http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3232
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Media Beat (12/19/07)
By Norman Solomon
When I picked up a ringing phone one morning in mid-December, the next thing I knew a producer was inviting me to appear on Glenn Beck’s TV show.
Beck has become a national phenom with his nightly hour of polemics on CNN Headline News -- urging war on Iran, denouncing “political correctness” at home, trashing immigrants who don’t speak English, mocking environmentalists as repressive zealots, and generally trying to denigrate progressive outlooks.
Our segment, the producer said, would focus on a recent NBC news report praising the virtues of energy-efficient LED light bulbs without acknowledging that the network’s parent company, General Electric, sells them. I figured it was a safe bet that Beck’s enthusiasm for full disclosure from media would be selective.
A few hours later, I was staring into a camera lens at the CNN bureau in San Francisco while Beck launched into his opening. What had occurred on the “NBC Nightly News,” he explained, “was at best a major breach of journalistic integrity.” And he pointed out: “The problem isn’t what NBC is promoting. It’s what they’re not disclosing.”
A minute later, Beck asked his first question: “Norman, you agree with me that they should have disclosed this?” The unedited transcript tells what happened next.
Solomon: “It’s a big problem when there’s not disclosure. I’m glad you opened this up. And I wouldn’t want any viewers of this program to be left with the impression that somehow General Electric is an environmentally conscious company.
“On the contrary, they have a 30-year history of refusing and actually fighting against efforts to make them clean up the Hudson River, which GE fouled with terrible quantities of horrific PCBs, other rivers as well. People told they can’t fish in the Hudson River. General Electric still lobbying to not have to clean up.
“General Electric, even today -- and this report is very timely -- General Electric is lobbying to get Congress to pass $18 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for a huge GE product which is General Electric components for nuclear power plants. So we should not be fooled in any way by efforts to greenwash General Electric or any other company.”
Beck: “You know what’s amazing to me? GE has a bigger budget for -- special interest budget than all of the oil companies combined, and yet nobody says anything. Let me reverse this.
“Norman, do you think if I got on as somebody who says I don’t know what we can do about global warming, I’m not sure man causes it, and I certainly don’t want to have laws and regulations on this, if I got on and said that but I was being -- my corporate -- my corporate parent was Exxon Mobil, do you think I’d get away with that for a second without that being on the front page of the New York Times?”
Solomon: “Well, other networks, including General Electric’s NBC, have been very slow on global warming. And in fact, General Electric has major interest in components and products used by the oil and gas industry.
“I think if you look across the board, all the major networks, even so-called public broadcasting, which has Chevron underwriting its ‘Washington Week’ program every Friday, there is a problem, as you say. I think your words are very apt, ‘promoting’ but ‘not disclosing.’
“But let’s be clear about this, Glenn. I have a list here, for instance, that I jotted down.
“ABC, owned by Disney. ABC doesn’t disclose in their relevant news reports about Disney’s stake in sweatshops.
“Fox News -- and now as of the last couple of days now, Wall Street Journal owned by the same entity, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp -- they don’t disclose that the ownership is entangled with the Chinese government to the detriment of human rights but to the advancement of the profit margin of the parent company.”
Beck: “See --”
Solomon: “We would be remiss, Glenn, if we left out CNN, because CNN has a huge multi, multibillion-dollar stake in Internet deregulation and the failure of the Congress to safeguard so far what would be called net neutrality. So every time CNN does a news report on the Internet, on efforts to regulate or deregulate or create a two- or three-tier system of the Internet, CNN News should disclose that Time Warner, the parent company, stands to gain or lose billions of dollars in those terms.
“And one more thing.”
Beck: “Real quick.”
Solomon: “A major -- a major advertiser for CNN is the largest military contractor in the United States, Lockheed Martin. So when you and others --”
Beck: “I got news for you, Norman. Norman --”
Solomon: “-- promote war -- when you and others promote war on this network --”
Beck: “Norman -- Norman --”
Solomon: “-- we have Lockheed Martin paying millions of dollars undisclosed. So I would quote you --”
Beck: “Norman -- Norman --”
Solomon: “Promoting but not disclosing is a bad way to go.”
