Rival sniping commentators, Keith Olbermann (Countdown on MSNBC) and Bill O’Reilly (The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel), are at it again, flinging insults across the airwaves. The long-running name-calling saga, silenced last Spring by parent companies MSNBC’s General Electric and the FOX’s News Corporation with a handshake agreement for a cease fire, sparked again last Monday night and erupted into a raging fire.

A pretty mad Olbermann, insulted his rival, Bill O’Reilly and the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, by calling O’Reilly a “racist clown” in reference to an O’Reilly statement made two years ago about a black-owned restaurant and brought up again by O’Reilly himself, (but this time much tempered and changed), following the arrest of Harvard’s Professor Gates. Olbermann, fired the first shot, and called O’Reilly on the re-worded statements and repeated, on air, his inappropriately racists remarks of two years ago. Not surprisingly, O’Reilly shot back, claiming that G.E., through MSNBC, was “promoting the election of Barack Obama, and then seeking to profit from his policies,” — which brought the “parents” back out scrambling to salvage the old cease-fire and mend fences.

Their reasons for concern are self-serving. Apparently Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Immelt are concerned about any perceived damage to their corporate reputations, when in fact it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the freedom of the press.

So the old question begs as to who sets the boundaries in reporting – “parents” who pay the bills, or journalists? Whose interests do the journalists serve first, their parent’s or that of the public at large?

I commend Olbermann for throwing caution to the wind by going against his “parent,” in using his own judgment as to what should, or should not, be said on his program — and when and how. It gives me renewed hope that “parental” pacts cannot, and should not, infringe on journalism and that unbridled journalism will prevail.

I say let commentators keep commentating. No more corporate agendas, please. No more corporate handshakes. Let the judgment of a journalist dictate as to where the boundaries lie, as long as it stays within accepted broadcast legal parameters.

It seems it was all done backwards…. First came the innovation, then the run-away successes and then – oh dear, how do we get paid?  Take the freebie online publication dilemma. Who thought that one up?  Now comes all the chest beating, albeit a bit late, in light of the need to make money – or as we used to say, manage a sustainable business.

Look, hindsight doesn’t work.  You don’t get to charge once ‘you’ve given away the store.’

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp. is mumbling about the need to end a “malfunctioning” business, per Eric Pfanner’s article in the International Herald Tribune of May 18.  According to the article, other publishers including The Guardian Media Group in Britain and the New York Times Company said they were examining ways to get readers to pay for digital news.

Even the ever-growing and popular two-year old Twitter is getting concerned about getting paid.  It wants to steer clear of advertising, per company cofounder Biz Stone in an article on CIO.com, on May 19, 2009, but needs to consider options.  Apparently, the company is developing tools and services that it may offer on top of Twitter’s free microblogging service.  According to a videotaped interview at a recent Reuters event, Stone offered, “I think by the end of the year we’ll have something out there.  It doesn’t have to be this super home run in terms of making billions of dollars. … But it has to show a little bit of signs of life, telling folks, ‘Yes Twitter can be a sustainable business.”

Let’s hope…

Lawmakers in France have come up with a whopper (pardon Burger King) of a plan to fight against unauthorized sharing of digital music and movies, in the hopes of having consumers pay for such services.  The approved law simply threatens such pirates with the loss of Internet access.  Good luck…

There seems to be an answer amidst all this brouhaha, and the example can be taken from the music industry.  It’s about packaging, that is, not charging for what the customer expects to get free, but offer add-on services as a package — and then charge.  Example: unlimited music, packaged with broadband subscriptions or other purchases.

But just think — it would not be a bad business model if digital news were to be packaged in a similar way, with legitimate offerings consumers actually want.  Basically, sell something other than basic services, which can then remain free.  Clearly there some other attempts at getting paid for receiving the news electronically, such as subscriptions to Amazon’s Kindle DX tablet and the soon-to-come Reader from the New York Times.

One expects business paradigms to change, but in the end, business has, and always will be, about getting paid for services or products.

I think that the original allure of the Internet, with its infinite possibilities, had us all jumping into the water but, apparently, not with feet first…