Olbermann Watch has the video of Fox News Watch correcting a typo in Keith Olbermann’s name that occurred when Cal Thomas gave him a Turkey award. Olbermann responded by giving Fox News Watch The Bronze for the typo.

Today on Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz, the subject of NBC’s decision to call the Iraq conflict a civil war was discussed with NBC’s Richard Engel, Project for Excellence in Journalism’s Mark Jurkowitz, “The Washington Post’s” Rajiv Chandrasekaran and CNN’s Arwa Damon. Transcript follows…

KURTZ: Joining us now in Baghdad, CNN International Correspondent Arwa Damon. In Beirut, Richard Engel, NBC’s Middle East bureau chief. Here in Washington, Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Project of Excellence in Journalism. And Rajiv Chandrasekaran, assistant managing editor and former Baghdad bureau chief of “The Washington Post” and author of “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.”

Richard Engel, why did NBC make this declaration of a civil war? I didn’t know that networks had foreign policies. And how do you respond to critics such as CBS executive producer Rome Hartman, who said this was a political statement by the network and not a news judgment?

RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS: Thank you for having me, Howard.

I’m here in Beirut. As you can see behind me there are some demonstrations ongoing. So I’ll try and talk over them.

I don’t think that decision to call it a civil war was politically motivated at all. I think it was very much driven by what the reports are coming from the ground, what I’m reporting in Baghdad when I’m there, what our military analysts are seeing, and what Iraqis themselves are saying. They believe that it is a civil war and that Iraqis have been calling it that for about a year now.
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Variety’s Brian Lowry bemoans the state of TV News as he sees it…

A FEW YEARS AGO, I mused about the prospect of Peter Jennings interrupting the nightly news to read ad copy, the same way radio stars like Sean Hannity and Paul Harvey do. Alas, the joke has become reality, with CNBC’s Donny Deutsch doing precisely that, reading a plug for Philips Electronics during his cable talkshow.

Obviously, nobody will ever confuse ad-man Deutsch with newsman Jennings, but this concession to advertisers (in a multifaceted deal that includes sponsorship of “NBC Nightly News”) is the latest shoe to drop in what has been a signature year for TV news — one marked by a slow downward stumble in terms of long-eroding standards.