See update below which suggests Olbermann didn’t violate NBC’s ethics policy.

***

GE, the parent company of NBC and MsNBC, has caused its subsidiaries to fire suspend Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for contributing roughly $7,000 to 3 Democratic candidates. The spin excuse they are pushing behind the scenes for his “suspension” is the following:

In suspending Mr. Olbermann, NBC appeared to be trying to differentiate itself from the Fox News Channel, a unit of the News Corporation. NBC executives privately said that they saw a chance to draw a distinction between the journalistic standards of their news division and the standards of Fox, a favorite of Republicans. Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group that opposes Fox, noted on Friday afternoon that two Fox News hosts, Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity, had given money to Republican politicians in the past.

The News Corporation also came under scrutiny this year for a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association — a donation that Mr. Olbermann has been sharply critical of.

No, they fired suspended him because he was no longer needed. GE sees a Republican resurgence in Congress with the possibility of Obama being a one term President and decided they didn’t need the headache Olbermann causes them with National Republicans. How many NBC officials gave money to the GOP this year? How much did GE itself funnel anonymously to 501(c)(4) groups?

We’ll never know.

But I can tell you what GE’s Political Action Committee (PAC) gave to candidates over the last year: $2,396,709. When Republicans controlled the House and Senate in 2008 they gave $801,950 to Republican candidates and $476,950 to Democrats.

In 2010, with Democrats controlling large majorities in both houses of Congress, the GE PAC reversed itself, giving Republicans less and Democrats more: Dems = $781,650; Repubs = $473,200.

And that’s just the money we know about from GE’s PAC. How much GE spent in other ways this election cycle we will never know.

In short, GE’s management is massively hypocritical. They saw the way this election went and did what they had to do to appease Republicans after the Dems lost control of the House and almost the Senate: they handed the GOP the head of Keith Olbermann. The excuse they are giving for that decision “in private” is complete and utter cow piss. They found the excuse they needed to find, just as CBS found an excuse to make it up to the Bush administration in 2004 by conducting an internal investigation by an “independent panel” to justify killing Dan Rather’s career at CBS News. How independent was their investigation? Take a gander:

Internal notes from CBS brass (see below and the following four pages)—recently provided to Rather as evidence in his ongoing $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit—suggest the same may not be said about the method by which CBS’s top executives selected the panel members.

The notes indicate that in choosing the so-called “independent” investigators, CBS sought input from the Republican Party. The network’s lawyers argue that CBS chose a GOP attorney (former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh; the other panelist was Louis D. Boccardi, former CEO of the Associated Press) “to open itself up to its harshest conservative critics and to ensure that the panel’s findings would be found credible.” But a list of potential candidates compiled by Linda Mason, CBS’s senior vice president for standards (below and the following four pages), suggests the effort was intended at least initially to quiet attacks from the political right. Mason compiled her list in consultation with CBS Washington lobbyists Carol Melton and Gail McKinnon.

In short, Olbermann just got Dan Rathered by GE. Scared of losing influence with the Republicans in Congress, GE Executives cravenly did what they do best: protect their bottom line. Suspending Olbermann had nothing to do with drawing “a distinction between the journalistic standards of their news division and the standards of Fox.” GE’s own record of political contributions makes that very clear.

Update [2010-11-5 17:0:6 by Steven D]: Greg Sargent questions whether Keith even violated NBC’s policy:

Check out the fine print of what NBC policy said, as of 2007, about political activities on the part of NBC employees:

“Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns or groups that espouse controversial positions. You should report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the President of NBC News or his designee.”

Emphasis mine. This is a bit difficult to parse. But this does seem to say that those who are worried that their “standing as an impartial journalist” would be jeopardized by political activity should report it. Last time I checked, Keith Olbermann doesn’t pretend to be an “impartial journalist.”

Likewise, neither do Joe Scarborough or Pat Buchanan, both of whom have also given political contributions. [Emphasis by Steven D] It seems possible that none of these three would think they may have violated company policy.