Olbermann Broadcast Corporation: one very loud mouth a network doth tarnish.

IN late October of last year, MSNBC moved its offices from Secaucus, N.J., to NBC headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. "It was cool," one longtime MSNBC employee says of the move. "All these old offices with so much history ... you'd be walking around and someone would point out John Belushi's old office."

But one MSNBC employee wasn't happy with his office. According to two sources who worked for the network at the time, Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's Countdown, didn't like his door. It had a window. He wanted a solid one.

He called the building manager. "They told him, 'Look, it's an old building, we're not changing the doors,'" the longtime employee says. "So Keith calls [MSNBC president] Phil Griffin and says, 'I want a new door or I'm not going on the air tonight.' And so Phil went and got him a new door."

Because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets.

THE FRINGE ON TOP

Despite what you may have heard, Olbermann's MSNBC is not becoming a network for liberals--not for your average hybrid-driving, New Yorker-reading, fair-trade-coffee-drinking liberals, anyway. Those liberals already have networks: They have ABC, CBS, CNN, National Public Radio, as well as Comedy Central's The Daily Show and its mock-talk counterpart, The Colbert Report.

No. Under Olbermann, MSNBC is becoming something different. It is becoming a network for people who write furious diatribes on group blogs like Daily Kos; who think that President Bush should be indicted for war crimes; who use phrases like "vast right-wing conspiracy" unironically--a network for people who agree that the Republican party has reduced to lapdogs most of the journalists at ABC, CBS, and CNN, to say nothing of the contemptible Fox News. MSNBC was a liberal network. It is now in the process of becoming a network for the far Left. (NBC News and MSNBC declined to comment for this article.)

MSNBC's hard-left turn was not motivated by ideology. Griffin more or less admitted to the New York Times last year that it was a business decision. For years, the network has lagged behind cable-news rivals Fox News and CNN. But even though it remains in third place, MSNBC's ratings have undeniably improved in recent years behind the success of Olbermann's Countdown, particularly since he turned the show into an orgy of Bush-bashing. "They've discovered that partisan commentary sells on cable," says S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

Partisans thrive in the 24-hour, 100-plus-channel environment of cable, because viewers with so many choices will usually choose to get their news from someone who shares their beliefs. But what works on cable doesn't necessarily work for the "big three" network-news broadcasts. Lichter explains that in a world of proliferating news sources, ABC, CBS, and NBC must struggle to offer something unique. "What they've got is their credibility, defined by their evenhandedness," he says, "and that is why they so jealously guard their reputations for objective neutrality."

Thus MSNBC's great leap leftward poses a big problem for NBC's news division. The traditional journalists at NBC News--guys like Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, and, until recently, Tim Russert--are said to be privately appalled by the way MSNBC's naked partisanship is rubbing off on NBC News, but on this matter they have been overruled. NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker recently told a conference of business students, "The definition of NBC News is really changing, and it's becoming more MSNBC and MSNBC.com."

Here's what Zucker means: The number of viewers who watch Countdown each night (around a million) is still small compared with the number of viewers who watch the NBC Nightly News (around 8 million). But in 2007, MSNBC's primetime audience grew by 28 percent, while NBC Nightly News's declined by 13 percent. Whatever works at MSNBC is going to be emulated across the news division. "It's follow the leader," a former NBC executive tells me. "Those who work for broadcast primarily are constantly reminded," he says, that their futures depend on MSNBC's success.

In a New York Times article published last year titled "Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left," Griffin was quoted as saying that MSNBC's leftward evolution "happened naturally." The article revealed that conservative host Tucker Carlson's show was in danger of being canceled and that NBC execs were thinking about creating a show for Rosie O'Donnell. At the time, O'Donnell was fresh off a stint as co-host of ABC's The View, where she gained notoriety as a far-Left partisan and 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

MSNBC eventually rejected the idea of a show for O'Donnell, but the ideological cleansing foretold in the Times came to pass. Tucker Carlson's show was canceled, and he was replaced by NBC's left-leaning White House correspondent David Gregory. A few months earlier, MSNBC had moved former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough from prime time to mornings to replace Don Imus, whom the network had fired for making an off-color joke about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Then-MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams had stepped down from his management position to fill Scarborough's prime-time slot, but his legal-affairs show, Verdict with Dan Abrams, wasn't to last long (more on that later).

