Agent Refutes “Blind Gossip Items” About MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann

Jean Sage, the agent for MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, is fed up with the unsourced rumors about her client. The New York Post was apparently preparing to publish a story about the train conversation she describes below. The story became an item in Page Six yesterday, which many people assumed was referring to Olbermann. This is the text of Sage’s e-mail to TVNewser this morning:

“I can no longer ignore the recent blog postings and blind gossip items that claim or imply that my client, Keith Olbermann, is having any ‘woes and complaints’ or is doing less than a spectacular and thoroughly professional job anchoring MSNBC’s ‘Countdown.’ Rick Kaplan and Phil Griffin have been immensely supportive of Keith and “Countdown” and they were thrilled with his Pope coverage.

The gist of these totally unfounded postings and rumors is that a conversation was overheard on a train from Washington DC to New York, involving either myself or an ‘associate close to me.’ I live and work in Northern California and haven’t been in New York since October of last year, nor in Washington for much longer than that, nor on such a train in at least five years. Just as importantly, there are no ‘associates close to me’ and no one besides myself who ever, in any way, deals with Keith as a broadcasting agent, or anything close to it.

Perhaps I am not objective when it comes to my client but Keith Olbermann has never been more fulfilled by a job in the 22 years that I have represented him, than he has been in these last two years of ‘Countdown.’ He rarely takes sick days (and, when he does, he voluntarily counts them against his vacation time). In fact, his superior coverage of the late Pope’s illness, passing, and funeral, occurred after he voluntarily gave up a vacation long-scheduled to begin April 1st.

To the anonymous source who seems hell-bent on destroying my client’s reputation from dark corners, shame on you. If you are an on-air person, I understand how difficult it must be to see someone so immensely talented in all facets of television and radio, succeeding so well that you can only feel better by trying to discredit him.“