Aaron Barnhart: The Five Myths of The Keith Olbermann Demotion

A reality check from Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star:

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback to my earlier piece about Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews (but mostly Keith) getting bumped off main anchor duty at MSNBC. As you saw last night, David Gregory took charge of the channel’s coverage of the 9/11 service forum. Rachel Maddow, the new star of MSNBC, anchored the after-show; Olbermann and Matthews were nowhere to be seen.

I’ve been booked on CNN’s "Reliable Sources" this weekend to defend my position with Howie Kurtz and Eric Deggans and S.E. Cupp.

And that position is that MSNBC needed to move Olbermann off the center seat in order to get that fig leaf reattached by which it can continue to do news and commentary without damaging its brand or that of NBC News. Doing so, I argued, will actually help Keith as well as MSNBC.

Clearly, though, mine is a minority view, so I thought I would respond to criticisms of MSNBC’s move at length. I’ve dealt with conservative criticisms before, in pieces like this one. Now I’ll deal with liberal and progressive criticisms, which I have framed as five myths — an apt approach, I think, since I am dealing with articles of faith that can and should be challenged.

CLICK HERE TO READ AARON’s "FIVE MYTHS" ANALYSIS.  (There’s even a hilarious evisceration of Phil Donahue!)