Olbermann Immeltdown?

FTV Live joins the growing chorus in How Does Olbermann Keep His Job?

“I’m out talking about this company seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with nothing to hide. We’re a 130-year-old company that has a great record of high-quality leadership and a culture of integrity.” Jeffrey Immelt, CEO, General Electric

Jeff Immelt the head of GE and the parent company of NBC tried to still the bumpy waters between NBC and Fox News. FTVLive reported how he met with Fox big cheese Rupert Murdoch. It seemed that both sides agreed to try and play nicer in the future. [NYT's Brian Stelter credited NBC czar Jeff Zucker for brokering peace but it turns out it was Zucker who kept the war going.]

Then Keith Olbermann goes on the air and makes more attacks against Fox blowhard Bill O'Reilly and Fox News in general.

You might want to give Keith Olbermann credit for blowing off the boss and doing his own thing, but we have to wonder if Jeff Immelt is running the company or is it Keith Olbermann?

It's been obvious that Jeff Zucker is unable to control Olbermann, but now Jeff Immelt can’t even get this guy to reign it in? And if you ask us, he's has to be humiliated in the process?

One has to wonder what would happen when a guy in the jet engine division tells Jeff Immelt to "go fuck himself"? Which is basically what Olby did to the GE boss.

FTVLive continues: It's not like Olbermann has been a ratings juggernaut. His ratings have been slipping fast.

So we have to ask...How the hell does Keith Olbermann have a job?

He has to have pictures...

Jane Hamsher Fire Dog Lake: Olbermann has now made two contradictory statements about his role in the affair.

Me: a) That Himself unilaterally decided to stop hammering O'Reilly and Fox, and b) he was told to.

Ironically the undoing of Olbermann is lying to his liberal constituency. Jane Hamsher: It is clear that there was a deal between GE and News Corp, because both are confirming it. So Olbermann is, at best, guilty of obfuscation by claiming that he was not "party" to any deal. As Glenn said:

That's because GE executives didn't care in the least if he consented and didn't need his consent. They weren't requesting that Olbermann agree to anything, and nobody -- including the NYT's Stelter -- ever claimed that Olbermann had agreed to any deal. What actually happened is exactly what I wrote: GE executives issued an order that Olbermann must refrain from criticizing O'Reilly, and Olbermann complied with that edict. That is why he stopped mentioning O'Reilly as of June 1.

Jane continues: Either Glenn's reporting is right, as Olbermann confirms, and he was silenced by GE. Or Glenn's reporting is wrong, as Olbermann said last night, and the GE-News Corp deal had nothing to do with his actions.

There will be a cloud over Olbermann's credibility until he clarifies what really happened.

MSNBC's overall ratings are dropping.

Glenn Greenwald Salon.com: Immelt has succumbed to those threats and ordered Olbermann to cease reporting on Fox. There is simply no doubt -- none -- that this happened. That is the reason that O'Reilly's name has not passed Olbermann's lips since June 1 -- because GE, petrified of further reporting by Fox of its corporate activities, has barred Olbermann from doing so.

Last night, however, Keith Olbermann went on Countdown and denied that he had been silenced by anyone He accused the NYT reporter of getting the story wrong, even naming him "Third Worst Person in the World" and claiming:

Mr. Stelter asked me at least twice last week if there was such a deal, and I told him on and off the record there was not, and I told him I rather obviously would have to be a party to such a deal, and I told him that not only wasn't I, but I had not even been asked to be by my bosses.

Olbermann also re-affirmed the claims he made in his June 1 broadcast -- exactly the time that GE executives decided there would be no more attacks on Fox -- that the reason he was no longer talking about O'Reilly was because the topic had become too serious to make light of in the wake of the Tiller murder and that -- Olbermann -- voluntarily decided not to mention O'Reilly and Fox in order to "quarantine" them. Going further, Olbermann last night even mocked Bill O'Reilly for working at a place (Fox News) where corporate interference with editorial decisions is allowed, saying about Rupert Murdoch's interference: he "could never get away with that here. . . ."

David Sirota Huff Post: "MSNBC partisans insisting that we should ignore General Electric's manipulation of the news out of deference to Keith Olbermann's supposedly infallible awesomeness are at best being intellectually dishonest, and at worst endorsing in precisely the kind of propagandistic pro-censorship sycophancy that is at the heart of this scandal.