Sure, NBC can do whatever it wants. But the airwaves are public property, and still they're completely dominated by corporations that basically churn out their own agendas with minimal regulation. Same as the Wall Street bailout -- the banking system felt entitled to millions of taxpayer dollars (and for good reason, as there would have been another great depression if not for the bailout) but howled at the suggestion of any kind of new regulation, even if it would have been in their own long-term best interest. It's the usual thing -- all big companies believe in socialism for themselves, libertarianism for everyone else (or for themselves, when it's convenient). The same thing happened with health care, or with the various attempts to introduce public high-speed internet, as if profit was a god-given fucking right. And really, I wouldn't mind giving true libertarianism a try -- go ahead and let corporations do whatever they want, but pull the plug on all the subsidies and legal favoritism they get -- except that isn't possible, at least not in the US. This wouldn't bother me so much if, say, the broadcast media was more like internet, and you could tune in Democracy Now or Al-Jazeera alongside CNN, Fox, or the BBC.
Anyway, this is my problem with the argument that we have the right to free speech, but not the right to employment. Everyone needs a job, so this pretty much means that the only people with the right to free speech in actual practice are the independently wealthy and a few tenured professors. I don't give a shit about Olbermann personally, he'll be fine, but this pretty clearly sends a message about the acceptable range of discourse, whether it was intended to or not (from what I've read it had as much to do with office politics as any other kind of politics).
For the record, I don't think people should be fired or blacklisted for saying stupid racist things either.
