Olbermann Rocks! K. O.the new Murrow - 10/06/2007 The Nation

[Democrat 4 Ever]

Article by Marvin Kitman - Olbermann Rules!

(snip_

Finally, CBS president William Paley made Ed Murrow shut up--by canceling his shows. In the dark ages after Murrow, the most powerful commentary on network news was the raised eyebrow of David Brinkley after reading a piece of news on NBC. A generation of telegenic and totally uninvolved journalists followed.

In short, what CBS (and all the others) need is a new Ed Murrow. Good news! There's already one out there on the launchpad who has demonstrated his qualifications. I'm talking about Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. He has the journalistic chops and the mind, heart, instincts and courage.

Olbermann, who anchors a one-hour nightly news show on MSNBC called Countdown With Keith Olbermann, closes his show every night by saying "1,547th day since Mission Accomplished in Iraq," an hommage to Ted Koppel's "Iran Hostage" coverage, which evolved into Koppel's late-night ABC news show Nightline (the MSNBC show was originally Countdown: Iraq). Then Olbermann throws his crumpled script at the camera, which shatters, a simulated digital effect (something Koppel never did).

"Our charge for the immediate future is to stay out of the way of the news," he explained when the show debuted on March 31, 2003. "News is news. We will not be screwing around with it," a reference to Bill O'Reilly, his rival over at Fox News in the 8 pm time slot. "It will not be a show in which opinion and facts are juxtaposed so as to appear to be the same."

Olbermann, who looks more like a high school teacher than a glitzy TV anchor, is the one who cuts and dices the news of the day into five segments, what he and his staff consider the day's top stories, illustrated with news reports from NBC News correspondents, interviews with newsmakers, whom he treats courteously, interspersed with signature witty interjections (calling 9/11 Rudolph "Giuliani's red badge of courage"), further interrupted by new ways to look at the news.

(snip)

Full acknowledgment that K. O. is the best newscaster on TV today. You can read the rest here:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071008/kitman/3

[BrklynLib at work]

1. Yeah. Uh-huh. You betcha.

[ThomCat]

2. I like the attention KO is getting, and I agree that he's the best

that's on tv. And I like The Nation. I subscribe to it.

But, I did not care for that article. The article seemed to wander, and didn't seem very well written. It really didn't touch very much on the rivalry between KO and O'Reilly. They could have done an entire article on their two styles, and how KO is a refreshing return to integrity.