To: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC
Keith, no one loves the job you’ve been doing more than me. Followed you back when it was The Big Show, yada yada yada.
You’ve been doing a great job of pointing out the problems with electronic voting machines in Ohio and Florida, and treating this story with the coverage that it truly deserves.
That’s why I’m so sorry to see it bite you like this.
This Bloggerman post on the MSNBC web site has a time stamp of 8:13 PM Eastern Standard Time– but there’s a problem. I, and about 600,000 other people, were watching you on Countdown at that very moment.
This leads one to believe that A) The timestamp was wrong, B) Someone else is posting your stories.
Please explain this little electronic glitch so that you can go on explaining the other ones without nagging contradictions.
Of course, you could have done all this as a test to show us how easy it is to fake electronic records…
Er, Glenn? Do you really think that a celebrity of Olbermann’s stature is actually going to be posting his own blog entry? That’s insane. Of course he has an assistant do it. This isn’t a glitch or a credibility problem, it’s a person who’s too busy doing his job to sit at a computer and format blog entries.
—KRAD
Let me direct you to Mr. Mark Cuban, a man who’s just as busy as Olbermann, if not more so. He posts his own entries. And he was just the splashiest example I could think off offhand, I can name dozens more.
And in the case of Olbermann, of course it’s credibility. His name is on the post. It’s a simple enough thing to explain– he delayed the post, his assistant posted it, he hit “send” during a commerical break, whatever. Just clear it up.
If his staff did it, then say so. After all, the post in question ends with “These are my people — they are running professional risks I can�t begin to describe — and I will stand up for them, first, last, and always.” So stand up for them.
Assuming, of course, he wrote that. :-/
He’s a newsman. Credibility is his stock in trade.
Couldn’t he write it and have someone post it for him. Seriously, who cares anyway? Aside from you, that is.
Some of the segments on Olbermann’s show are pre-taped. Assuming he posts his blog posts himself, that could certainly explain it.
Much easier to believe that the video was not live. Or that the entry was prepared throughout the day, and that it was posted during a taped segment, or by an assistant. Possible process: KO writes the piece, has someone look it over, vets any changes and answers queries, then passes it back for the mechanics of posting. No biggie, eh?
I know on Blogger, you can manually change the date stamp when you send a post.
Maybe the blog is set to upload during the show?