Vivian Schiller is the Chief Digital Officer for NBC News and MSNBC. She was hired for the position last year so this is her first Olympics in that role with the company.
Her Twitter page is very clear in the bio that “Links and retweets aren’t endorsements. Opinions are my own.” That’s fine, that’s normal and you’re allowed to make that disclaimer.
Since NBC has been under a tremendous amount of pressure concerning their less that quality coverage of the 2012 Olympics in London, you had to think it was only a matter of time before NBC employees started to put their feet in their mouths in a public forum.
Enter Vivian Schiller.
Even when you say in your bio that “retweets aren’t endorsement”, when you do retweet something and add “+1″ to it, that becomes an endorsement.
I mention that because of the following tweet:
+1 @jonathanwald the medal for most Olympic whining goes to everyone complaining about what happens every 4 yrs, tape delay @brianstelter
— Vivian Schiller (@VivianSchiller) July 29, 2012
Just in case she decides to delete the tweet and it somehow messes up Twitter’s embedding script, here’s an always dependable screenshot:
So there you go, that’s what the Chief Digital Officer of NBC News and MSNBC thinks of all us who are angered by NBC’s awful coverage of the Olympics. That’s what she thinks of all of us using the #NBCFail hash tag. She’s perfectly within her right to think it, perfectly within her rights to tweet about it…of course, we’re perfectly within our rights to call her out on it.
Anyone else get the feeling that NBC doesn’t give a damn what people think of their coverage as long as they get their ratings (and they are) and the sponsors paying for the massive multi-billion dollar price tag the network gave to the IOC for broadcast right are happy?
That was the only NBC executive who had a “foot in mouth” moment. If you were having troubles with the online streaming yesterday, Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital, suggets it’s “your fault”.