Beck: “Norman, let me just tell you this. First of all, Lockheed Martin is not a -- not a corporate overlord of this program.”
Solomon: “It’s a major advertiser on CNN.”
Beck: “That’s fine. That’s fine. Advertisers are different. But let --”
Solomon: “Well, it is fine, but it should be disclosed.”
Beck: “Norman, let me just tell you something. If you think that it’s warmonger central downstairs at CNN, you’re out of your mind. But that’s a different story.”
Solomon: “Well, upstairs, when I watch Glenn Beck, in terms of attacking Iran, it certainly is. It’s lucrative for the oil companies, as well as for the major advertiser on CNN, Lockheed Martin.”
Beck: “But we’re not talking about advertisers. We are talking about --”
Solomon: “Well, you don’t want to talk about it. So let’s talk about the Internet stake.”
Beck: “No, no, no. Norman --”
Solomon: “Let’s talk about the Internet stake that the owners of CNN have. Huge profits to be made or lost by the parent company of CNN depending on what happens in Washington in terms of Internet regulation.”
Beck: “Norman, let me tell you something.”
Solomon: “That should be acknowledged, don’t you think?”
Beck: “Absolutely. And if it was on this program, it would be acknowledged.
“I thank you very much for your time.
“That just goes to show you, you’ve got to beware of everybody who you’re getting your news from. Wouldn’t it be nice if once in a while somebody came on and said, you know, I don’t really have an agenda except the truth? It’s my truth. If you don’t like it, you should go someplace else.”
During the back-and-forth, I’d understated the present-day role of Chevron as a funder of key news programming on PBS. Actually the Chevron Corporation, which signed on as an underwriter of “Washington Week” last year, no longer helps pay the piper there -- but the massive energy firm does currently funnel big bucks to the most influential show on PBS, the nightly “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
The corporate funders of the “NewsHour” now include not only Chevron but also AT&T and Pacific Life. There must be dozens of journalistic reports on the program every week -- whether relevant to the business worlds of energy, communications or insurance -- that warrant, and lack, real-time disclosures while the news accounts are on the air. Meanwhile, over at “Washington Week,” the corporate cash now flows in from the huge military contractor Boeing and the National Mining Association.
And that’s just “public broadcasting.” On avowedly commercial networks, awash in corporate ownership interests and advertising revenues, a thorough policy of disclosure in the course of news coverage would require that most of the airtime be devoted to shedding light on the media outlet conflicts-of-interest of the reporting in progress.
And what about Glenn Beck? The guy is another in a long line of demagogues riding a bull market for pseudo-populism. Brought to you by too many corporate interests to name.
Showing posts with label CNN Headline News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNN Headline News. Show all posts
Sunday, December 30, 2007
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Sunday, May 13, 2007
CNN's rodeo clown
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200705080004
CNN's rodeo clown
Eric Boehlert
Posted to the web on Tuesday May 8, 2007
Summary:
So you can feast on your stories but it won't stop the bleeding
When the truth is found the houses surely fall down
There's blood on their mouths of all lies and liars
The bloody red eyes of the rodeo clown
--John Mellencamp, "Rodeo Clown"
The bad news last week was that Glenn Beck, the right-wing radio talker and self-described "rodeo clown" who broadcasts nightly on CNN Headline News, hosted a world-is-flat special about the "myths" surrounding global warming. In it, Beck rounded up the usual ban of discredited, oil industry-friendly "experts" who announced that the looming atmospheric crisis is overblown, and that far from being a consensus, serious scientists still disagree on the matter.
The good news was that Beck's special, "Exposed: Climate of Fear," was a commercial flop, finishing dead last in total viewers among CNN, Headline News, Fox News, and MSNBC programs that night. The weak showing simply highlighted Beck's recent, albeit little-discussed, ratings woes. Just months after being hyped as the fastest-growing prime-time program in cable news, Glenn Beck has become arguably the most stagnant prime-time program in cable news.
