Time Magazine Gives Glenn Beck a Rave Review

Time magazine's cover story on Glenn Beck by David Von Drehle is a clinic for journalism students who wish to learn about faux balance, false equivalencies, straw men, and omissions of important facts. Nowhere in this piece does Mr. Drehle mention the fact that 62 of Beck's sponsors have yanked their ad buys to distance their companies from Beck's recent charge that President Barack Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." And although Drehle tells the story of Beck's successful effort at drumming out Van Jones from President Obama's green jobs team, nowhere does he bother to inform his readers that Jones had been a co-founder of ColorofChange.org, the group responsible for the advertiser boycott. These stories are all over the web so Drehle is either a terrible journalist or he purposefully omitted them.

In the first paragraph, Drehle refers to crowd estimates of Beck's recent "9/12" rally in Washington, D. C.: "If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists." Drehle chooses not to include another Beck story that is also all over the web and was featured on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, of Beck speculating on FOX the morning after the rally that "the University of -- I don't remember" scientifically analyzed the gathering and estimated it to be "1.7 million" people.

This lie was repeated by right-wing sources, including Michelle Malkin, throughout the news cycle that day only to be handily debunked. The statistician, Nate Silver, calculated the crowd to be about 70,000, and nowhere can be found any "liberal source" calling them "greedy racists." Drehle not only serves up a straw man in his opening paragraph but let's Beck off the hook for his wildly exaggerated claim of the size of his protest.

Drehle doesn't waste any time with his faux balance between "left" and "right." In paragraph five he draws a comparison "[b]etween the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school." But he doesn't tell us who these liberals are who "fantasized" about Brownshirts at the health care town halls. He must be referring to those of us who denounced the tactics of deliberately shouting down public meetings in an attempt to drown out civil discourse, which was indeed a common practice of various thuggish right-wing groups in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s.

As far as "goose-stepping children" goes, Drehle must be referring to the American Right's freak-out about the president of the United States addressing the nation's school children to urge them to study hard and to succeed. How that bizarre view of an innocuous presidential address equals the spectacles we saw in August of near violence breaking out at town halls Drehle leaves to his readers to figure out.

(Drehle also sees a false equivalency in the effects on American political discourse of the works of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on the "right," with those of Minnesota Senator Al Franken and the Academy Award winning filmmaker Michael Moore on the "left." There's no difference in his view, just opposite poles of the same over-the-top phenomenon.)

Drehle acknowledges that Beck's routine plays on the raw emotions of fear and anger (two reptilian instincts that bring out the worst in people), yet he seems enthralled by him for doing so: "Beck has emerged as a virtuoso on the strings of their discontent." Fanning the flames of Americans' basest instincts for fun and profit? Who on the Left is doing that on the public airwaves?

Drehle's longest quote from Beck in the article is from Beck's teary-eyed soliloquy about wishing the nation could return to that mythical time right after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Nowhere does Drehle bother to contemplate the possibility that Beck might be crassly exploiting the fear and anguish caused by the 9/11 attacks for his own political and pecuniary purposes just as the Bush/Cheney administration did for seven plus years.

Beck described his shtick to Drehle calling it "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment," and Drehle praises Beck for his "flexible narrative" that "often contains genuinely uncomfortable truths." Drehle tells his readers about Beck's most recent obsession with President Obama's policy czars "whom Beck fears Obama is using to subvert constitutional government -- and he has some radical-sounding sound bites to back it up." But Drehle chooses to omit the fact that George W. Bush had appointed even more "czars" than Obama, and that the whole "controversy" is just another desperate and hypocritical Republican talking point.

If Drehle really believes that Beck "fears" a constitutional breach by the Obama White House then why does he choose not to explore exactly what part of the Constitution is being "subverted" and what are Beck's credentials as a constitutional scholar to make such a claim? And if Beck describes himself first as an "entertainer" then why should we take seriously any of his "fears" about the "threat" to the Constitution that Obama poses? Drehle leaves these obvious questions unanswered.

Perhaps the best example of Drehle's false equivalency that grants legitimacy to Beck's brand of red-baiting hate speech is this: "We're in the flood stage, and who's to blame?," he writes.

The answer is like the estimates of the size of the crowd in Washington: Whom do you trust? Either the corrupt, communist-loving traitors on the left are causing this, or it's the racist, greedy warmongers on the right, or maybe the dishonest, incompetent, conniving media, which refuse to tell the truth about whomever you personally happen to despise.

Here Drehle gets to stand back and remove himself from the pettiness of American politics. He transcends all. He's neither "right" nor "left" nor part of the "dishonest, incompetent, conniving media" -- he's the disembodied glib voice of reason. The only problem with this artificial construction is that Drehle is writing a cover story for the most politically influential newsweekly in the corporate media.

And he dropped the ball.

Perhaps there are "synergies" between Time Inc. and Beck Inc.'s media production companies? Or maybe Drehle doesn't want to piss Beck off because he might be asking him for a gig at some later date -- (print journalism is a tough business these days). In any case, it is a terrible disservice to Time readers to have such a glowing and legitimizing article on a person who is becoming richer each day by playing on the fear and anger of his fellow citizens in a period of economic crisis and practicing the same despicable tactics as Joseph McCarthy.

 

 

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Comments

[lisaman]

Rupert Murdoch doesn't own Time Mag, does he? This article does have the same "fair and balanced" approach, doesn't it. In other words it wasn't fair and it wasn't balanced. I am shocked a magazine like Time that has a decent rep would ruin it, IMO, by doing such a fluff piece on such a radical man.

I almost wish I had a subscription just so I could cancil it!

