Keith Olbermann On His Hiring–And Firing–At Fox Sports: ‘For Once, Murdoch’s Mafia Failed Him’

Current TV host Keith Olbermann, writing for The Guardian, describes the experience of being hired–and fired–by Rupert Murdoch. “From my vantage point,” Olbermann writes, “the most important fact remains that, after my exit, Rupert had to keep paying me not to have to work for him: $800,000 over the next eight months. It was the best job I ever had.” Olbermann, who was hired by Murdoch to be part of an expanded Fox Sports cable effort that included Olbermann hosting a nightly show to compete against ESPN’s legendary SportsCenter–an effort Olbermann describes as one of Murdoch’s “first abject failures in American television.” Olbermann says the failure was the result of multiple mistakes on the part of bosses at News Corp.: “for once, Murdoch’s mafia failed him.”

In the column, Olbermann accuses Murdoch of insisting on Olbermann’s firing for reporting about News Corp’s intent to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers:

It was a great story – and a great journalistic quandary. My bosses suggested we should run it past Murdoch’s personal public relations department, and the answer came back that provided I made it clear that none of the sources were from inside the company, and provided I run the official Murdochian denial, I should report my scoop. Mr Murdoch, we were told, never interfered in the news.

Silly me: I believed him.

Olbermann says within days of running the story, he was an ex-Fox Sports host. “Less than three weeks later, my business agent got a call from the man in charge of Fox’s baseball coverage. I was no longer going to be its studio host. A few hours later, he phoned again to say that my now weekly cable show had been cancelled. The next day I was told to come in and clean out my office on the Fox lot in Los Angeles.”