Day 1: October 1

34 days to Election Day

The show starts out with some relatively pure reporting: in the half-hour or so before airtime, the Senate passed the economic bailout/rescue package, so the open is devoted strictly to that subject. David Shuster reports on the package's passing, mentioning that all three members of the presidential race who are in the Senate voted for the bill. He then talks to Richard Wolffe about the passing of the package, and the segment then morphs from reporting into interpretive journalism. Shuster asks Wolffe to speculate on whether John McCain had had reservations about voting yes on the bill, and whether that had anything to do with the split in his own party on the bill. He then asks Wolffe about a planned Republican National Committee ad hitting Barack Obama for voting for the bill, and he speculates on how an attack on Obama over this issue would be received. Finally they move on to whether or not the House will vote for the bill, and whether there's a "burden" on the candidates to work to get votes for the bill.

It's interesting that the phrase used most by the two reporters was "I think." There's also strikingly cynical language used in the segment by both men, including referring to items tacked onto the bill as "goodies" and "sweeteners," and accusing the two sides of "playing politics."

Keith Olbermann himself then retakes command of the show, further discussing the plan. He shows a bit of possible political bias, answering his own question of why the current bill is "better" than the previous one with, "Well, in short there are corporate tax breaks and fewer regulations. Don't you feel better already?" He then has a conversation with economist Paul Krugman concerning the possible effectiveness of the plan. This also is primarily analysis and interpretive journalism. He asks Krugman whether the plan is "good or bad." He asks whether it's a good or bad thing that "larding [the plan] up with pork" has made the crisis seem like less of a crisis. He asks whether the U.S. government will end up nationalizing banks -- something which Krugman has little to no chance of actually knowing. He asks a hypothetical question of whether doing nothing would work to solve the crisis. In the whole segment, Krugman makes very reasoned and informed inferences -- he is, after all, a top-flight economist -- but they are still only inferences.

The next segment discusses a round table John McCain held with the editorial board of an Iowa newspaper, and supposed issues with his demeanor. The segment includes large samples of McCain's own words -- a venture into descriptive journalism -- but the samples all back up the notion of McCain's rough temper, which could be journalistic bias toward portraying candidates badly, political bias toward portraying Republicans badly, or it could just be the truth that McCain really was nasty throughout the whole exchange. A combination of the three seems the most likely -- it actually happened, but Olbermann was biased toward the specific angle he chose to take. Olbermann's own words belie that, such as when he characterizes Sarah Palin as unable to "handle herself with anybody other than a starry-eyed supporter, let alone someone challenging or adversarial," and his use of humor -- which, while entertaining, is at the expense of McCain, like when he tells McCain that he should "pause for the laugh there, sir" after showing tape of him making a joke about wanting to be a dictator.

The third segment is fairly rife with political bias, as Olbermann carpetbombs Palin over her interview with Katie Couric, focusing on her inability to name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that she disagreed with. He brings in James Moore, an author and contributor to liberal blog Huffington Post for an assist in the attack.

The most striking part (in terms of Patterson) isn't really the long video clip of Palin that is shown, but the commentary delivered by Olbermann before the video. He essentially calls her stupid -- or at the very least, ignorant -- saying that an "epiphany of knowledge" or a "lightning bolt of insight" could strike her before or during the upcoming vice presidential debate, but says that no matter what is to come, there will always be the moment when CBS first showed the interview, a "smoking gun of stupidity," during which she "flatlined." He then refers to the aforementioned question as the one that "erased whatever had remained of Sarah Palin's credibility as a national political figure." Moore later refers to Palin as being "uninformed, or even stupid," having a "diminutive brain," and "sleeping in her tanning bed when John McCain woke her up."

Palin may be what Olbermann and Moore say she is, but to have an eight-minute bash session on a vice presidential candidate -- totally ignoring the issues, concentrating on her person -- can hardly be called news reporting.

The next segment is devoted to Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" piece, in which he gives the title award to the person -- usually a Republican politician or someone associated with the right wing -- and names two runners-up based on quotes and actions from the preceding day. He sometimes uses the segment as a fact check -- as in Republican congressman Steve King, who he calls out on faulty economic and unemployment statistics. He also typically uses the segment to lampoon FOX News (or, as Olbermann refers to it, "Fix News") and its personalities, especially Bill O'Reilly, or "Bill-O the Clown." Clearly there is some political bias involved in his criticism of conservatives -- not that it is inherently proof of bias to criticize certain politicians, but that Olbermann tends to only attack Republicans in this segment. His criticism of FOX News probably also fits in that category -- he rarely attacks CNN or the other network news entities.

The final segment of the show is essentially just a montage of Sarah Palin in compromising interview situations. This is yet another example of political bias, as it's being used clearly to attempt to discredit her (it's not new, thus it is not news, so that's really the only other use it could have).

In summary, at first glance it would appear that I was right -- Thomas Patterson wouldn't be a big fan of Countdown.