Howard Kurtz attempted a valiant face-save for Keith Olbermann after the scalding Jason Linkins story at the Huffington post accused Olbermann of having "lied" to his viewers. (BTW, Dan Froomkin new Washington DC editor, way to go HuffPo.)
Kurtz claims that Olbermann's decision to stop talking about Bill O'Reilly actually precipitated the negotiations between Fox and GE:
The day after Olbermann's comments about the Tiller slaying, executives convened a large meeting and talked about Fox and the importance of striking the right on-air tone. Olbermann later expressed a willingness to make minor adjustments in his style, but he and his allies, concerned about setting a precedent, dug in for a fight.Not so, says Brian Stelter of the New York Times:
Mr. Olbermann told viewers on June 1 that he would halt his jokes about Fox News because he believed that Fox had played a part in inciting the death of the abortion doctor George Tiller. Inside Fox, executives chuckled. They knew that a pact had already been struck by Mr. Olbermann’s bosses to end the feud.It's like the teenager busted for a big bag of weed in his backpack whose story just keeps getting better and better.
If it turns out that Kurtz's "source" played him like a Stradivarius, do you suppose he'll salvage his credibility by giving them up?
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7040