Like a lot of you, I've been seriously bummed by the MSM's perfect silence on the crucial subject of FISA and wiretap immunity. I've been waiting anxiously for KO to turn his attention to it, but like so many other media types, he -- yeah, even he -- seems hypnotized by the exigencies of the campaign.
I would have preferred to send this letter to him directly, but I can't find a way on the Internet to contact him, via e-mail or any other way, and I don't want to spend any more time looking. If any of you have an in with him, please pass my letter along to him.
Meanwhile, I think he checks in here from time to time (in fact, I know he does), so maybe he'll see it here. And this way the rest of you get to see it too, which is just as well. Here goes:
Mr. Keith Olbermann
Countdown
MSNBC
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY
January 29, 2008
Dear Mr. Olbermann:
I am concerned about the neglect, on Countdown as on other news shows, of the story of the FISA/wiretap immunity battle currently going on in Congress.
Yes, there’s a campaign on, and to an extent, the media's preference for coverage of that story is understandable. But the FISA struggle is a major constitutional issue. If you’re opposed to wiretap immunity (and I think you are), then it’s important for you to recognize that the Bush Administration’s timing in bringing this issue up now is no accident. On the contrary, the Administration is counting on the media, including you, to ignore it in favor of other news like the caucuses and primaries and who said what about whom. It knows that the media may do this for fair reasons (the primaries really are important news) and foul (they want to be complicit in suppressing the FISA story).
But don’t be distracted -- or suckered! I think you appreciate, perhaps uniquely, that the stakes of the FISA battle are very high indeed. Not only are crucial Fourth Amendment rights at stake. Congress is poised to enact legislation which would retroactively legalize a gross and thoroughly deliberate crime against the public – and to do so on patently false and demogogic pretenses. And perhaps worst of all, immunity would forever foreclose any investigation into one of the Bush Administration’s most serious and egregious crimes.
Time’s a-wasting! This story is very hot and will get hotter. And if ever the country stood in true need of responsible journalism, this is the time – and you’re the man!
Yours very truly,
[my signature]