What happened to Olbermann Watch? Updated! A new message from Mr Cox.

If you've visited Olbermann Watch today, you might have noticed something has changed. It isn't there!

We have posted at that site for years, thanks to Mr Robert Cox who gave us the opportunity to expose Keith Olbermann. Our hope was that, by shedding light on Keith's hypocrisy, bias, and lies, that he would be seen for what he is: a partisan propagandist, and not a "journalist" or even a "newsman". We kept a running count of his political guests: a long stream of dozens of Democrats, interrupted at one point by a Republican (who was there only to discuss his call for Rumsfeld's removal). We documented Olbermann's use of blue blogs as "news sources", and the attempt to team up with moveon.org to boost his viewership. We collected his vitriolic, mean-spirited personal attacks into an "Olbersaurus", then took the best and used them back at Olbermann himself. (Apologists for Olbermann who ridiculed our "name calling" were the source of endless amusement. They were totally oblivious to the fact that the names we called were the ones Keith himself used on others, and by ridiculing us they were actually ridiculing the "infamous, deplorable" Keith Olbermann.) We caught Keith more times than anyone could count reporting a story as fact that wasn't, and not correcting or retracting it when the truth came out. This was especially true of the 150+ times he attacked Bill O'Reilly, attacks that were frequently based on fabrications or outright lies. But Keith's lies weren't limited to Mr Bill; we had scores of them to sift through when we named Olbermann's top ten lies of 2006.

Olbermann Watch has served a useful purpose. Keith, who used to claim he was "nonpartisan", just this week admitted that, yes, he is a liberal. And Olbermann Watch stood as the Number One Olbermann blog on the internet, with many regular readers--including Keith himself (who was caught lifting stories, and even media clips, from the site, without acknowledgment of course). But despite all of the above, not only did NBC award this partisan poseur a new contract, they actually expanded his reach by giving him a commentary spot on NBC. Mr Cox now believes that Olbermann Watch may have done more harm than good, actually increasing public awareness of Keith (the theory of "there's no such thing as bad publicity"). In any event, here is Mr Cox's statement:

There is no disguising the fact that we have been extremely unhappy with the recent decision of NBC Universal to not only retain Keith Olbermann for four more years but to elevate him in an unprecedented fashion. We had held out hope that MSNBC would allow Olbermann's contract to expire even up until the last few weeks. But the deal is done and our Countdown Clock expired at midnight on March 1, 2007.

Given this, we have come to the conclusion that we have done more harm than good over the past 2+ years in keeping Olbermann in the public eye at a time when few were watching his show and even less cared about his assault on the journalistic standards we hold dear. So, after careful consideration and consultation with the entire staff, we have decided the time has come to retire OlbermannWatch.com.

It's been a great run. We certainly had a lot of fun running the site but it's just been increasingly difficult to maintain our enthusiasm as Olbermann's ratings have increased and a compliant media has done everything to boost Olbermann and his show.

We wish all of you the best over the next four, painful years.

Sincerely,
Robert A. Cox
Managing Editor
OlbermannWatch.com

Update: Mr Cox has just issued a new message:

Dear Friend of Olbermann Watch,

Read this...

http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/?p=939

Then visit here...

http://www.olbermannwatch.com

And be sure and come back tonight at precisely 8 PM ET for one last message from your friends at Olbermann Watch.