Jim Geraghty, "The Campaign Spot" @ National ReviewIt is pretty darn astounding that with all of the insistence from the White House that Fox News Channel is "not a real news network," that their preferred channel, MSNBC, did not have live coverage at 10 p.m. Eastern on ELECTION NIGHT. They re-ran Olbermann's 8 p.m. coverage, which was, of course, two hours out of date.
"What do you want?"
"I want the truth."
"We can't handle the truth!"
No, really, when you stop covering the news, people can legitimately say you're not a news network. That has nothing to do with percieved bias or ideology (although we can speculate as to why Olbermann disappeared from the 10 p.m. coverage, as previously expected) but because you're not actually bringing any new information to viewers.
Just imagine what it would have sounded like had Olbermann gone live at 10:00:
"We go now to New Jersey, to the Corzine campaign, ... and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames and the... and Governor Corzine is falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the one of the worst catastrophes in the world. [indecipherable] its flames... Crashing, oh! ... Oh, the humanity!"