While questions lingered, MSNBC staffers thought back to the previous Friday, when, in retrospect, it should have clear that some change was afoot. According to one network source, on Friday, Sept. 5, on the heels of Mr. Olbermann' impromptu criticism of a RNC video about the Sept. 11 attacks, MSNBC managers began spreading the word among staff, producers, reporters, and anchors of a new set of marching orders. For the previous four days, the McCain surrogates had been busy pounding the media for bias against their candidate, and many in TV news were feeling defensive. One week earlier, on Friday, Aug. 29, during a breaking news segment about Sarah Palin's nomination as Senator McCain's vice presidential candidate, MSNBC producers had run a graphic at the bottom of the screen asking, "How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?"
Now word was spreading at MSNBC day side: Edge was out, caution was in. "Every day-side anchor, every producer, everybody was told the word on high is that no more edge," said our source. "Be especially careful not to inject any sort of opinion or ridicule or anything like that. Play it straight down the middle. If you say something is not true, you have to say who's claiming that it's not true. The managers were saying, 'Go for boring. That's all we care about right now, be boring.'"
Over the past two weeks, during its round-the-clock coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the cable news network had been anything but boring.