“Impact Segment tonight, hate speech in the General Electric corporation, as you may know GE owns NBC which last week unleashed the most hateful attacks on the Tea Party demonstrators the TV news business has ever seen” (FOX News)

“Or what right-wing extremists sewed, “Doctor tiller has blood on his hands” and when hate speech turns into murder, when phrases like, “Doctor Tiller the baby killer” become network slogans, when there is a straight line between what was said on that network and what happened in that Kansas church.” (MSNBC)

The on air battle of words between MSNBC’S Keith Olbermann and FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly has been in the public eye for the last few years. New York Times columnist Brian Stetler reported Saturday that the constant bickering brought the CEOs of both MSNBC and FOX together in June to talk peace.

“Over time, G.E. and the News Corporation concluded that the fighting “wasn’t good for either parent,” said an NBC employee with direct knowledge of the situation.”

The companies formed a truce, but the deal has not yet trickled down to the fighters, and even though Stetler had quoted Olbermann in his article that he was “party to no deal,” this did not stop the host from going on the attack.

“I had even written to him that this was merely a misinterpretation of an announcement I made here on June 1, that because Bill O’Reilly of Fox News had abetted the assassination of Doctor George Tiller he had become to serious to joke about and I would thus stop doing so an announcement that would obtain unless until of course I felt like changing the rule again later since this is not the US Constitution here but a half-baked television newscast and I make all the rules, so tonight’s runner-up Bill-O the clown.”

Bob Franken in his blog on Politics Daily offered another view on this feud and why it represents a new low for serious journalism and focusing on the credibility of the press in the United States.

“When we use our precious and shrinking time and space in trivial pursuits, it allows leaders in government and the corporate and financial worlds to work out their deals with few paying serious attention.”

So what do you think, is this back and forth banter harmless entertaining television or is the constant feuding damaging the public’s trust in the press?