Keith Olbermann Suspended Without Pay For Paying Democrats

Earlier this morning, Washington Post tribute site Politico reported that teevee's Keith Olbermann, who works for news channel MSNBC, donated money to three Democratic candidates just four days before the elections on Tuesday. This is something many Americans do, but it is not something MSNBC Americans can do, because it appeared to be a violation of NBC's news ethics policies. And it seems it is a violation, because the network has suspended Olbermann without pay today. Olbermann will now curse out MSNBC for being evil, mug exasperatedly for a non-existent camera, leave his office, and call up Joe Buck for some therapeutic World Series broadcast criticism. Meanwhile, Fox News and its personalities probably didn't donate enough to Republicans.

Here's the guy, the president of MSNBC, who thinks he's Keith Olbermann's boss:

I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."

Whoops.

Of course, basically everyone on Fox donates to Republicans all the time, and the network itself likes to give the party millions directly. But at Fox you are sort of expected to donate to political candidates, whereas at MSNBC you are supposed to pretend to be a journalist with some kind of impartiality. There's no Politico story about Fox, but whatever. Boring.

Olbermann has yet to respond to why he would think donations made just four days before the election would help these candidates, Raul Grijalva, Gabrielle Giffords, and Jack Conway. [ Politico / HuffPo ]