Olbermann Takes Issue With Recent Feature In TV Guide

Keith Olbermann wrote THE DAILY to rebut Pat Jordan's profile of him in the current "TV Guide," which was summarized in last Friday's issue. Olbermann wrote, "After 26 years in broadcasting, the number of articles written about me is now approaching the four-figure mark. Yet, until now, I have never felt impelled to publicly condemn any one of them in its entirety. ... I was warned by many [previous Jordan interviewees] not to cooperate with Mr. Jordan. I hope this answer to his piece ... will serve as my apology to them for having failed to heed their sound advice. One sentence contains the most egregious of Mr. Jordan's failures: 'Fox executives panicked and abandoned their long-term plan, Olbermann claims.' I never made any such claim. In the only interview he ever conducted with me, last July, Mr. Jordan asked about a series of changes at Fox Sports Net in late 1999. He asked if the network had 'panicked' or 'abandoned its plan,' and I told him that I would not attach either phrase to the executives' decisions because ultimately it was their business to run, not mine, and their decisions, if not specifically inarguable, were certainly inarguably valid ones." Olbermann adds, "Mr. Jordan's article is also rife with simple factual inaccuracies: I am not hoping, and have in fact never hoped 'to land a national sports show on syndicated talk radio.'" Meanwhile, TV Guide Manager of PR Ben Grossman said, "Of course the story is solid and we stand by it. There's really nothing else to say" (THE DAILY).