Media: Boycotting Glenn Beck

Free speech can sometimes have a financial cost, said Brian Stelter in The New York Times. When Glenn Beck, the controversial Fox News superstar, recently accused President Obama of being a “racist” who harbored a “deep-seated hatred of white people,” it sparked a grass-roots pressure campaign aimed at Beck’s advertisers that has proved “unusually successful.” In response to an online petition with some 145,000 signatures, at least 20 companies, including such giants as Procter & Gamble, Geico, and Wal-Mart, have pulled their advertising from Beck’s show. So far, said Yael Abouhalkah in The Kansas City Star, Beck’s “nutty comment” hasn’t hurt Fox’s bottom line, as the commercials have been shifted to other programs. But “at a time when TV commentators seem to be able to get away with saying anything they want, it’s notable that some companies have decided to draw a line.”

Maybe there is “justice” after all, said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. I have no idea if Beck actually believes the garbage he spews or is merely doing what he thinks will get him the highest ratings. Either way, his race baiting has reached a new low for a supposedly mainstream media figure. In his widely syndicated radio show, Beck has actually been arguing that the real agenda behind Obama’s health-care reform is “stealth reparations”—a form of racial payback to blacks as compensation for their ancestors’ enslavement. Perhaps if Beck and Fox pay a price for such nonsense, there will be less of it. While that remains to be seen, “it is encouraging to see confirmation of my parents’ warning: If you keep throwing mud, some of it is going to splash back on you.”

Nobody is forced to watch Beck, said Michelle Oddis in Human Events Online. If you are offended, change the channel, and if you are an advertiser who doesn’t want to be associated with him, pull your ads. But isn’t it curious that liberals, who are supposedly sensitive to violations of free speech, are cheering on what appears to be a White House–backed “orchestrated campaign” of intimidation to silence a critic? It just so happens that the Beck boycott is being organized by the activist group ColorOfChange.org, one of whose founders, Van Jones, is a special advisor to Obama on environmental issues. If a Bush aide had ever been involved in a boycott of, say, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, the cries of “censorship” would have been deafening.

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