Media Matters For America Call Out Fox News Host Glenn Beck On His Irresponsible Advocacy Of Hateful 9/12 Protests

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, September 11, 2009

CONTACT Jess Levin (202) 772-8162 jlevin@mediamatters.org

 

Washington, D.C. – Today, on the eighth anniversary of 9-11, one day before Glenn Beck’s “9-12 Project” descends on Washington, Media Matters for America calls attention to what has become a familiar, disturbing pattern on the purportedly “fair and balanced” news network.

Fox News now routinely engages in political advocacy against the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress, and Beck’s promotion of a September 12 march on Washington is the latest example. Network executives have made little effort to hide Fox News’ agenda, with one referring to the network as the “voice of opposition.”

“There is little difference between being the ‘voice of opposition’ and just being the opposition,” said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters. “Since the president’s election, Fox News has become nothing more than the 24/7 media wing of the Republican Party. No political party in American history has had such an enormous megaphone.”

BACKGROUND:

Since President Obama’s inauguration, Fox News network executives have made their intentions clear. In clips aired on the March 23 broadcast of NPR’s Media Circus, vice president for programming Bill Shine referred to the network as the “voice of opposition.” And chief executive officer Roger Ailes reportedly said of the new administration: “I see this as the Alamo,” adding, “If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.”

On air, the network’s agenda is even clearer. Fox News personalities and hosts have promoted and encouraged viewers to “join” tea party protests and town hall meetings. They have implored viewers to call Congress and the White House to protest Democratic policies. And they have declared “Victory!” when Democratic legislation has been stalled.

Most recently, Beck and Fox News have repeatedly promoted Beck’s “9-12 Project,” which, in addition to encouraging local events, is organizing a September 12 march on Washington, which Fox News will broadcast live.

 

• Beck’s 9-12 Project “a place” for people looking to take back their country. Beck started the 9-12 Project, which describes itself as “a place for you and other like-minded Americans looking for direction in taking back the control of our country.” Beck’s FoxNews.com website, under a section titled, “TAKE ACTION: GET INVOLVED!” states of the 9-12 Project: “Check out Beck’s new Web site for updates on the stories and people who prove that your values and principles are still very much alive.”

• 9-12 Project organizes events across country. The conservative project frequently organizes events around the country. For instance, members of the 9-12 Project have helped organize tea parties, and Beck’s 9-12 website is working with others for a “March on Washington,” among other local events, on September 12. Beck will participate in a 9-12 “March on Washington” by broadcasting live from 1 to 3 p.m. ET on Fox News.

• Beck: “9-12 Projects and rallies happening all over.” In recent months, Beck has frequently touted the effectiveness of his 9-12 Project in organizing followers. On August 12, for instance, Beck described the 9-12 Project as giving “ourselves an outlet of voice to connect, because you needed to community organize. … Well, you have already done it. There are 9-12 Projects and rallies happening all over. The biggest one seems to be in Washington, D.C., on September 12.”

• Beck: “We started that. Millions all involved across the country and the 9-12 project and other organizations like it.” On August 27, Beck said of the 9-12 Project:

BECK: Now, the second part of this. A few months ago, I told you, you got to know you’re not alone. You’ve got to know. You got to unite. Talk to people. Make sure you know you’re not alone, through the 9-12 Project. We started that. Millions all involved across the country and the 9-12 Project and other organizations like it. I knew we needed to connect with one another.

• Beck: “On 9-12, I hope to see you in Washington. I will make sure you’re seen all over the country.” On August 28, Beck described the 9-12 march on Washington as something “worth standing up for” and told viewers, “I hope to see you in Washington. I will make sure you’re seen all over the country.”

• Beck: Will we find people “to stand for our country?” Discussing his participation in the 9-12 march, Beck asked viewers: “Will we find another 50 men or women willing to stand for our country and the republic? On the Fox News Channel, you can find out all of the details at the 912Project.com.”

• 9-12 march website: Beck “really helping our numbers grow!” A post on the 9-12 march website 912dc.org states, “The recent coverage by Glenn Beck is really helping our numbers grow!” The website frequently mentions Beck’s promotion of the march and excerpted a September 8 USA Today articlewhich reported that the march has been “[e]ncouraged by conservative commentators such as Fox’s Glenn Beck.”