KEITH POWER

It is increasingly clear that Keith Olbermann was behind most of these changes. Network insiders say that Griffin, who has known Olbermann for 27 years, goes along with anything the Countdown host wants. They also say that Griffin's bosses at NBC comply because Countdown is the first hit show MSNBC has had. They say that NBC News management waited a long time for something, anything, at MSNBC to succeed. The minute Olbermann's "Special Comments" started generating numbers, everyone at the network was encouraged to, as Griffin put it to the Times, "go for it."

Olbermann's "Special Comments" are nothing more than vitriolic, red-faced rants directed at anyone who makes him angry. Then-Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was the first to receive the "Special Comment" treatment. It was crude and hyperbolic--Olbermann called Rumsfeld a "quack" and accused Bush of threatening America with "a new type of fascism"--but it got people's attention. In late 2006, "Special Comment" became a regular feature on Countdown, and since then the show's ratings have nearly doubled.

As his ratings have improved, Olbermann's rants have gotten crazier. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, he went to Ground Zero and called for the president's impeachment. He called the GOP "the leading terrorist group in this country." He called Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace "a monkey posing as a newscaster" and President Bush a "pathological presidential liar" and the "idiot-in-chief." He is just as outspoken when being interviewed, telling Playboy magazine last year that Fox News "is worse than al-Qaeda" and "as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was."

Olbermann eschews debate in favor of unchallenged assertion; he surrounds himself with sycophants. Countdown features a regular rotation of pundits that includes zero conservatives, and almost all of the politicians and strategists he interviews are Democrats. On the rare occasion when Olbermann has a Republican on his show, it is someone like Sen. Chuck Hagel or Scott McClellan who is there to criticize the Bush administration.

Olbermann's roster also includes a couple of straight news reporters moonlighting away from their day jobs. The one seen most often is Richard Wolffe, senior White House correspondent for Newsweek. The McCain campaign perceives Wolffe to be one of the most pro-Obama journalists covering the election, and his association with Countdown has simply added to that perception.

Wolffe recently co-authored a cover story for Newsweek on how the Obama campaign was preparing for the GOP "onslaught." The article stated that "the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968," and that "Sen. John McCain ... may not be able to resist casting doubt on Obama's patriotism." The article prompted a letter from McCain aide Mark Salter, who accused Newsweek of aiding the Obama campaign's effort to portray even legitimate criticism of Obama as an out-of-bounds GOP smear.

Wolffe typically functions as a yes-man on Countdown, lending Olbermann Newsweek's credibility by nodding in agreement as he spins his crazy theories. Indeed, it is dangerous to disagree with Olbermann. Former Countdown regular and liberal columnist Dana Milbank was recently banned from the show for writing a column in which he referred to Obama as the "presumptuous nominee." Olbermann announced his decision to ban Milbank on Daily Kos, where he has been blogging since January. (Milbank has since signed a new contract with CNN.)

Olbermann's Kos blog is emblematic of his symbiotic relationship with the left-wing blogosphere. A remarkable amount of his material is drawn directly from left-wing web sites like Kos, ThinkProgress, and Media Matters. Arecent example: At a McCain town-hall event in New Mexico, a woman asked McCain a long, multi-part question about the state of veterans' health care, which she called "substandard" and "a sorry state of affairs." At the end of her question, she added, "If we don't reenact the draft, I don't think we'll have anyone to chase bin Laden to the gates of hell."

After the applause died down, McCain began his answer by saying, "Ma'am, let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said, and thank you." He then proceeded to give his standard talk on improving veterans' care, without mentioning anything about bringing back the draft. The left-wing blog ThinkProgress quickly posted an edited video clip of the exchange under the headline, "McCain on Reinstituting a Military Draft: 'I Don't Disagree.'" That night, Olbermann led his broadcast with the story.

Later that night, a well-regarded political reporter for The Atlantic named Marc Ambinder pointed out on his blog that the stories circulating about McCain and the draft were highly misleading. "I've heard McCain tell numerous audiences that he opposes a new draft," Ambinder wrote. "As the context makes clear, McCain is focusing on the meat of the question and not the woman's exclamation at the end." Even though the story had been thoroughly debunked, Olbermann was undeterred. He did a segment the following night on "the mounting evidence [that] McCain ... would start drafting your kids or you into the military."

For aping their talking points, left-wing bloggers reward Olbermann by uploading Countdown clips and promoting his show. Not that they wouldn't anyway. Such sentiments as he expresses on a nightly basis--Dick Cheney is a war criminal, Bush has turned America into a police state, Fox News is the GOP's propaganda arm, etc.--are greeted as received wisdom in the left-wing blogosphere. It is hard to know how much Olbermann's online fan base contributed to his ratings success, but it certainly played a role.

