O'Reilly, Olbermann, and "Fake News"

This evening, I came across an article written by Bill Carter for the New York Times, highlighting the “feud” between MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.

Now, I have to admit, I have never watched an entire Bill O’Reilly show. I’m pretty sure my television’s life would be seriously endangered should I attempt to stomach O’Reilly for more than two minutes in one sitting. I’d more than likely put my foot, or some other heavy object, right through the screen.

I do, however, watch Keith Olbermann any chance I get. I was an Olbermann fan in the olden days when he was on ESPN, and I could never understand why he left the sports network to pursue "serious news." I never thought he was cut out for straight, "just the facts, ma'am" journalism. But he seems to have found his very own news niche with “Countdown…”

This NYT article kind of annoyed me, though. Carter kept harping on the fact that Olbermann’s audience was “microscopic” compared to O’Reilly’s. And that even though Keith’s share was growing—by 30% so far this year—he was still a “speck in the rearview mirror” of Fox News. Apparently the writer had already concluded that America prefers O’Reilly; so why write the article at all? Just to let everybody know what a formidable media giant O’Reilly is, and that Olbermann is little more than a tiny, annoying gnat buzzing in O’Reilly’s ear? Is Fox News paying under the table for some “free” publicity? Or, in view of the recent “classified information” debacle, have NYT writers been given the word to be extra nice to conservative pundits for a few months, until such time as the right wing’s undies become unbunched?

One line in Carter’s article particularly confounded me, however. He writes,

“That a rabid audience can be built for a political discussion show from the left, as it has so effectively been done on talk radio and on some of Fox’s programs from the right, has not been demonstrated before, unless you count the fake news shows on Comedy Central.”

Fake news? Is “fake news” really the exclusive domain of comedy shows? It seems to me the only difference between Fox and Comedy Central is that on Fox the “fake news” is presented as legitimate journalism. At least the “fake news” they do at Comedy Central is marketed as such. By the way, Mr. New York Times writer, I believe what Comedy Central does used to be referred to as “political satire,” before our national media so blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction, news and opinion, that no one knows what is truth and what is a joke anymore.

Unfortunately, what Fox News does is no joke. But it isn't news, either.

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