For CNN, the repercussions of the backslide are immense and go far beyond the advertising dollars and cents involved.
That's because whereas CNN last year traded away its good name in exchange for debuting Beck's factually challenged and hateful brand of broadcasting, at least CNN execs were getting a ratings boost out of the Faustian bargain. Today, Beck's still making a mockery out of CNN's reputation on a daily basis, as he disparages liberals, gays, Democrats, blacks, immigrants, and Muslims at will. But in return, CNN's now stuck with a Beck program that's trapped in neutral and shows signs of sliding into reverse.
Well played, CNN.
"I'm a rodeo clown who happens to have a radio and TV show," Beck recently announced. Beck uses the rodeo clown shtick relentlessly (it's listed under "occupation" on his MySpace page), as he works overtime to assure viewers he's an undereducated, unsung hero with no journalism background. He's just an Average Joe who, by the way, produces 60-minute, prime-time news specials for CNN.
In truth, rodeo clowns are distracters. They bring attention to themselves by causing loud, outlandish scenes so that dismounted bull riders can reach safety. So in that regard, yes, Beck is a rodeo clown; a professional distracter.
For instance, just prior to the "Climate of Fear" telecast, Beck not only compared Al Gore to Adolf Hitler (an attack the Anti-Defamation League labeled "outrageous, insensitive and deeply offensive"), but he also warned that global warming activists want the United Nations to run the world and to implement a "global carbon tax." (Even though "Climate of Fear" aired nearly 10 weeks later than originally scheduled, it still had a rushed, amateurish feel to it. It doesn't appear as though CNN sent out any review copies in advance.)
Adding insult to injury for the CNN news family was the fact that Beck's special directly insulted the news channel's integrity. How? Beck did it when hyping "Climate of Fear" by stressing that Americans weren't getting the "other side" of the global warming story, in part because of the "mainstream media hype" surrounding the issue. Beck clearly suggested that journalists at CNN, among other places, were doing such a dreadful (read: biased) job reporting about global warming, that Beck had to step in and provide the "other side" of the debate (read: the truth).
It was Beck simply echoing the right-wing canard that the liberal media deliberately keep the truth from the masses. CNN not only approved of Beck's message, the news channel actively promoted it. (If CNN wanted to get into the business of producing "other side" specials, it should have aired one in February 2003, looking at the "other side" of the pro-war push. That would have saved CNN much future embarrassment regarding Iraq.)
"Climate of Fear" certainly wasn't journalism, not even the pseudo-brand often practiced on cable television. It was more like anti-journalism. Instead of trying to enlighten and educate consumers about the day's events, it was a deliberate attempt to mislead viewers under the guise of being informational and under the auspice of television news. It was foolery, plain and simple. Specifically, it was an attempt to re-assure partisans about global warming, to import pleasing facts into their hermetically sealed worldview of what's right and wrong. All done by Beck, a former top-40 DJ and proud non-journalist.
It truly has become amateur hour at CNN.
James Zogby got it right late last year. After watching Beck's nearly year-long McCarthy-like crusade against Arabs and Muslims, the president of the Arab American Institute wrote, "While [the CNN] network may have hoped that Beck's flamboyant style would increase ratings, the cost to their integrity has been staggering."
I realize lots of executives, producers and reporters at CNN likely cringe at the mention of Beck's name and claim it's unfair to connect CNN with Beck; that the Headline News personality has nothing to do with the larger global news network. I don't buy it. The fact remains that Beck is invited onto CNN shows, including most recently Paula Zahn Now and Anderson Cooper 360. Also, CNN programs pitched in to hype Beck's recent global warming hoax special.
CNN cannot be a little bit pregnant here. It pays Beck a salary. He's a centerpiece for Headline News' prime-time schedule, and CNN helps promote his program. The painful part now for CNN is that Beck's show is no longer attracting new viewers, which makes the news organization's decision to give him a national platform all the more embarrassing.