Olbermann's sudden popularity paid off in February 2007, when NBC signed him to a four-year contract extension rumored to be worth $4 million per year. His new contract also reportedly came with a role on NBC Nightly News, where he was to contribute occasional "essays." (Olbermann promised that these "essays" would not be like his "Special Comments.") Asports broadcaster for most of his career, Olbermann was also offered a role on NBC's Sunday-night football broadcast.

THE MAINSTREAM FIGHTS BACK?

Olbermann's rise has provoked mixed feelings from the journalists at NBC News. On one hand, Jeff Zucker, the president of the network, has publicly declared that MSNBC is the future of NBC News. Thus anyone who wants to have a future at NBC News has to learn to live with Olbermann and his brand of journalism. On the other hand, the more traditional journalists at the network hate Olbermann's way of doing business. They're embarrassed to be associated with a man who, in a recent "Special Comment," called the Bush administration a bunch of "cold-blooded killers" and told the president of the United States to "shut the hell up."

During the Democratic primaries, Olbermann's rhetoric got so overheated that the liberal New Yorker took notice and published an unflattering portrait of Olbermann by Peter J. Boyer titled "One Angry Man." The piece gave vent to the concerns of network bigs like Tom Brokaw and, in one of the last print interviews he ever granted, Tim Russert. Boyer wrote that as the race got tighter, Olbermann raised eyebrows at NBC when he started attacking Hillary Clinton with the same level of ferocity he usually reserved for Republicans. For instance, when Hillary surrogate Geraldine Ferraro suggested that being a black man might be an advantage in this year's Democratic primary, Olbermann accused her of "cheap, ignorant, vile racism"--"filth" in which Hillary was "awash."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Olbermann also lashed out at Clinton on several occasions when he was co-anchoring MSNBC's primary-night election coverage with Hardball's Chris Matthews. Matthews is also a big fan of Obama (the nominee famously gave him a "thrill going up [his] leg") and a harsh critic of Clinton, to whom he was forced to apologize after attributing her political success to public sympathy over her husband's infidelity. (When asked at a Harvard University forum whether MSNBC "officially" supports Obama, Matthews answered, "Well, it's not official.")

One of Olbermann's uncharitable comments about Hillary drew an on-air rebuke from Tom Brokaw, who occasionally appears on MSNBC to offer commentary on election nights. One election night after it was clear that Hillary could not overtake Obama's lead, Olbermann accused her of attempting to "shoehorn" her way into the spotlight with a non-concession speech. Brokaw replied that Olbermann was being "unfair." Brokaw complained to Boyer that trying to protect NBC News's brand from the circus at MSNBC is "a strain."

If Boyer's piece made it clear that some at NBC News are concerned about Olbermann's influence at the network, it made equally clear that the people who matter at the network aren't worried. "I think we're onto something," NBC News president Steve Capus told Boyer in reference to Olbermann's "Special Comments." Griffin brushed off concerns by comparing Olbermann's show to the opinion page of a newspaper.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain supporter, argues that Griffin's analogy is flawed. "At newspapers, there's a wall of separation between the editorial board and the newsroom," he says. "I think this dynamic MSNBC has come up with just makes this impossible." He points out that NBC News reporters make frequent appearances on MSNBC, and MSNBC commentators Olbermann and Matthews are the network's anchors during big news events. "Where the cable entertainment ends and the news reporting begins is getting pretty hard to see," Graham says.

Both the Bush administration and the McCain campaign have written letters to Capus recently to complain that NBC News reporters appear to be emulating MSNBC's more opinionated style. Last May, White House counselor Ed Gillespie sent an angry letter to NBC News accusing it of "deceptively" editing an interview Bush gave to NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel.

For Gillespie, the botched interview served as an opportunity to draw attention to other irritating aspects of NBC's coverage. For instance, two years ago NBC News made an editorial decision to declare the situation in Iraq a "civil war." Pointing to declining levels of violence in Iraq, Gillespie asked, "Will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?" Gillespie ended his letter with this: "Mr. Capus, I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the 'news' as reported on NBC and the 'opinion' as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines."

The McCain campaign used similar language in its own angry letter to NBC News. This time the dispute stemmed from a presidential forum at which Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren interviewed each candidate. Obama went first; Warren told the audience that McCain had been placed in a "cone of silence" in which he could not hear the questions Obama was being asked.

