Are our prayers finally being answered for better coverage?

MSNBC's decision to remove Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchoring the coverage of the upcoming debates may finally indicate that our prayers for more widespread impartial coverage of political events such as the conventions and debates maybe finally be answered. In class many of us have often echoed the same complaints that former editorial director of MSNBC Davidson Goldin recently echoed when he stated, "The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming."

Although I do love Olbermann (mostly because of his roots on Sportscenter where he paved the way for future sport's anchors), I applaud MSNBC, and their parent network of NBC, for making this decision to remove him from his anchor position in spite of the fact that he has become the most successful network in the 12 year history of the network. It is nice to see that there might actually be network executives in the world who still do care about their position as either "Reporters of objective fact" or "Neutral Adversaries" and not simply as "Profit seekers" (although this move is in light of the fact that MSNBC did improve its total convention viewership by almost double from the 2004 conventions, it did not improve it's "competitive position" so this may in fact be a profit seeking move.)

For more information see today's New York Times (as well as most other papers).