EPISODE 143: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Rupert Murdoch showed Joe Biden's 2020 Presidential Campaign Commercials to Jared Kushner before they were public. This - the most startling of the second tranche of revelations from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit against Fox and NewsCorp - doesn't just violate electoral and journalistic ethics. It may be criminal - and it certainly should mean the metaphorical 'Death Penalty' for a dark, evil propaganda channel masquerading as a news organization. Fox News must be de-platformed and the company drive into bankruptcy. We can have democracy in this country, or we can have Fox News. We cannot have both.
Fox is still in a position to do the damage outlined in the newest revelations (including, in essence, selling time on Fox News panels to Mike Lindell, and when its own researchers confirmed the crazy claims against Dominion were false, ignoring them and firing them) in part because in 2009 MSNBC and NBC cut a deal with Fox to circumscribe what news it could report about Fox, and what news Fox could report about MSNBC, NBC, and parent company GE. It's time to tell that nauseating story in full detail.
B-Block (30:56) SPECIAL COMMENT: The 2009 NBC-Fox collusion began with conversations among then-NBC President Jeff Zucker and Roger Ailes of Fox, and included a threat by GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt to take MSNBC off the air, and the attempt to buy off Fox by having GE advertise on Fox Networks.
C-Block (53:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: The saga of NBC's deal to help Fox News stay out of the full glare of public criticism climaxed in a July dinner in the GE Chairman's Private Dining Room on the top floor of 30 Rock. It was a scene worthy of the movie "Network" - only they didn't wind up actually assassinating me - only symbolically.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.