Why MSNBC pulled Olbermann and Matthews

last updated 8 January 2015

MSNBC “tried a bold experiment” by having “politically incendiary hosts” Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews lead the channel’s election coverage this year, said Brian Stelter in The New York Times, but “that experiment appears to be over”—they’re being replaced by David Gregory. This move is clearly “a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.”

“MSNBC has finally come to it senses,” said Jeff Bercovici in Portfolio.com’s Mixed Media blog. Both Olbermann and Matthews are “opinion journalists” that lean to the left, and they obviously don’t have the “whole hat-switching thing” down—especially Olbermann. He’s just not capable of separating “news and editorial”—too bad he “knows frighteningly little about his chosen profession.”

Imagine if Fox did what MSNBC just did? said Adam Serwer in The American Prospect blog Tapped. “They’d have to drop most of their talent.” During their convention coverage, “Fox hosted the likes of Karl Rove and Laura Ingraham balanced out by Brit Hume, Sean Hannity and Carl Cameron—who still struggles with the idea that the South lost the Civil War.” It’s obvious that Fox’s conservatism is deliberate,” while “MSNBC’s liberalism is occasional.”