Griffin’s announcement means that Olbermann’s suspension – originally announced as being indefinite – will mean he missed two nights of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” MSNBC’s flagship primetime program.

But Griffin’s decision Friday set off a controversy over whether MSNBC was doing the right thing by punishing a liberal commentator for giving to Democratic candidates – donations first reported by POLITICO.

Mike Allen reported in Playbook Sunday that Olbermann was punished because he refused to deliver an on-camera apology for his donations, which broke NBC rules because he didn’t tell his bosses about them first. Allen also reported that Olbermann told his bosses that he wasn’t aware of the policy, though he was reluctant to say that publicly.

Olbermann broke his post-suspension silence on Sunday, writing on Twitter ahead of Griffin’s announcement:

“Greetings From Exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug & obviously left me tweetless XO.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow delivered the most detailed explanation of MSNBC’s thinking behind Olbermann’s suspension on her show Friday, saying that she was aware of the rule and understood why he had to be suspended for breaking it. Maddow argued that that MSNBC’s punishment of Olbermann served to highlight what made the cable network different from Fox News, where there is no rule against its on-air personalities donating to candidates.

“Let this incident lay to rest forever the facile, never-true-anyway, bullpucky, lazy conflation of Fox News and what the rest of us do for a living,” she said, arguing that Fox personalities endorse and fundraise for candidates in a way that MSNBC personalities don’t.

“Yes, Keith’s a liberal, and so am I, and there are other people on this network whose political views are shared openly with you, our beloved viewers,” she said. “But we are not a political operation. Fox is. We are a news operation. And the rules around here are part of how you know that.”

Fox News, however, says the network does not espouse a particular point of view, arguing that its conservative primetime hosts like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly offer views in much the way the opinion pages of a newspaper do, while the network’s news coverage is objective.

Olbermann’s suspension also touched off a debate about whether the rule that Olbermann broke was appropriate for opinionated hosts in his position.

“MSNBC is enforcing a set of standards meant to apply either to another entity — NBC News — or another era, when news people had to act as if they didn’t have political rooting interests,” wrote The New York Times’David Carr on Sunday night. “The game has changed, but the rules remain the same, at least at some media outlets.”

Meanwhile, Olbermann’s fans spent Friday deluging MSNBC with phone calls and emails, Maddow said during her show. By Sunday, more than 200,000 had signed a petition to reinstate him organized by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.