A principled walkout?

Where is everybody?

With voters in Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska and Kansas going to the polls today in the most dramatic and unpredictable primary season in decades, MSNBC -- the self-described "place for politics" -- ran taped programming all afternoon and then finally went on the air at 8:00 p.m. Eastern without Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw or Brian Williams.

Norah O'Donnell is in the anchor chair.

America Wants to Know sincerely hopes that what we are witnessing is a principled walkout in protest of NBC News' decision to "suspend" star political reporter David Shuster over a comment that displeased Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Shuster said Thursday on MSNBC that the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" Chelsea Clinton in "some weird sort of way" by having her telephone Democratic Party superdelegates and beg them to support her mother.

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson held a conference call with reporters on Friday and trashed David Shuster as "beneath contempt" and "disgusting." Then today, Hillary Clinton personally commented to reporters to express her outrage and released a copy of a letter she sent to NBC News president Steve Capus. "No temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient," the senator wrote.

Senator Clinton complained to Mr. Capus about "the pattern of behavior on your network that seems to repeatedly lead to this sort of degrading language," a reference to earlier comments by Chris Matthews that she had not liked.

Then the roundhouse punch: "There's a lot at stake for our country in this election," Senator Clinton wrote, "Surely, you can do your jobs as journalists and commentators and still keep the discourse civil and appropriate."

Did you catch that?

She's telling NBC News -- NBC News -- that their on-air talent is improperly affecting the outcome of the election.

That is a mortally serious charge to level at a news organization.

To respond to such a charge with anything except forceful profanity is to concede that Senator Clinton is correct.

We'd like to think that Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams responded to Senator Clinton's letter today with language that shook the walls of Rockefeller Center.

America Wants to Know doesn't think David Shuster said anything wrong and believes Senator Clinton has her own motive for the noisy effort to discredit him. [See our earlier post, "The Clintons play smashmouth."] But no matter what David Shuster said, no matter what Chris Matthews said, no matter what Tim Russert asked Senator Clinton during a debate, a news organization cannot cave in to office-seeking politicians who write letters demanding that its employees be fired.

It's one thing for a politician to request airtime, or a correction, or even an apology. It's another thing entirely to demand the termination of a reporter's employment.

That's an abuse of power.

The government has a lot of power over NBC/Universal's business. From broadcast licenses to station ownership to the catch-all category of antitrust [See our earlier post, "Tackling the NFL"], a senator can make a lot of trouble for a media conglomerate.

NBC/Universal doesn't want any trouble.

But we're guessing that in the dressing rooms at NBC News tonight, they've got some.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: David Shuster's e-mail correspondence with the Clinton campaign was published by The Politico and can be read at this link.

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