterRoss

Good luck making yourselves all feel better. Olbermann is fantastic and wise and runs a brilliant show. Your jealousy is raging, revealing all the things those of you ragging on him for having a brain will never have.
http://www.nukethefridge.com MartiniShark

How exactly is it jealousy to point out inaccuracies in the programming? The post here is about KO getting incensed about actions that he is guilty of perpetrating himself in the very same segment. He’s accused Drudge of thieving, while lifting content from this site in the exact same broadcast. Another time he was critical of ABC for wrongly editing a video and then as he ran the same video he himself had convenient edits, without attribution. He’s borderline pathological.

Olbermann may in fact run a brilliant show. The problem is we are talking about COUNTDOWN.
ImNotBlue

WriterRoss says:
December 15, 2009 at 1:34 pm

…all the things those of you ragging on him for having a brain will never have.

I don’t think any of us WANT the brain he has. He can keep the massive ego (which got him fired from how many jobs?), the hypocrisy, and the nasty bitterness that is his hallmark. No… he (and perhaps you) can keep that.
Ted

Good God Pat, do you ever tire of being a cliche? If anyone knows anything about self righteous, pseudo intellectual vanity, it would be you. Dumb ass gas bag.
Pat Doherty

Ted

Long time. I see you’ve kept up that unintentionally hilarious habit of using big boy words that you know are negative-sounding, but don’t particularly understand. “Dumb ass gas bag” is more your style. I eagerly await your response where you say I’m the one who doesn’t understand big words.