Olbermann Hits Fox News Watch for Naming Olbermann 'Turkey of the Year'

November 28th, 2006 10:14 PM

On Tuesday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann included Fox News Watch as one of the nominees in his regular "Worst Person in the World" segment. Awarding the FNC show third place with the "bronze" distinction, the Countdown host relayed conservative columnist Cal Thomas' choice of Olbermann as "Turkey of the Year" during last Saturday's show. While Thomas had taken Olbermann to task generally for "inaccuracies" and "hot air," Olbermann only mentioned Thomas' joking comment about Olbermann accusing him of dying his hair as he made fun of the FNC show's misspelling of his name (Olberman) in its on-screen graphic. Olbermann also labeled Fox News Watch as "the only program on Fox News Channel that tries to live up to the network's otherwise ironic slogan 'Fair and Balanced.'" Notably, as documented here by NewsBusters, Olbermann last year posted on his Bloggermann Web site that Fox News Watch was one of "ten television shows worth watching," quipping that it was created by Roger Ailes "to fulfill some legal requirement that his network actually be at least .0005% 'fair and balanced.'" (Transcript follows)

Below is a transcript of Olbermann comments from the November 28 Countdown show:

Keith Olbermann: "The bronze goes to Fox News Watch, the only program on Fox News Channel that tries to live up to the network's otherwise ironic slogan 'Fair and Balanced.' Analyst Cal Thomas named me his journalistic 'Turkey of the Year' for my observation that his hair may have been colored. No complaint about that, but they misspelled my name on the graphic. And, you know, you always look like less of a journalistic turkey calling somebody else a journalistic turkey if you don't spell the alleged turkey's name wrong."