You never have to guess what Keith Olbermann thinks about his colleagues in the media. He is always more than happy to tell you.
On a recent episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the host was discussing changes made to the an excerpt from Walter Issacson’s book about Elon Musk when it was reprinted in the Washington Post. Isaccson was Olbermann’s boss at CNN.
He listed a number of decisions and assignments that Isaacson oversaw. Those included a new 8 pm newscast, 9/11 coverage, and a hire that would define the network.
“He had to make a crucial decision that the future of CNN was Anderson Cooper,” Olbermann recounted, “who has done as much as anybody to make sure that CNN has, in that time, sunk from first place in the field to last.”
Cooper joined CNN in 2001. He came over from ABC, where he had recently switched from doing news to hosting a reality TV show.
Olbermann did not elaborate on exactly what Anderson Cooper had done to tank CNN’s ratings. He has been the anchor of the network’s primetime lineup since 2003 when Anderson Cooper 360 debuted. Since 2002, he has also been the host of the network’s New Year’s Eve specials, which are routinely panned by others in the industry as being “beneath” the news network’s standards.
This isn’t the first time Keith Olbermann has gone after Cooper this month. On an earlier episode of Countdown, he called Cooper “world’s longest-running unsuccessful marketing experiment” and accused him of “denigrating his audience” and showing “how little he understands what he does for a living.”