For more examples of the network’s political advocacy, please see Media Matters‘ comprehensive report:

“Voice of the opposition”: Fox News openly advocates against Democratic Congress, White House

Open Letter From Media Matters For America To CNN About Disgraceful Lou Dobbs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, August 28, 2009

CONTACT Jessica Levin (202) 772-8162 jlevin@mediamatters.org

 

Washington, D.C. — Today, Media Matters for America President Eric Burns issued an open letter to CNN President Jonathan Klein regarding prime-time anchor Lou Dobbs’ scheduled appearance on September 15 and 16 at the “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” legislative advocacy event and rally sponsored by the anti-immigration organization Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR, an organization that has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and that has been sharply criticized for its racially-tinged ads, was founded by John Tanton, who has a long history of making racist statements and espousing racist beliefs.

A FAIR press release announced that Dobbs will broadcast his show from the rally and will be joined by 47 conservative talk radio hosts.

Burns writes, in part:

“Mr. Dobbs represents an ongoing threat to CNN’s credibility as a serious news organization, in no small part because of his polemical coverage of immigration issues and his continued use of his CNN show to lend prominence to groups such as FAIR. The attention and legitimacy he gave to the “birther” movement — and CNN’s condoning of his actions — did real damage to that credibility. His participation in the upcoming FAIR rally would do further, serious damage. We urge you to finally acknowledge that Mr. Dobbs’ actions in this and other contexts are inconsistent with the reputation that CNN strives to maintain.”

The complete text of the letter reads:

August 28, 2009

Dear Mr. Klein:

On September 15 and 16, Lou Dobbs is scheduled to broadcast from Capitol Hill as a leading voice of the annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” two-day legislative advocacy conference and rally sponsored by the Federation for  American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Including Mr. Dobbs, the event will feature 47 conservative talk radio hosts from around the country. We write to urge you to prohibit Mr. Dobbs from participating in this event.

FAIR is a rabidly anti-immigrant organization founded by an unrepentant racist, who remains on its board. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FAIR a “hate group.” Mr. Dobbs’ participation — and, inextricably, CNN’s — would bestow legitimacy on the rally and on FAIR, as the group itself recognizes and touts. In announcing its 2008 “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” conference (from which Mr. Dobbs was allowed to broadcast his CNN television show), the FAIR Congressional Task Force boasted in a press release that Mr. Dobbs’ “prominence will add to the visibility and stature of an event that has already had an enormous impact on the national debate about immigration policy.” FAIR’s website approvingly stated that in 2007, “talk radio and cable news programs such as Dobbs’ ” helped turn the public against immigration reform efforts, which it labels as “amnesty.” The press release announcing this year’s rally notes that it will be “led by Roger Hedgecock … and Lou Dobbs.” In addition, the group has given Mr. Dobbs its “People’s Voice Award” for “his continued efforts in leading the immigration reform movement through both his talk radio show and his television show.”

CNN’s association with FAIR through Mr. Dobbs is nothing less than a stain on an organization that calls itself “The Most Trusted Name in News.” FAIR was founded by John Tanton, who still sits on the organization’s board of directors. Tanton has a long history of making racist statements, espousing racist beliefs, and funding racist organizations. In 1986, Tanton reportedly wrote: “As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night?” In 1993, he reportedly wrote: “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” In 1997, Tanton was quoted by the Detroit Free Press as saying that without a reduction in immigration levels, the United States will be overwhelmed by people “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” In 2001, Tanton reportedly praised the work of John Trevor, a notorious Nazi sympathizer, saying his work should form “a guidepost to what we must follow again this time.” Tanton is not a relic of FAIR’s past: In the organization’s 2004 annual report, chairman of the board of directors Nancy Anthony wrote that Tanton’s “visionary qualities have not waned one bit. He stills floods us with more ideas than we can possibly absorb.”

In March, Dobbs’ CNN show reported that FAIR “supports a temporary moratorium on immigration.” FAIR executive director Dan Stein has been quoted saying the following: “Many [immigrants] hate America, hate everything the United States stands for. Talk to some of these Central Americans.”

