I fear for Keith Olbermann.

Like so many others who hunger for some journalistic independence on TV news, I often marvel at Olbermann's dogged reporting and unique commentary. In a cable news environment of conformity and conservatism, the MSNBC host takes on the Bush administration for "demonizing dissent," for abusing our Constitutional traditions, for "taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love [following 9/11] and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death."

Only Olbermann talks about Team Bush's "monstrously transforming [9/11 unity] into fear and suspicion, and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections." He was virtually alone on TV news in seriously reporting on 2004 election irregularities in Ohio, and in exploring the pre-Iraq war Downing Street Memos indicating White House deception. In recent months, his prime targets seem to have evolved from softer ones like Bill O'Reilly to bigger game: Bush and his minions. It's worth noting that strong criticism of an extremist presidency hardly makes Olbermann a leftist. I remember him as the whimsical sports guy on ESPN.

I remember his first go-round on MSNBC in 1998 when he could have sued his bosses for repetitive stress disorder for having to host scores of Lewinsky episodes on the road to Clinton's impeachment -- an impeachment that may well have been impossible if not for the complicity of TV news.

It's obvious his bosses at MSNBC/NBC/GE never envisioned the increasingly bold Olbermann of recent months. It's likely that Olbermann himself could not have foreseen his current role as the lone voice of those who feel assaulted by a cable news business dominated by the O'Reillys and Hannitys.

So why do I fear for Olbermann? Because I know his bosses. In the runup to the Iraq war, I too worked for MSNBC -- as an on-air pundit and a senior producer on the prime-time Donahue show.

As I detail in my new book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, the suits at MSNBC/NBC muzzled us and ultimately terminated us. They feared independent journalism and serious dissent. They smeared Bush critics, with MSNBC's editor-in-chief actually going on air -- without evidence -- to accuse Iraq WMD skeptic Scott Ritter of being a paid agent of Saddam Hussein.

Olbermann has been gaining in audience ratings. That provides him some security. But perhaps not enough.

When Donahue was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion, it was MSNBC's most watched program. Canceling your top-rated show doesn't happen often, but it happened to Donahue. Who knows what will happen to Olbermann?

With Donahue, management cared less about building up audience than tamping down dissent. While independent outlets and blogs were soaring in audience by questioning the rush to war, our bosses imposed straightjackets on us that prevented similar growth.

In the last months of Donahue, management gave us strict orders: if we booked a guest who was antiwar, we needed two who were pro-war. If we booked two guests on the left, we needed three on the right. When a producer proposed booking Michael Moore, she was told she'd need three right-wingers for ideological balance.


Olbermann's increasingly bold dissent has been occurring at a time when Bush's approval ratings are low and Bush's war is in shambles. That gives him some added security.

During Donahue's tenure at MSNBC on the eve of war, Bush's popularity was high. And media conglomerates were particularly concerned about not ruffling the White House at that moment -- as they were lobbying hard to get FCC rules changed to allow them to grow still fatter.

The day after Donahue was terminated, an internal NBC memo leaked out; it said that Phil Donahue represents "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." Why? Because he insisted on presenting administration critics. The memo worried that Donahue would become a "home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

NBC's solution then? Dump Phil, stifle dissent, brandish the flag.

NBC's solution now? So far, Olbermann appears to be on more solid footing -- mostly because the political zeitgeist is much changed from four years ago. But MSNBC is still owned by GE's conservative bosses and managed by NBC's ever-timid executives. Olbermann knows this reality as well as anyone; six months ago on C-SPAN, while expressing confidence that good ratings would keep them at bay, he remarked: "There are people I know in the hierarchy of NBC, the company, and GE, the company, who do not like to see the current presidential administration criticized at all."

I'm pulling for Olbermann; I'm one of the multitudes who find his commentaries online (perhaps more see them on the web than on TV) -- and forward them far and wide. But with each new broadside against the Bush administration, I fear for his future. His best security is us, an active citizenry. It's media activism, organized heavily on the Net. It's media watch groups like FAIR and Media Matters for America. It's the movement that resisted the FCC changes in 2003, challenged Sinclair Broadcast propaganda before the '04 election, and recently exposed the 9/11 "hijacking" of ABC by right-wing Clinton-bashers.

In the epilogue of Cable News Confidential, I lauded this movement: "My only regret was that such a potent movement had not coalesced by 2002 -- to flex its muscles against MSNBC brass in defense of an unfettered Donahue."

If Olbermann gets muzzled or terminated for political reasons, it will be up to us to fight -- not only for him, but for the concept that without serious dissent, democracy is a sham.

Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations. And tell your friends.

Of the top oil-producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The president is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the U.S. By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela.  A country with so much oil wealth shouldn't have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez. 

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott.  

Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to work, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don't have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela. 

