On Keith Olbermann

I really like Ezra Klein's take on the Keith Olbermann affair. The point to keep in mind, about whether the anti-donations rule makes sense, is that once you accept that there is no such thing as a journalist without any opinions, the very worst thing is a journalist who pretends they don't have any opinions. The problem with FOX is not so much that they lean right-wing; in fact, that isn't the problem with them at all. The problem is two-fold: one, they lie every time they speak; and two, they have made a massive PR campaign over the last decade or so to convince people that they are "fair and balanced" and that therefore anyone who disagrees with them is biased. No: they have an opinion. Other people, like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, have different opinions. Everyone has opinions. And it's a hell of a lot easier to divine whether someone's being biased when you know what their true opinions are, instead of having to try and figure out what they might believe and then whether they're biasing their coverage in favor of that position. So the anti-donations rule, while it may not have been anti-1st Amendment, was distinctly bad policy. The only way for bias to be effective is to pretend that no one has opinions and that journalists are the Voice of Objective Fact.