Keith Olbermann is a well-known broadcaster, with a background in sports and news. He has won fans and enemies for his leftist perspective and occasional “Special Comment” section. Olbermann has worked for various networks and had a legendary battle with Rupert Murdoch. He now hosts his own show, Countdown, which is geared towards a sinister summation of daily news. MSNBC replaced Olbermann and Chris Matthews from offering commentary on major news events surrounding the 2008 presidential election, but it did not affect their individual shows.
Keith Olbermann is perhaps best known today as the guest broadcaster on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, an overnight staple of the MSNBC lineup. Presenting five newsworthy stories a night from an undeniably “leftist” perspective, Olbermann has won fans and enemies alike, sometimes infuriating those he criticizes in his occasional “Special Comment” section and delighting those who share his views of him. . Sports fans are likely to recognize Keith Olbermann from his long career as a sports host, contributing to broadcast networks ABC, NBC, CNN, ESPN and Fox.
Olbermann was born in 1959 and showed an early interest in both writing and sports. In his teens, Keith Olbermann began writing about collecting baseball cards. He also started taking his first steps in broadcasting and advertising as a teenager. An early high school dropout in Tarrytown, New York, Olbermann entered college at Cornell University when he was sixteen, earning a bachelor’s degree in communication arts.
His work in broadcasting continued through his college years and after leaving college in 1979, he started working at United Press International and joined CNN two years later in 1981. Olbermann’s work as a sportscaster he earned several awards in his early years after college as well, and just over a decade after joining CNN, he landed a co-anchor position at ESPN’s SportsCenter.
While well liked by many sports fans and clearly extremely knowledgeable on sports, there have been persistent rumors that Keith Olbermann made trouble for SportsCenter and left the show in 1997. Olbermann acknowledges that he burned some bridges and felt that the The pressure was just too great, but he continued to work on a variety of networks, which brought him into contact with Fox News, where he produced and hosted the Keith Olbermann Evening News. His firing by Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox, led to a legendary battle between Olbermann and Murdoch, which continues to play out regularly on Olbermann’s MSNBC show.
While continuing to serve as a sports commentator, Olbermann transitioned into casting daily news, especially after the September 9 attacks, and earned his own show, Countdown in the 11. Over the years, the show has become much more geared towards sinister summation of daily news. Notably Olbermann has been extremely critical of the Bush administration, has been openly dismissive of the way Senator Hillary Clinton conducted her 2003-2007 campaign for the presidential nomination, and continues to ignite a longstanding feud with Rupert Murdoch and with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Many consider Olbermann to be the leftist equivalent of O’Reilly and the two journalists openly traded insults on their programmes.
Given its presentation of news from a leftist perspective, MSNBC made the decision in mid-2008 to replace both Olbermann and fellow reporter Chris Matthews from offering commentary on major news events surrounding the 2008 presidential election. These presentations are unlikely to they could be called impartial journalism, though they certainly appealed to those who support Senator Barack Obama. However, this substitution affects neither Matthews’ nor Olbermann’s individual shows, in which both presenters still mostly have carte blanche to discuss and comment on news from their political perspectives.
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