Imagine that while Bill Clinton was president, Secret Service agents had gone to fetch Chelsea Clinton's boyfriend from jail, where he'd been arrested for public drunkenness. One could imagine days of righteous indignation on talk radio and pundit television about misuse of the Secret Service and the lack of dignity surrounding the Clinton family.

In fact, the Secret Service did go to the aid of a drunken friend of the first family, but it wasn't big news -- perhaps because it involved not the Clintons, but the family of George W. Bush.

The incident occurred in Fort Worth on Feb. 25 when a "very intoxicated" college student was arrested at a rowdy fraternity party and was, according to the county sheriff, "very vocal" that his girlfriend was George W. Bush's teenaged daughter, who'd also attended the party. After the student used his cellular phone to make a call from his cell, Secret Service agents quickly arrived to get him out. Bush's daughter reportedly waited outside the jail in a Secret Service vehicle.

The White House wouldn't comment on the matter, and the story disappeared from the news in a day.

(On Fox News, Brit Hume made it appear that the First Daughter, not Secret Service agents, freed the youth from jail.)

Now imagine that in support of President Clinton's top policy initiative, the Democrats had staged an elaborate photo-opportunity timed for the evening news -- with an embarrassing memo surfacing to expose a Democratic plan to deceive the media and the public. One could imagine the national press and pundit corps howling like wolves about the deviousness of the administration and its supporters.

Indeed, a deceptive memo recently leaked to the Washington Post, but it wasn't the work of the Clintonites. The memo was circulated by the National Association of Manufacturers in response to a call from the office of Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. It urged corporate lobbyists to camouflage themselves as working class folks for a GOP rally on Capitol Hill in support of Bush's tax cut plan.

"The theme involves working Americans," said the memo. "The Speaker's office was very clear in saying that they do not need people in suits. If people want to participate -- AND WE DO NEED BODIES -- they must be DRESSED DOWN, appear to be REAL WORKER types, etc. We plan to have hard hats for people to wear." The political director of the manufacturers' association, who normally wears a suit and tie, attended the Republican rally in a faded farmers' hat, rugby shirt and green pants.

The Capitol Hill photo-op, with its sea of hard hats, looked good on TV for the Bush team and their tax cut. Media outrage over the deception was rare.

The flip side of the press corps' often-justified obsession with Clinton administration spin and flimflam seems to be an overly gullible view of the Bush camp.

Soft coverage of the new administration extends to policy matters. Case in point: a recent Washington Post article headlined "Richest 1% Will Get 22% of Cut, Bush Says,' which served up White House propaganda as news. Only a close reader of the story would notice that Bush's claim was based on ignoring two key components of his tax plan: estate tax repeal and income tax rate cuts that kick in big-time in 2006. Consideration of the full Bush plan shows the richest 1 percent getting roughly 40 percent of the cut.

If a newspaper blandly repeats what it knows to be misleading propaganda, "then the paper is prepared to be lied to about anything," concluded media critic Bob Somerby of DailyHowler.com in his analysis of the Post article. "Post readers were wholly, completely deceived."

Despite the frequent complaints of "liberal bias," studies of presidential news coverage -- including Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency" and Robert Entman's "Democracy Without Citizens" -- suggest that the last two Democratic presidents received tougher media scrutiny that the last two Republicans.

Have Washington reporters perhaps been intimidated by the GOP's incessant charges of liberal bias? In 1992, Republican National Chair Rich Bond acknowledged that intimidation is indeed a goal of media-bashing from the right: "There is some strategy to it," Bond told journalists at the Republic national convention in Houston. "I'm a coach of kid's basketball and Little League teams. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is �work the refs' [meaning the media]. Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."

It's probably less intimidation than an instinct toward propping up the ship of state that has prompted news media to legitimize George W. Bush's ascent to power. At the end of February, broadcast networks and newspapers nationwide proclaimed that Bush did win Florida's election after all. "Bush Really Won," bannered the New York Daily News. "Florida Vote Review Confirms Bush Win," headlined the Houston Chronicle. "Recounts in Miami-Dade Find Bush a Fair Winner," claimed the Los Angeles Times. It was exciting news -- and false. Or at best, premature.

The overheated stories were based on a Miami Herald/USA Today recount of certain contested ballots in a single county, Miami-Dade. That tally found additional votes for Al Gore, but not enough new votes to surpass Bush when added to official, disputed tallies in three other counties that Gore had sought a recount. The analysis did not pretend to settle the question of who received more total votes in Florida. When these stories appeared declaring Bush the rightful winner, two journalistic teams were still at work on statewide ballot reviews, with the more exhaustive review not due until mid-April, at the earliest. But many news outlets, in their rush to erase the question mark next to the Bush presidency, ended up misleading the public.

The fact that Bush entered the White House through a disputed election may not mean he should get tougher news coverage. But he and his administration certainly are not entitled to softer coverage.

Jeff Cohen is the founder of FAIR and a panelist on "News Watch" on the Fox News Channel.

