Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said in an interview with Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air that he hopes he will be able to talk more freely on his new show at Current TV.
The liberal host of MSNBC's Countdown gave his last broadcast for the cable news network he called home for eight years in January. The following month, Olbermann accepted a job as Chief News Officer of Current Media, the parent company of Current TV, where he will start his hour long new show, also called Countdown, on June 20.
"This is not specific to NBC or MSNBC, but I just saw an environment growing in which there were more and more conflicts of interest within these large national corporations -- or even multinational corporations -- where no matter what you said, you had the potential to affect some other part of the big company's business," Olbermann explained.
"The more that that's true, the less they want you to say. And even if there is no explicit attempt to censor or to proscribe or otherwise to interfere, there becomes an issue of the larger the corporation, the more fear in the part of the people involved in its production."
"My hope was to go and get an environment where there wouldn't be any of that and I think I've found it," he added.
Olbermann believes that he should not have been suspended from MSNBC for making political contributions to three Democratic candidates because he was an opinion journalist. He said it was not a conflict of interested for a nearly universally liberal opinion journalist like himself to donate to liberal candidates.
The Current TV cable channel went on the air in August 2005 and is led by former Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt.
During the interview, Olbermann also explained why he does not vote and how the Bush administration responded to his show at MSNBC.
Listen to the Fresh Air interview, courtesy of NPR, below:
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