THE FALSE GOD OF OBJECTIVITY AND OTHER BAD JOKES

It’s not often you’ll see Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly agree on anything. But they finally have some common ground: they both think Ted Koppel worships the False God of Objectivity, and that cable TV news is the future of journalism.

For those of you just tuning in, Koppel wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about how cable TV news is promoting partisan commentary to generate ratings and passing it off as journalism at the expense of more balanced journalism, and how this is creating partisan echo chambers that tell people what they want to hear at the expense of The Other Side.

Basically, O’Reilly didn’t like being called a liar, and Olbermann didn’t like being compared to O’Reilly. So they’ve both turned on Koppel.

We’ve covered this before, so you know how I feel about both KO and Bill-O and cable news in general. In other words, I basically agree with Koppel.

But I do have a problem with KO’s straw-man argument about objectivity being the “false god” that helped the Bush Posse do what it did.

( Gibbity gibbity gibbity )

DISCLAIMER: The whole topic of objective vs subjective journalism is way more complex and nuanced than I’m making it sound here. I could probably do a separate post of how cable TV news shows compare to advocacy journalism and investigative journalism. But this has already gone on too long.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been employed as a journalist for the past decade and a half. So my take on this may differ from the average person.

Just the facts,

This is dF