Olbermann’s coverage of the Gabriel Gifford’s shooting was the straw that broke the camel’s back and made me start really questioning the accuracy of what we call news. This started me on the path that lead me to where I am today. It’s all mostly bullshit.
Loughner, the asshole who shot Giffords, had made a shit ton of posts on some forum that I had managed to find. I remember sitting on my girlfriend’s couch reading them while my girlfriend flipped through the news channels and eventually we settled on MSNBC.
While I was reading Loughner’s rants about how language is a form of brainwashing and other stuff that I literally couldn’t make sense of, I heard Olbermann and the head of the SPLC twist this into being the fault of the far right and Sarah Palin of all people. She had put out a map targeting districts that she thought the Republicans could flip (which obviously meant that she was calling for violence against the Democrats elected in those districts).
There was literally nothing in Loughner’s writings that reflected a political ideology a sane person would recognize but to hear Olbermann tell it, Gifford’s was the first casualty in a Republican planned wave of violence.
I’m sure you can still find copies of Loughner’s posts, though I’ve been unable to find a copy of Olbermann’s show from that evening. Seeing the contradictions between reality and what was being put forth by the media was a real wake up call for me.
You fast forward to the Trump Presidency and you quickly realize that the hysteria put forth by Olbermann and his ilk has done real damage to the national discourse. While Olbermann is thankfully relegated to the backwaters of the Internet, that hysteria has been picked up by a lot of people. Look at CNN, a news network I used to consider slightly left leaning but still middle of the road, and you realize they’re just peddling in lies (The Joe Rogan Horsedewormer thing for example).