Exposing the Cable-News Ceasefire

Earlier this month, Brian Stelter, who covers television and media for the New York Times, broke word of a surreptitious accord between two of the biggest guns in American cable news. Stelter's piece illuminated not only a ceasefire between MSNBC and Fox News and their lead crusaders, Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly, but also the closed-door corporate concerns of the networks' motherships, Jeffrey Immelt's General Electric and the Rupert Murdoch monolith, News Corp.

Yet the shaky détente between the station's more inflated personalities was not meant to be. Olbermann huffily eviscerated the report on his own show the very next business day, taking shots at O'Reilly, Murdoch, and Stelter himself. Within a week, O'Reilly had made a point of completely nullifying any DMZ by questioning GE's business practices, as is his wont. The Hatfields and McCoys of basic cable were back to lobbing powder kegs at each other's Midtown offices.