A moment of truth for cable news

I applaud you, thanks for posting this article,

I'm looking forward to expansion of intellectual, intelligently designed (ahem), humanist discourse from CurrentTV.

While Al Gore created an innovative positive place on the web, it's a pity that the initiative he took to make the web happen means that this will also be the place that will become a Mecca for right wing hate-posters.

I know I'lll do my best to help the haters, the pathetic money-maniacs, the profiteers, the corporatists, the Churchies, the warmongers, and the right wing chickens be better people.

Can't hear from you soon enough, Keith.

Al Gore
I think after Obama he should have the Supreme court finally validate the 2000 election in his favor and force the r e p ublicans to forfeit the following 8 years to make up for the Bush fiasco

Olbermann had mediocre ratings at MSNBC. Why would cable ratings change? The only network who could be hurt by his return is MSNBC. You will see headlines about how Olbermann has driven up Current's ratings. It's because Current barely has ratings now. There will be the curiosity factor. Then Olbermann was slide back into the relative obscurity he enjoyed at MSNBC. I predict within two years Olbermann will manage to step outside the boundaries of decency and Gore will have to fire him.

I'm excited. Keith Olbermann and Al Gore have 'earned' my respect. I would love to shake both their hands for their 'voices of reason' during these dark times in American history. Keith for his show and Al Gore for his book, "Assault on Reason".

I have some issue with the article writer's bi-polar discription of Keith Olbermann. To go from comparison of Edward R. Murrow to "just another lefty" was way off base. The writer definitely has very little trust in Al Gore and Keith Olbermann's ability to raise the bar of cable news. Obviously, he wasn't a regular viewer of COUNTDOWN. Because in all the years I've watched Keith, he never lost his journalistic integrity onscreen.

Do you know that hitting the link brings up an advertisement for Exxon and natural gas exploration (exploitation)?

From the article above.

I begin with this: Except for CNN, which makes an honest effort to report real news, cable news in America has let the nation down. If Joe McCarthy had a reality television show on NBC, I wonder if NBC would have promoted McCarthy then the same way it promotes Donald Trump and his campaign for birthers and bigots now?

Cable news in general has turned American democracy into a freak show, where bigots and nuts receive a free megaphone, where shills and hacks parade to the cameras to treat the audience like idiots dishing out spin that many of them don't even believe, where serious issues are not treated in serious ways while celebrity fluff is force-fed to small audiences who often turn elsewhere for news and information.

Now here come Al Gore, one of the pre-eminent statesmen of our times, recipient of both the Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award among many other well-deserved honors.

And here comes Keith Olbermann, the highly rated former MSNBC host, who unveils his new show on Current TV in June, a moment I for one eagerly await.

Olbermann at his best carries the standard of Edward R. Murrow, speaking truth to power with a fearless integrity. Olbermann not at his best is just another cable lefty endlessly reminding viewers which righties he despises.

Here is what is interesting and important about the new Gore-Olbermann venture in cable news:

Olbermann has expressed concern, as I and many others have, about the influence of corporate ownership of news media. Until Gore entered the picture it was impossible to fully quantify the impact of corporate ownership of news.

Now Olbermann's corporate owner will effectively be Al Gore and Gore's company. This is the first time in the history of news when corporate ownership of news will reside in the hands of a statesman and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and Academy Award.

For Keith Olbermann, this is beyond the opportunity of a lifetime. Keith will be unchained from even the slightest hint of corporate interference in news. As the U.S. Army says, Keith will have the opportunity to be all that he can be, and news will have the opportunity to be all that it can be, at a moment when more than 70 percent of the nation does not trust television news, according to Gallup.

If Keith raises the standards of cable news the sky is the limit in terms of quality, ratings, credibility and influence.

If Keith essentially repeats his MSNBC show on Current TV, with minor changes, it will simply mean that Current TV and MSNBC will divide MSNBC's current ratings in half, and suggest that the problem never was corporate interference but is rooted in the culture of what is called cable news today.

For Al Gore, the moment will also have lasting meaning because it will visibly define the "Gore brand.” I am not sure whether Gore thinks about this, or cares about this, but we will soon learn what happens to cable news when the ownership is not interested in promoting the reality show of a bigot, or becoming an appendage of the Republican Party, but rests in the hands of a Nobel Laureate and Academy Award recipient.

The possibilities are endless if the Current TV mission succeeds at a time when cable news is either distrusted or ignored by most of the nation, when there is a global yearning for serious news and information about the United States and the world, when the new technologies of social networking and inter-active media create enormous opportunity to expand and bring together the universe of news consumers who are not the idiots that many in cable television believe they are.

I thought this article offered really good insight, please read it.