More on the GE-News Corp Deal

Olbermann returned to Countdown last night, following his vacation where he was replaced by a corporate lobbyist, and immediately denied the New York Times story on the existence of a deal between GE and News Corp. The article stated that these owners of MSNBC and Fox had directed both Olbermann and O’Reilly to stop fighting in order to preserve the image of the parent companies. Last nighthe calls O’Reilly a racist and Rupert Murdoch the day’s ‘worst person in the world’. Ouch.

A quick scan of twitter shows the NYT reporter saying that he thought his story would strain the detente, effectively remarking that the deal was in place and, once it became public, would be dropped so as to discredit the belief that it ever existed at all.

As for being replaced by a corporate lobbyist during his vacation, Olbermann posted the following on Daily Kos last night:

As to Richard Wolffe I can offer far less insight. I honor Mr. Greenwald’s insight into the coverage of GE/NewsCorp talks, and his reporting on Richard’s other jobs. I must confess I was caught flat-footed. I do not know what the truth is; my executive producer and I have spent the last two months dealing with other things (see above) but what appears to be the truth here is certainly not what Richard told us about his non-news job.

I am confident his commentary to this point has not been compromised – he has been an insightful analyst and a great friend to this show – but until we can clarify what else he is doing, he will not be appearing with us. I apologize for not being able to prevent this unhappy set of circumstances from developing.