Cool Keith?
Olbermann hammered frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani in a commentary eight days before his hosting duties. MSNBC's decision to give the liberal host the job, Bauder writes, prompted complaints from the Giuliani camp and other campaigns, which privately contacted NBC to express concerns.
NBC News senior vice president Phil Griffin says Olbermann can play both roles.
"He can tell when it's appropriate to express himself in a commentary and when to be a journalist," Griffin told Bauder. "That's one of his strengths. He knows exactly the tone and his role when he's doing anything."
It's certainly possible to be a straight reporter one moment and a commentator the next. But it does create a perception problem. Mainstream media outlets have long pushed the notion that they are in the business of giving viewers the facts, not their twist on it. And having those facts offered by people who are publicly giving their opinions undercuts that effort.
To be sure, nothing has really changed since the time before Olbermann and Dobbs found their niche. Reporters have always had opinions, even if they pretended otherwise. Perhaps we're better off when those opinions are aired publicly – that way, viewers can take them into account when consuming news.
But it's interesting that news outlets, in allowing folks like Olbermann and Dobbs to straddle the line between straight news and opinion, are now making the tacit admission that they are moving away from the useful fiction that journalists striving for objectivity don't have opinions to overcome to achieve it.