Tuesday, August 15 -- A tiresome Democratic vice president seeks the top job, but his administration's policies have so alienated Democratic-oriented activists they take to the streets during the party's convention. Meanwhile, the Republicans serve up a shrewdly repackaged candidate with a surname rejected eight years earlier by the national electorate, a candidate speaking well-scripted words of moderation and compassion.

If this scenario feels like a recurring dream, that's because we lived through it once before, in the tumultuous election year of 1968. To Democrats, it may be more like a nightmare; if history repeats itself, the GOP will reinhabit the White House. There is one significant difference between then and now -- Ralph Nader -- and it's a difference that may hurt the Democrats' chances.

First, the similarities.

In 1968, Richard Nixon won by appealing to voters in the center with the help of soothing talk about peace in Vietnam and "bringing us together again" at home. His opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, lost the support of the left by clinging to his boss's failed Vietnam policy.

Humphrey's hawkishness led some Democratic voters to stay home or vote for protest candidates. It dampened enthusiasm among young activists for crucial get-out-the-vote efforts. And it divided the party.

As if reading from the vintage 1968 script, today's Democratic leadership clings so fervently to its policy of corporate-oriented trade -- and the campaign funding it brings in -- that it seems to be almost deliberately dampening the enthusiasm of core activists allied with the party.

Like the World Trade Organization officials who were blindsided by protests that disrupted their meeting in Seattle last fall, Vice President Al Gore is underestimating the depth of resentment caused by the administration's trade policies. Seattle-inspired protesters -- who see those policies as protecting corporate profits at the expense of workers, human rights and the environment -- have descended upon Los Angeles in droves.

In June, Gore made it even more clear that he takes them and their votes for granted, by choosing as his campaign chairman William Daley, the White House's top lobbyist for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the China trade deal. (Daley, incidentally, is the son of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the Humphrey-backer and conservative Democrat whose mishandling of the convention contributed to Humphrey's 1968 defeat.)

And here come the Republicans, who won in '68 with "the new Nixon," offering up a new Bush in 2000: "George the Compassionate."

Although there are uncanny parallels between 1968 and 2000, there are also differences, which may make prospects worse for Gore -- but, paradoxically, more favorable for the future of progressive politics.

In 1968, the only peace-oriented alternatives to Humphrey were fringe candidates like Eldridge Cleaver and Dick Gregory, and they were on the ballot in only some states.

This year, Nader, a widely respected political figure, will be on the ballot as the Green Party candidate in almost every state. Nader is capitalizing on the dissatisfaction with Gore, tapping into the energy of activists who see Gore as not only wrong on trade but also unduly beholden to corporate interests in general.

In 1968, the Democratic dissenters were primarily young people, many below the then-voting age of 21, with few resources. Their social and cultural positions often put them outside the mainstream.

Today, progressive dissent is more mature, has more resources and brings together mainstream issues from economic fairness to environmentalism.

And whereas the unions in 1968 largely sided with Humphrey against dissenters, many in labor today loudly question Clinton-Gore trade policies and have actively supported the protests in Seattle and elsewhere. Two powerful unions, the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers, even flirted with endorsing Nader, a powerful critic of trade deals deemed hurtful to workers. The Teamsters have not yet endorsed a candidate; the UAW endorsed Gore last week.

If George W. Bush wins over a divided opposition, there will be much soul-searching on the left. Some will blame Gore's conservative policies on issues like trade, military spending and the drug war. There will also be scrutiny of Gore's campaign choices, like his selection of Daley and pro-business, free-trader running mate Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Others will blame Nader as a spoiler.

The blame-Nader chorus has been rising from Gore backers since national polls last month found Nader's support as high as 8 percent. Although Nader is indeed popular with disgruntled Democrats (10 percent of union members in Michigan, according to one poll), he is also popular with independents and John McCain voters.

But where Nader may do best is with disaffected or unengaged Americans who otherwise would not bother casting a ballot, especially newly eligible voters on college campuses. For progressives, this mass of new voters may hold the key to November.

Most voters registered and brought to the polls by the Nader campaign will likely vote Democratic for Congress, because the Green Party won't be fielding candidates in many districts. These voters may decide whether majority control of Congress returns to Democratic lawmakers, many of whom bristle at the Republican Lite programs of Clinton-Gore.

Haunted by the ghost of 1968, the American left is a long way from learning whether this recurring dream will end well or end badly. The real test may come after the 2000 election.

If the Nader electoral movement evaporates in 2001 while the GOP wins the White House and keeps Congress, few on the left will call it anything but a nightmare. If, however, the Nader upsurge leads to a permanent, emboldened progressive electoral force -- whether inside or outside the Democratic party -- it would widely be deemed a success, even if a new Bush is temporarily in the White House.

Jeff Cohen (jeffco@ulster.net) is co-author of "Wizards of Media Oz" and is a weekly panelist on Fox News Channel's "News Watch." He wrote this article for Perspective.