FAIR has been sharply criticized in the media for racially tinged ads. A 2000 campaign ad the group ran against former Sen. Spencer Abraham, a Lebanese-American, attacked his support for making more visas available for foreign workers and accused him of “trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their way of terror to any city street in America.” In 2004, a group of FAIR-backed ads targeting former Texas Democrat Martin Frost and former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel featured dark-skinned men loitering on street corners and running from the police. The Dallas Morning News denounced the ads in an April 2004 editorial, calling them “as racially tinged as those Willie Horton ads the late Mr. [Lee] Atwater put together for the first President Bush during his 1988 White House bid.” In an April 24, 2004, editorial, the Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star called the ads “trash” that “incite hate,” “play upon stereotypical racial fears,” and “are full of half-truths and lies.’”

And yet, rather than denouncing the group, Mr. Dobbs’ CNN show has cited FAIR as a credible source on immigration issues no fewer than six times in the last year while also routinely failing to disclose his close association with the group.

There should be no doubt concerning the content of the upcoming rally. It will give a platform to precisely the type of radio host you, Mr. Klein, reportedly said would no longer be invited on CNN. Speakers last year included Les Kinsolving, a WorldNetDaily.com columnist who asked Robert Gibbs at a White House press briefing why the president won’t release his “long-form birth certificate.” Another speaker from last year, South Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman, has reportedly said of undocumented immigrants: “If you commit a crime while you’re here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it.” Also on the roster last year was Steve Gill, a Nashville radio host who has said of President Obama: “This man, and his evil minions, really do hate this country.” Jeff Katz, while a radio host in Sacramento, reportedly “said motorists should be awarded a sombrero-shaped bumper sticker for every illegal immigrant hit while attempting to cross the border from Mexico,” adding, in the words of the Sacramento Bee, that “[f]or every 10 bumper stickers … a motorist would earn a free drink or meal at Taco Bell.”

As Media Matters has highlighted repeatedly, Mr. Dobbs represents an ongoing threat to CNN’s credibility as a serious news organization, in no small part because of his polemical coverage of immigration issues and his continued use of his CNN show to lend prominence to groups such as FAIR. The attention and legitimacy he gave to the “birther” movement — and CNN’s condoning of his actions — did real damage to that credibility. His participation in the upcoming FAIR rally would do further, serious damage. We urge you to finally acknowledge that Mr. Dobbs’ actions in this and other contexts are inconsistent with the reputation that CNN strives to maintain.

We await your response.

Sincerely,

Eric Burns

President

Media Matters for America

Tim Wise Asks When Are Republican Leaders Going To Stand Up To Extremists

Author and speaker Tim Wise, billed by CNN’s Don Lemon as an anti-racism activist, calls out mainstream Republicans for not standing up to the lunatics (like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh) who have hijacked the party and taken it to the heights of bigotry, intolerance and (in some cases or to some extent at least) racism. These protests that have come up since President Obama stepped into the White House have been intriguing to me and to a lot of other people who wonder where these “patriots” were when George W. Bush was in office and freedoms were taking a hit, wars were being started, deficits were mounting and lives were being lost. Wise, truly a dynamic and well-researched speaker, had an interesting conversation with Lemon about the topic of race as related to several current issues in this country.

Here is what Crooks and Liars had as a transcript from the show:

LEMON: OK. So we are going to continue our discussion now over the health care rallies and the tone of what’s going on in the country. Tim Wise joins us. He’s frequent here on the show. The author of “Between Barack and a Hard Place” and among the most prominent anti- racist activist in the country. Thank you, sir. Always good to see you.

TIM WISE, AUTHOR “BETWEEN Barack AND A HARD PLACE”: You, too.

LEMON: You heard the chairman from Florida say no, it is not race.

WISE: I did.

LEMON: It does a disservice. You heard David Sirota say it is the elephant in the room.

WISE: Right. Well like I said in the show before, it is the background noise of a lot of the opposition, not all of it but a lot of it. You know, when you have someone like Glenn Beck saying as he did about a month ago that the health care debate isn’t really about that. It is just reparations for black people, where you have Rush Limbaugh yesterday on the air saying first that community service is the first step towards fascism, which is bizarre even for him.

And then almost immediately after that saying one of the problems with America is too much multiculturalism. You wouldn’t say that unless you are trying to stoke white racial resentment. And so when you say those things, I want to know when are Republican leaders going to condemn that kind of rhetoric because that is where race is being interjected. It is interjected by us, it’s interested by the leading talk show hosts in this country.

LEMON: I mean, but is it knowingly or is it maybe unwittingly they’re doing it and maybe they don’t realize they are doing it.

WISE: Well, two things, it may be either or but it doesn’t matter. I mean, racism needs to be evaluated based on outcome. If you do something which has a predictable consequence, you have to be accountable for that consequence. So for example, when Glenn Beck lied and said that Van Jones was involved in the Los Angeles riots which was not true. That is a very clear, as David said, dog whistle politic moment.

You’re saying that because you know that the L.A. riots are viewed as this racialized rebellion and it scares white folks to death. So you say that about this man. It isn’t true. Glenn Beck had to know that wasn’t true. That is a way to scare white folks. Where race comes in, it is old fashion but it’s white racial resentment that they are trying to whip up.

LEMON: But you know, it is very – it is smart if you want to get your message out. So listen, as we’ve been saying, it’s the elephant in the room. Let’s talk about this Congressman Wilson thing.

WISE: Yes.

LEMON: One person wrote me on Twitter and said I think (INAUDIBLE) if it is not racism then I don’t know what it is, self-indulgence, selfishness, egotism or all the traits pure lack of thought. And then one person says I’m with Ron Reagan and Bill Maher. If Obama’s skin color was closer to his mom’s, talking about Joe Wilson, he would not have shouted out. And I have to tell you -

WISE: I believe that.

LEMON: I have to tell you, for the first time – last night I was watching “Real Time” with Bill Maher and I was like finally someone is talking about this. Finally is talking about this.

WISE: Right.

LEMON: Do you think that Joe Wilson would have done that to a president who was of another color?

WISE: No, I don’t.

LEMON: He may have done the same thing if it was a woman president.

WISE: I don’t know but I know here is a guy who is an avowed neo confederate who says Strom Thurman and (INAUDIBLE) segregation was his hero. There is some racial stuff going on, I hate to say it, with this congress person and it makes me wonder with that kind of background. It makes me wonder.

LEMON: But isn’t it – what is behind – I think that the thing that we are not getting to is what allows him to be – to feel that is OK to say it.

WISE: Right.

LEMON: Isn’t that what it is?

WISE: I think it is what David was talking about.There is a large segment of the American population, particularly a sizable amount of white folks, frankly, and in the Republican Party who do not view him as legitimate, the Berger phenomenon. Let’s be honest. If this man’s name was Oshanasi or O’Malley and I made a birth certificate that said he was born in County Court Ireland in 1961, nobody would care or believe it. But if you say he is from Africa, he has an African daddy. He is from Kenya. People will believe that.

They want to point him as a foreign outsider out to destroy America. And that kind of over the top rhetoric isn’t just about political disagreement, it is about an attack on his identity and his American- ness. Because some people simply can’t accept that we are not the only folks in this country, we are not the standard anymore for what an American is. It is a multiculture nation.

LEMON: I hear African-Americans all the time are used to when talking about President Bush and they would say not my president. That is not right, either.

WISE: Oh, it is not right. It’s not right. You know, I was at rallies where occasionally people had signs that would compare President Bush to Hitler. But you know, what, it wasn’t the leading spokespeople on the left doing that. It wasn’t our talk show hosts, it wasn’t our authors and our columnists and our commentators, it was folks on the streets. It is not right. But it is not equivalent. That is coming from the very top of the conservative mouthpiece community.

LEMON: Hey, listen, I got to go. Do you think this is good for us so because now we can examine and talk about it? It is out there.

WISE: Oh, I think so. It is bringing some things out of the woodwork. If we address it honestly, we can move forward but if we continue to stay in denial I don’t think we will.

LEMON: Denial, it is not just a river, right? Thank you. Tim Wise, it’s always good to have you on. Appreciate it.

Wise has helped shed light on these tea-bagger protests. Looking at some of the vile and disgusting racism we’ve seen from the images of these events you see anger from the far right (beyond the normal political partisanship). As Wise points out, there were nuts saying negative things about President Bush, but such sentiments were not coming from people in such prominent right-wing positions (like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity and others) of influence or organizations of influence (like Fox News). These are people with tremendous platforms and loud megaphones. These idiotic statements are, in essence, endorsed by high-profile conservatives and, in some cases, high-profile Republican politicians (who have, as an example, helped keep the birther issue alive by not denouncing it).

As a side note: Republicans who have stood up to Limbaugh have usually come back on their knees to beg for Rush’s forgiveness.

Perhaps normal Republicans are paralyzed by fear.