Indeed, the dirty little media secret is that Beck's show has hit a ratings brick wall. Despite the glowing press from The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, which showered Beck with profiles because his show was being touted as the fastest-growing program on prime-time cable news, Beck in recent months has been flat-lining. In fact, he's actually losing viewers.
The Nielsen rating numbers from April were particularly telling and highlighted how Beck's show appears to have completely maxed out less than 12 months after its debut. April was a news-heavy month, which produced a huge spike in cable news viewership following the campus massacre at Virginia Tech. Except, that is, for Glenn Beck. (On the night of the VT shooting, Glenn Beck finished last among prime-time cable news programs, excluding those on CNBC.)
Overall, for the month of April, ratings for CNN Headline News' prime-time lineup, which is anchored by Beck, were up a microscopic 4 percent, compared to healthy, double-digit gains posted by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
A hot show? Please, Glenn Beck has become as cool as the other side of the pillow. For the month of April, Glenn Beck's original airing in the 7 p.m. time slot averaged 304,000 viewers, down from last September, when the program drew 321,000 viewers each night. In viewers aged 25-54, the key demographic group sought by advertisers, Glenn Beck averaged 122,000 last month. Again, that's down from September, when the program drew 149,000. So much for the being "the fastest-growing show on cable news," which was how Beck himself described the program earlier this year.
Last September was also when Glenn Beck surpassed MSNBC's Hardball in viewers 25-54, outpacing Chris Matthews' show by 17,000 viewers. No more. In April, Hardball beat Glenn Beck by 40,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic each night. And often the tally these days is far larger. For instance, on Tuesday, May 1, Hardball bested Glenn Beck by nearly 200,000 total viewers. And with the presidential election season heating up, it's unlikely that trend toward the Beltway-centric Hardball and away from Glenn Beck is going to change in the coming weeks and months.
As for the 9 p.m. time slot, in which Glenn Beck is replayed each weeknight, the show has done very little to boost Headline News' ratings. Back in June 2005, the channel, by simply looping its recap of daily headlines, was averaging 321,000 viewers each night. In April, despite all the hype about Beck's supposed ratings surge, that 9 p.m. number at Headline News had barely budged, to 328,000 viewers.
More proof of Beck's woes? Last November, Beck did hit a ratings home run with his first-ever, hour-long special, "Exposed: The Extremist Agenda." (The show pounded the evident notion that there are Muslim extremists in the Middle East who hate America.) For the 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. time slots combined, Beck's special attracted nearly two million viewers. CNN rewarded Beck by giving him four more specials this year.
"Glenn's unique style works well for his everyday show format, but giving him a full hour on just one topic really gives him the chance to delve deeper, in a way that clearly resonates with his viewers," cooed Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN Worldwide. "We look forward to hearing what Glenn has to say on these timely and provocative issues."
Last Wednesday's "Climate of Fear" marked the first of that new batch of Beck programs, and ratings were down a whopping 70 percent from Beck's November special. In fact, Beck's widely promoted "Climate of Fear" finished in last place at both 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., losing to the regularly scheduled cable news offerings on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
Given that weak showing, I'm not surprised that suddenly CNN is much less talkative about Beck's ratings. Whereas last winter the channel was issuing press releases touting Beck's healthy gains, CNN last week declined my request for any ratings information regarding Beck's recent performance.
If Beck doesn't right his ratings ship soon, CNN's going to have to hire another rodeo clown just to distract people from fact that the news channel traded in its reputation for a last-place show.
CNN's rodeo clown
Eric Boehlert
Posted to the web on Tuesday May 8, 2007
Summary:
So you can feast on your stories but it won't stop the bleeding
When the truth is found the houses surely fall down
There's blood on their mouths of all lies and liars
The bloody red eyes of the rodeo clown
--John Mellencamp, "Rodeo Clown"
The bad news last week was that Glenn Beck, the right-wing radio talker and self-described "rodeo clown" who broadcasts nightly on CNN Headline News, hosted a world-is-flat special about the "myths" surrounding global warming. In it, Beck rounded up the usual ban of discredited, oil industry-friendly "experts" who announced that the looming atmospheric crisis is overblown, and that far from being a consensus, serious scientists still disagree on the matter.
The good news was that Beck's special, "Exposed: Climate of Fear," was a commercial flop, finishing dead last in total viewers among CNN, Headline News, Fox News, and MSNBC programs that night. The weak showing simply highlighted Beck's recent, albeit little-discussed, ratings woes. Just months after being hyped as the fastest-growing prime-time program in cable news, Glenn Beck has become arguably the most stagnant prime-time program in cable news.
For CNN, the repercussions of the backslide are immense and go far beyond the advertising dollars and cents involved.
That's because whereas CNN last year traded away its good name in exchange for debuting Beck's factually challenged and hateful brand of broadcasting, at least CNN execs were getting a ratings boost out of the Faustian bargain. Today, Beck's still making a mockery out of CNN's reputation on a daily basis, as he disparages liberals, gays, Democrats, blacks, immigrants, and Muslims at will. But in return, CNN's now stuck with a Beck program that's trapped in neutral and shows signs of sliding into reverse.
Well played, CNN.
"I'm a rodeo clown who happens to have a radio and TV show," Beck recently announced. Beck uses the rodeo clown shtick relentlessly (it's listed under "occupation" on his MySpace page), as he works overtime to assure viewers he's an undereducated, unsung hero with no journalism background. He's just an Average Joe who, by the way, produces 60-minute, prime-time news specials for CNN.
In truth, rodeo clowns are distracters. They bring attention to themselves by causing loud, outlandish scenes so that dismounted bull riders can reach safety. So in that regard, yes, Beck is a rodeo clown; a professional distracter.
For instance, just prior to the "Climate of Fear" telecast, Beck not only compared Al Gore to Adolf Hitler (an attack the Anti-Defamation League labeled "outrageous, insensitive and deeply offensive"), but he also warned that global warming activists want the United Nations to run the world and to implement a "global carbon tax." (Even though "Climate of Fear" aired nearly 10 weeks later than originally scheduled, it still had a rushed, amateurish feel to it. It doesn't appear as though CNN sent out any review copies in advance.)
Adding insult to injury for the CNN news family was the fact that Beck's special directly insulted the news channel's integrity. How? Beck did it when hyping "Climate of Fear" by stressing that Americans weren't getting the "other side" of the global warming story, in part because of the "mainstream media hype" surrounding the issue. Beck clearly suggested that journalists at CNN, among other places, were doing such a dreadful (read: biased) job reporting about global warming, that Beck had to step in and provide the "other side" of the debate (read: the truth).
It was Beck simply echoing the right-wing canard that the liberal media deliberately keep the truth from the masses. CNN not only approved of Beck's message, the news channel actively promoted it. (If CNN wanted to get into the business of producing "other side" specials, it should have aired one in February 2003, looking at the "other side" of the pro-war push. That would have saved CNN much future embarrassment regarding Iraq.)
"Climate of Fear" certainly wasn't journalism, not even the pseudo-brand often practiced on cable television. It was more like anti-journalism. Instead of trying to enlighten and educate consumers about the day's events, it was a deliberate attempt to mislead viewers under the guise of being informational and under the auspice of television news. It was foolery, plain and simple. Specifically, it was an attempt to re-assure partisans about global warming, to import pleasing facts into their hermetically sealed worldview of what's right and wrong. All done by Beck, a former top-40 DJ and proud non-journalist.
It truly has become amateur hour at CNN.
James Zogby got it right late last year. After watching Beck's nearly year-long McCarthy-like crusade against Arabs and Muslims, the president of the Arab American Institute wrote, "While [the CNN] network may have hoped that Beck's flamboyant style would increase ratings, the cost to their integrity has been staggering."
I realize lots of executives, producers and reporters at CNN likely cringe at the mention of Beck's name and claim it's unfair to connect CNN with Beck; that the Headline News personality has nothing to do with the larger global news network. I don't buy it. The fact remains that Beck is invited onto CNN shows, including most recently Paula Zahn Now and Anderson Cooper 360. Also, CNN programs pitched in to hype Beck's recent global warming hoax special.
CNN cannot be a little bit pregnant here. It pays Beck a salary. He's a centerpiece for Headline News' prime-time schedule, and CNN helps promote his program. The painful part now for CNN is that Beck's show is no longer attracting new viewers, which makes the news organization's decision to give him a national platform all the more embarrassing.
Indeed, the dirty little media secret is that Beck's show has hit a ratings brick wall. Despite the glowing press from The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, which showered Beck with profiles because his show was being touted as the fastest-growing program on prime-time cable news, Beck in recent months has been flat-lining. In fact, he's actually losing viewers.
The Nielsen rating numbers from April were particularly telling and highlighted how Beck's show appears to have completely maxed out less than 12 months after its debut. April was a news-heavy month, which produced a huge spike in cable news viewership following the campus massacre at Virginia Tech. Except, that is, for Glenn Beck. (On the night of the VT shooting, Glenn Beck finished last among prime-time cable news programs, excluding those on CNBC.)
Overall, for the month of April, ratings for CNN Headline News' prime-time lineup, which is anchored by Beck, were up a microscopic 4 percent, compared to healthy, double-digit gains posted by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
A hot show? Please, Glenn Beck has become as cool as the other side of the pillow. For the month of April, Glenn Beck's original airing in the 7 p.m. time slot averaged 304,000 viewers, down from last September, when the program drew 321,000 viewers each night. In viewers aged 25-54, the key demographic group sought by advertisers, Glenn Beck averaged 122,000 last month. Again, that's down from September, when the program drew 149,000. So much for the being "the fastest-growing show on cable news," which was how Beck himself described the program earlier this year.
Last September was also when Glenn Beck surpassed MSNBC's Hardball in viewers 25-54, outpacing Chris Matthews' show by 17,000 viewers. No more. In April, Hardball beat Glenn Beck by 40,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic each night. And often the tally these days is far larger. For instance, on Tuesday, May 1, Hardball bested Glenn Beck by nearly 200,000 total viewers. And with the presidential election season heating up, it's unlikely that trend toward the Beltway-centric Hardball and away from Glenn Beck is going to change in the coming weeks and months.
As for the 9 p.m. time slot, in which Glenn Beck is replayed each weeknight, the show has done very little to boost Headline News' ratings. Back in June 2005, the channel, by simply looping its recap of daily headlines, was averaging 321,000 viewers each night. In April, despite all the hype about Beck's supposed ratings surge, that 9 p.m. number at Headline News had barely budged, to 328,000 viewers.
More proof of Beck's woes? Last November, Beck did hit a ratings home run with his first-ever, hour-long special, "Exposed: The Extremist Agenda." (The show pounded the evident notion that there are Muslim extremists in the Middle East who hate America.) For the 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. time slots combined, Beck's special attracted nearly two million viewers. CNN rewarded Beck by giving him four more specials this year.
"Glenn's unique style works well for his everyday show format, but giving him a full hour on just one topic really gives him the chance to delve deeper, in a way that clearly resonates with his viewers," cooed Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN Worldwide. "We look forward to hearing what Glenn has to say on these timely and provocative issues."
Last Wednesday's "Climate of Fear" marked the first of that new batch of Beck programs, and ratings were down a whopping 70 percent from Beck's November special. In fact, Beck's widely promoted "Climate of Fear" finished in last place at both 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., losing to the regularly scheduled cable news offerings on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
Given that weak showing, I'm not surprised that suddenly CNN is much less talkative about Beck's ratings. Whereas last winter the channel was issuing press releases touting Beck's healthy gains, CNN last week declined my request for any ratings information regarding Beck's recent performance.
If Beck doesn't right his ratings ship soon, CNN's going to have to hire another rodeo clown just to distract people from fact that the news channel traded in its reputation for a last-place show.
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