PEACE TALKS

Olbermann and O'Reilly Make Up

Network heads decided things got out of hand.

But where will we turn for our innuendo, invective, and vitriol now? After years of heated, often personal, attacks between the two news hosts, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC are burying the hatchet. Or at least they're being forced to after their network heads issued orders from on high to end the feud. The idea for a peace treaty came out of a CEO summit meeting attended by both Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, and Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of GE, which owns MSNBC. The two discussed the battle and, according to The New York Times, "expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs." The many chapters and verses of O'Reilly vs. Olbermann are too numerous to summarize, but one of the most over the top aspects of the feud involved a sexual harassment suit filed against O'Reilly in 2004. Olbermann frequently referenced the lurid details of the suit on his show and at one point offered to pay the plaintiff to release purported tapes of conversations with O'Reilly.