Obama stumbled. McCain did not, and the event was widely considered to be a victory for McCain. On NBC's Meet the Press the next morning, chief foreign-affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported, "The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because [what] they are putting out privately is that McCain ... may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared." Mitchell's comment prompted a 520word response from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, in which he accused her of "repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated." (As it turned out, McCain had been in a limo on the way to the church during part of Obama's interview, but the campaign insists he did not overhear any of Obama's questions, and even Obama's supporters appear to have dropped the matter for now.)

Like Gillespie, Davis concluded his letter with a reference to MSNBC: "This is irresponsible journalism and sadly, indicative of the level of objectivity we have witnessed at NBC News this election cycle.... We are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC's lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race." (Davis's letter prompted a "Special Comment" in which Olbermann told McCain to "grow up.")

The longtime employee of MSNBC I talked to--the one who told me the story about Olbermann and his door--says it's a mistake to talk about MSNBC and NBC's News Division as if they were two different things. "We are NBC News," he says. "We're in the same building. We're staffed by the same people. We use the same cameras, the same tapes. There is no difference. That should be their critique."

Meanwhile, the perilous state of the traditional network-news broadcast has undermined those at NBC News who are troubled by MSNBC's creeping partisanship. The former NBC exec I talked to tells me, "There's panic at NBC News that Keith is going to destroy the brand, but there's even greater panic that the brand is going to be destroyed anyway."

TO THE CABLE STATION

Can NBC News be saved? There are signs that all is not lost. For one thing, Olbermann has yet to do a single "essay" on the NBC Nightly News that hasn't involved sports. Some insiders suggest that's a sign that Brian Williams is making sure Olbermann doesn't bring his whack-job politics onto the network's flagship news show.

Then there's NBC's election coverage. There's no doubt that Obama "got tremendous coverage during the primary elections, the best we've ever seen over a long period of time," says S. Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. Lichter's organization found that NBC News stood out for its relentlessly negative coverage of Hillary. It was also during the primaries that NBC News correspondent Lee Cowan famously told Brian Williams, "It's almost hard to remain objective [covering Obama], because it's infectious."

But Lichter's organization did a follow-up study that looked only at the media's coverage of Obama since he secured the Democratic nomination in June. This study showed that once the primaries were over, all of the networks started covering Obama more critically, but no network news show--including the first, newsier half of Fox News's Special Report with Brit Hume--covered Obama more negatively than NBC Nightly News. Lichter attributes the general trend to the "build 'em up, bring 'em down" cycle of presidential-election coverage. "Eventually media candidates stumble," he says. "They get greater scrutiny as they become more likely to become president."

But the fact that this phenomenon was most observable at NBC News could mean that some journalists there are finally pushing back against MSNBC's pro-Obama bias, although there's no way to tell. Lichter says, "In general, I've dismissed that argument [that liberal networks get tough on Democrats to counter perceptions of bias], but certainly this is a touchy area for [NBC] right now.... It wouldn't surprise me if the upper echelon at NBC News is working overtime to make sure that they don't get sucked into that vortex of opinionated coverage."

But it's an uphill fight: Olbermann's influence at the network is strong and growing. For evidence, consider the fate of Dan Abrams. Abrams started at MSNBC in 1997 as a legal correspondent and served as the network's general manager for a little over a year. Following Scarborough's move to mornings, Abrams stepped down as GM and created Verdict with Dan Abrams to replace Scarborough's old show.

Abrams tried hard to play along with MSNBC's new hard-Left tone by focusing on legal stories that put Republicans in the worst possible light. He created a feature called "Bush League Justice" about the administration's supposed abuses of power, and another called "Teflon John" arguing that the media are biased in favor of McCain. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make his show left-wing enough for Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann wanted MSNBC to give a TV show to Rachel Maddow, a host on the left-wing radio network Air America. Maddow is by all accounts a friendly and intelligent commentator, but she is also one of the Left's most strident partisans. Keith loves her, and he insisted that she get the 9 P.M. slot right after his. When the news finally broke that MSNBC was replacing Verdict with a show for Rachel Maddow, it was obvious that Olbermann had orchestrated the move; nevertheless, Olbermann couldn't resist the opportunity to brag openly about what he had done, to demonstrate to the left-wing bloggers how much power he had acquired with their help. He wrote a post on his Daily Kos blog announcing Maddow's hiring, in which he proudly proclaimed, "Yes, I had something to do with it."

Because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets.