Why Beck Is Out At Fox: Poor Ratings And Paranoid Rants

By George Zornick

After weeks of rumors about poor ratings and increasing concern at Fox News headquarters over Beck’s apocalyptic ranting, it’s finally official — Glenn Beck is ending his daily show on Fox. An announcement posted on his website today, but then taken down without explanation, said:

Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck’s production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.[...]

Glenn Beck said: “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.”



The statement did not indicate an end date for the show.

Beck entered the year without one-third of his earlier audience. Only months into his show, advertisers began deserting his program, and pressure by liberal groupsresulted in a loss of nearly 300 advertisers during the course of his show.

Last month, Fox News officials told the New York Times anonymously that they were “contemplating life without Mr. Beck.” The Times also reported that “[m]any on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness — he suggested that the president has ‘a deep-seated hatred for white people’— have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network.”

That seems like a reasonable concern. Just yesterday, here’s what Beck used his show to assert:

– Union leaders are communists, socialists, or revolutionaries who want destruction of “western way of life” [04/05/11]

– Maybe Obama decided to try suspects at Guantanamo to inflame the Islamic world [04/05/11]

– Obama is “merely a player” in a globalist, Islamist show [04/05/11]

– Showing images of Obama, SEIU, and others, Beck says he “would put a lot of these people in jail.” [04/05/11]

– Beck somehow linked 9/11 to Wisconsin election, budget cuts[04/05/11]

– Smeared students protesting in Wisconsin as Lenin’s “useful idiots”[04/05/11]

Beck’s rants earlier this year, in which he tried to connect uprisings in the Middle East to a rising Islamic takeover, abetted by liberal groups in the United States, evenprovoked the ire of fellow conservatives and Fox personalities like Bill Kristol, who characterized Beck’s rants as “fearfulness unworthy of Americans.”

Yesterday on his radio show, Beck foreshadowed this announcement by telling his listeners that if he left Fox News, “don’t you ever believe” that the liberal watchdog Media Matters “caused a victory.” Perhaps that’s true — only Glenn himself is to blame for creating a show so radically divorced from reality that even Fox News couldn’t handle it.

Glenn Beck's policies would be a disaster for Wilmington

by Jeremy Holden

Glenn Beck is coming to Wilmington. "This town hasn't taken any money from the government," he said, promoting the event. "They don't want any money from the government. And they are pulling together."

To be clear, the story of a community coming together during economic hardship is compelling, and it can illustrate the need for charity. But Beck's tale is nothing more than an effort to further attack programs that help those in need.

In fact, Glenn Beck's policy prescriptions would have disastrous consequences for the residents of Wilmington.

In 2008, DHL announced that it would eliminate 7,000 jobs in Wilmington. Mayor David Raizk has said the DHL closure was a "catastrophic event for the entire region."

In the past two years, Wilmington's use of food stamps, welfare, unemployment insurance, and the National School Lunch Program has increased significantly. According to state officials, food stamp enrollment in Clinton County is up 91 percent, while the number of people receiving cash benefits has increased 116 percent. Medicaid rolls have increased 37.5 percent during that time.

Mark Rembert is co-director of ENERGIZE Clinton County, an organization trying to tap into public and private resources to redevelop the region. He applauded the work of local service organizations, but said that "government money has played an essential role in meeting many basic needs in our community," adding that "it is difficult to envision what state our community would be in were it not for the unemployment insurance paid to laid off employees, food assistance programs, job and family service programs, and financial assistance to our local school system."

But to Beck, these types of "government handouts" make people "slaves."

Just months before the announced job losses, Beck discussed the enrollment process and public awareness campaigns for food stamps and Medicaid. He asked, "Is there no shame in this country anymore?" Food stamps, Beck said in April 2008, are "just the tip of the now taxpayer-funded iceberg lettuce."

In September, Beck proposed a solution to the problem of have-nots: "teach a man to make pie" (because pie is better than fish), and let charity fill in the gaps. Complaining about the number of Americans on government assistance, Beck said, "The vast majority of us -- get off your ass and bake some pie."

But after suffering thousands of lost jobs, Wilmington doesn't need a lesson in how to bake. It needs jobs and investment. And for that it has turned, in part, to the federal government.

Wilmington has received more than $10 million in stimulus funds, according to city officials. And that's a drop in the bucket considering that the city has requested more than $63 million in funding under the stimulus bill, which officials estimated would have directly created 1,211 jobs. Raizk explained to PolitiFact.com: "I've beat on more doors than I can count. Not because we are looking for a handout -- but we are looking for a hand up."

A Wilmington City Schools official says that stimulus funds were used to offset additional teacher layoffs and to purchase classroom resources.

In fact, when it comes to stimulus funding, the problem is not that "government money" has enslaved Wilmington. If anything, the people of Wilmington need more of it.

ENERGIZE Clinton County's Rembert explains: "While we have received some funds -- for which we are very grateful -- they are negligible given the size and gravity of our local economic crisis."

Which brings us back to Beck. At the height of the debate about the stimulus -- a stimulus that many economists said needed to be significantly larger to fix the economy -- Beck called the bill "slavery."

Beck has repeatedly denied what countless economists have said: that the stimulus has created millions of jobs that would not exist otherwise, including more than 500 in Wilmington. (Economists say the stimulus indirectly creates even more jobs than that, as employed workers spend stimulus-funded paychecks on goods and services.)

Beck would have you believe that the people who are working those jobs, weatherizing homes throughout Clinton and Clark counties and redeveloping downtown Wilmington, are slaves to the stimulus.

Wilmington doesn't need Beck -- it needs a strong social safety net and significant public investment in jobs.