How trust and authority is lost
On the feud between MSNBC's Keith Olberman and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.
At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in mid-May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.
Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.
As Glenn Greenwald points out.
So now GE is using its control of NBC and MSNBC to ensure that there is no more reporting by Fox of its business activities in Iran or other embarrassing corporate activities, while News Corp. is ensuring that the lies spewed regularly by its top-rated commodity on Fox News are no longer reported by MSNBC. You don't have to agree with the reader's view of the value of this reporting to be highly disturbed that it is being censored.
Greenwald also notes what is glaringly obvious in reading the NY Times (itself a corporate entity) article - no mention was made by the writer about the effect of this 'deal' on the journalistic freedom of Olbermann and O'Reilly.
Maybe that'll be left to the opinion pages, but somehow I think this one will disappear down the corporate memory hole.
And corporate media wonders why no one trusts them any more.
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