NewsBusters Archive

On Wednesday, NewsBusters reported how MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann sent an e-mail message to a viewer in which he debased colleague Rita Cosby as well as his boss at the time. Lloyd Grove of the New York Daily News (hat tip to NB reader John in CA) reported Thursday that Olbermann has been responding to his likely voluminous hate mail with…hate mail:

“Keith Olbermann's vacation isn't going so well.

“He was forced to apologize yesterday after more of his E-mails found their way to my inbox and exposed the host of MSNBC's ‘Countdown With Keith Olbermann’ as insulting and frequently obscene in an acrimonious exchange with two viewers who taunted him.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

(Update: For those that are interested, the following link directs you to a website that has some of the actual e-mail messages in question. Be forewarned that these are much more vulgar and offensive than what has been presented here.)

After Grove forwarded the e-mail messages to an MSNBC executive, Olbermann wrote the following (fair warning to  not have food or drink in your mouth as you read this):

On Wednesday two correspondents reporting from Iraq had dramatically different takes on the protest by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who were said to be upset by President Bush’s recent trip to Baghdad. NBC reporter Richard Engel described it as "a relatively small" protest while Lee Cowan of CBS said protesters’ anger had "boiled over".

Ironically, early Wednesday CBS anchor Bob Schieffer offered high praise for NBC's Engel.

On the Wednesday CBS Evening News Lee Cowan offered this description of the protests, "Anger over the U.S. presence here and the President’s surprise visit yesterday boiled over. Thousands of followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr made it clear again today that the 130,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq should withdraw immediately and leave Iraq to its own devices."

I'd call Jim Pinkerton's Newsday column - 'Movimiento' Aims to Take Back America - today's must-read.

Pinkerton reports on his brief foray inside the belly of the 'immigrant rights' beast. Far from being an echo of the black civil-rights movement of the '60s based on non-violence, Pinkerton says that it's a radical 'movimiento' animated by dreams of 'reconquista.'

Pinkerton explains that earlier this week he attended a panel discussion entitled "The New Immigrants Movement," part of a "Take Back America" conference convened in Washington, D.C., by the left-wing Campaign for America's Future.

Talk radio show host Michael Smerconish appeared on tonight's Scarborough Country to promote his suggestion, set forth in this column, Cut Coulter Loose, that the GOP disavow Ann Coulter for the statements in her most recent book, 'Godless', about the 9/11 Jersey Girl widows .

Smerconish told Scarborough that the Republican party needs to "make clear" that Coulter's comments are "appalling."

Scarborough sympathized, saying that Coulter's Jersey Girl comments "need to be condemned."  He complained that when you do criticize Coulter, "conservatives accuse people like us of being traitors."

James Taranto at Opinion Journal's "Best of the Web Today" reports that CBS just has to slant its poll reporting:

Here's a lovely example of liberal media bias: A CBS poll finds that 60% of Americans say it's likely "that the United States will ultimately find success in Iraq," and more than 50% say "Iraq will eventually become a stable democracy."

So is the headline, "Majority of Americans Foresee Success in Iraq"? Nope, it's "Poll: Zarqawi Death Has Little Impact." [Subhead: "Despite Zarqawi Death, Most Americans Say War's Going Badly."] CBS chose to play up this finding:

Apparently, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann doesn’t play well with others – color me shocked.

According to Lloyd Grove of the New York Daily News (hat tip to TV Newser), MSNBC’s Olbermann sent an e-mail message to one of his three fans that aren’t related to him that included a rather derogatory comment about his colleague, Rita Cosby:

“‘Rita's nice,’ Olbermann wrote to a fan from his MSNBC E-mail account, ‘but dumber than a suitcase of rocks.’ Yesterday Cosby retorted: ‘Keith got it wrong. I'm not that nice.’"

That wasn’t the only co-worker Olbermann dissed:

As a Jew, I try to tread lightly when it comes to discussing matters Christian. But I think I can say with confidence that if you're a traditional Christian who is not offended by Jim Rigby's column at the Huffington Post, Christians Who Want Democracy Must Stop Bowing to a Dictator Christ, you're not reading carefully.

Rigby is the pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. He has gotten into hot water for conducting ceremonies for homosexual couples. His church has also admitted a professed atheist as a member.

The blog Sweetness & Light has done excellent legwork exposing Time magazine's reporting on the Haditha incident. Sweetness & Light wants to know why it took so long for the incident to be reported by the media (four months) and who were the shadowy figures who gave the material to Time.

The Washington Times wrote an excellent summary of the work done by Sweetness & Light.

Time first broke the story on Haditha in March, four months after the incident -- a delay which too few of the Marines' more ardent accusers (such as Rep. John Murtha) failed to question. One of Time's key sources who had taken footage of the aftermath was represented only as a "journalism student." It has since been learned that this eyewitness was Taher Thabet al Hadithi.

Here's how Time reporter Aparisim Ghosh described Mr. Hadithi: "[H]e's a young local man ... He brought the tape to Hammurabi Human Rights... and they brought it to us once they found out that we were inquiring about this."