Playboy seeks balance on feedback to Olbermann interview?
Blogging Olbermann notes that Playboy had some serious blowback to its Keith Olbermann interview and was openly seeking letters in response to that so the blog’s owner was one of the ones who sent in a letter to Playboy…
I’m sure you all remember the Playboy interview back in September. Shortly after the release of the magazine (and after a couple of discussions of it here on ERT) I was contacted by Playboy editor Chip Rowe via the site’s contact form.
He said that they were getting overwhelmingly negative response on the interview* - mostly for the Fox Noise remarks, though some were just general anti-KO sentiment - and that he’d like to balance that with something positive from someone with my “expertise.” (No, really, that’s the word he used. I quickly denied being an expert on a man I’d never met.) After exchanging several emails, I wrote up a couple of hundred words for him to use on the “Letters to Playboy” page. The letter appears in the January issue, along with this blog’s address.
The magazine received, apparently, widespread, negative criticism of what Olbermann said in the article. So widespread that the editor felt the need to contact a FAN SITE to solicit something, anything positive for “balance” and then allowed the fan site owner to use a fake name to print it?
Can you imagine what would happen if someone got caught doing the same for O’Reilly or anyone at Fox?
Comment by Alison — January 14, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
I wonder if Playboy ever had Bill O correct what he wrote in his article a few years ago about how he gets more viewers that all of the Network News programs combined?
I’ve noticed over last few years that Playboy is getting a vocal right-wing presence, which surprises me, since they have always been a left-wing magazine, and most right wing administrations do what they can to suppress distribution of the magazine, including re-writing reports on “pornography” to include Playboy so they can restrict the stores and distributors that carry it under both Nixon and Reagan.
Comment by Cory!! Strode — January 14, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
Cory,
O’Reilly has said many times that he gets more viewers than all of the other CABLE news programs broadcast at the same time as his combined. This means CNN, Headline News, and MSNBC, not ABC, NBC, and CBS.
If you have a reference where he straightforwardly claims that he beats NBC,CBS and ABC combined in the ratings, please give that citation.
Comment by Missouri Show Me — January 14, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
Playboy January 2003 - Bill O’Reilly “The Death Of Network News.”
Comment by Cory!! Strode — January 14, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
So does this mean that most readers of Playboy are conservative?
Comment by jerziegrl — January 14, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
It just means that their readers - like football fans - aren’t interested in some shallow political hack. They would’ve bought The Nation if they wanted that.
Comment by Jim — January 14, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
The same article where Keith Olbermann admits that he’s “UN-American” when comparing Fox News to Al-Qaeda…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IOWBnkaitd8
Comment by ZoneDaiatlas — January 14, 2008 @ 11:00 pm
Cory,
Here’s the article you listed. Maybe I’m not reading it correctly. Could you please point out the part where Bill O’Reilly claims, “he gets more viewers than all of the Network News programs combined”?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/800184/posts
Comment by TBDave — January 15, 2008 @ 10:49 am
Good Luck!
Comment by Kashif Naeem — April 15, 2008 @ 4:44 am