Keith Olbermann, who is still smarting from his departure at MSNBC, used a recent interview with Cenk Uygur to criticize the cable network’s hiring Al Sharpton.
“For Olbermann, however, who has an uncanny knack for avoiding the facts,” writes the media watchdog Accuracy in Media, “it was just another opportunity to take a potshot at his former employer for in essence relegating him to cable television’s no man’s land.”
But Olbermann wasn’t the only one unhappy with the possibility of Sharpton anchoring his own show in prime time on MSNBC.
Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute, which promotes diversity in the media, wrote on his blog that one member of the National Association of Black Journalists told colleagues that “This would still be just another non-journalist media ‘celebrity’ receiving a TV show based upon their name recognition, not their years of experience, training, ability and talent.”
Olbermann used that quote on his show and sent it rocketing throughout the Internet.
The NABJ member behind that quote was Jeff Winbush, a blogger and former editor of the Columbus Post, a black newspaper, who told Prince in an email that he wasn’t attacking Sharpton personally but that he simply wanted to see “Black journalists get a fair shot as well.”
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