[Joe The Nerd Ferraro - Huffpost Blogger]

Good post - I have a similar post to yours commenting on his Beckness...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-the-nerd-ferraro/the-damage-that-itimei-ha_b_292874.html
If I am not violating any protocols here...

[exile]

i love magazines.
it started when i was a kid.
big glossy pictures and lots of words.

those days are over.
the beck is good story is an example of why mags are dead.

my latest subscripion costs 5 bucks for 12 issues.
where's the profit in that?

[Joseph Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/19/fox-news-producer-caught_n_292529.html

[Joseph Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey, how'd you like seeing that FOX associated producer hooked into her cell phone with the corporate office rallying the Tea Baggers at the rally -- precious!

[BuzzingAlong]

Need a laugh?

See: GOP Clown College
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30835791@N07/sets/72157614241935013

[GreatTruthsSeeker]

FOX and now Time do not understand the number of sentient beings that hold truth as a core value and that they disrespect this shared value when they twist it beyond logic or reality, or ignore it.

Many Republican leaders are prevaricators (to lie or mislead) and are driven by concupiscence (lust) for personal gain. That is also true for some Democrat leaders too.

The difference is that some neo-cons and their media have refined these two traits of prevarication and concupiscence into something that closely resembles voodoo. It is sometimes quite apparent that they wither because of it, and sometimes it is all too obvious that it negatively affects media that is more grounded in reality and the truth.

Some FOX reporters and a significant percentage of Republicans participate in the initiation and exacerbation of hate activities and obscurantism because the thought of having a black or Democrat as president is intolerable to them. Racism and ignorance have common roots and both can frequently be viewed as illnesses.

The etiology (cause) of an illness is often hidden, and the sequelae (presenting or residual effects) of an illness are frequently not. The etiology and sequelae of ignorance and racism are often well hidden.

In our world, ignorance is not bliss, it’s propagated and quite malignant.

We fight this malignancy when we share the truth.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
To contact TIME:
[e-mail]

[GreatTruthsSeeker]

To writet the editor:

[e-mail]

[RichardHayward]

I think the bigger question here is...with all this heated rhetoric and only getting more heated...what is the spark they want to use to overturn the election. They are hate filled, sore lossers hell bent on some type of violence against Americans that don't comform to their way of thinking. Beck, Limbaugh, Dobbs, Hannity, O'Reilly have all stepped up their rhetoric to a fever pitch much like the Tailban with their regressive, back to the good ol days, when women, uppty blacks, queers all new knew their places. My hope is that someone from our side steps up and defuses this hateful rhetoric before the Spark.

[nk007]

You hit the nailed the nail on the head! The Republican right wingers do in many ways resemble the Taliban and seem to intent on inciting chaos and violence in the hopes of regaining power.

[wfglaser]

Not to fan the flames any further, but...

I recall a similar outcry about media bias on the part Time back in 1995 when they named Newt Gingrich "Time Man (now Person) of the Year." It was pointed out then that Time had, in the past, also selected such luminaries as Adolf Hitler (1938) and Josef Stalin (1939 AND 1942), but that act in no way meant that Time supported their ideologies or ambitions, but was "merely" reporting on their influence on contemporary events.

[JohnSawyer]

The difference here is, when Time ran its covers of Hitler and Stalin, those issues didn't contain articles stating that Hitler or Stalin had "emerged as virtuosos on the strings of discontent", or represented "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment," or praised them for their "flexible narrative" that "often contains genuinely uncomfortable truths", or that they had "some radical-sounding sound bites to back them up."

[bujudude]

The term "journalistic integrity" is practically an oxymoron in America these days. Robert Greenwald's excellent documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism" beautifully spelled out the pernicious effects of Murdoch's illegal media empire and his callous disregard for truth and simple decency. Most of the MSM has been on a stampede towards the far right for many years now, and simply because the right-wingers are currently the most vocal element on what passes for a debate these days, coupled with the craving for sensationalistic "news" stories which pander rather than inform, create a perfect storm of ignorance and vitrol.

Time lost its credibility a long time ago, and the Beck fluff piece further erodes its own iffy journalistic standards.

[MadMadMan]

This is the biggest threat to America - the Mainstream Media posing as the referee between 2 extremes, one that relies on facts and behavior to observe what is going on in this country "the Left Liberals" and the other that uses extreme labeling, lies and distortions of fact and history to cry "wolf, communism, socialism,and danger" over any and all humanitarian actions or views of the country "the Glen Becks of the Right and FOX.
More and more the media has shown itself to be so cowardly as to have forfeited it's position as the Fourth Estate. I do not pretend to know the answer but certainly one is to empower the FCC and pass legislation that goes back to limiting ownership of the media and attempting to allow more objective and yes, left of central voices, to be heard across America.

[onenvrnos]

FCC>>Agreed. There has to be a way for news media to be held accountable.

[PanBaccha]

To MadMadMan ... Your article speaks truly on our failure to recognize the true antagonist in this media mess that daily celebrates and 'legitimizes' the longevity of straw men. It is the media that pretends to journalism, and instead 'instigates' the crude and debased issues of the day, ad infinitum. FCC should be re-structured with proper guidance and ethics. Thank you for that piece.

[onenvrnos]

Great article.When I recently learned that it is not illegal for the news media to lie and distort facts for their choosing, I truly felt our country was--and is--in real jeopardy.

http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html (Thanks to whomever that was that posted this link earlier)

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

So there you have it: news media can lie to us all they want, and they all do either by outright lies or omitting any semblance of truth.

Just as Time's article on Glenn Beck is lacking as a truly journalistic expose, so has the news media (like our politicians) been purchased for the corporate agenda. This is a fundamental challenge to the intent of free speech, because the only ones speaking are the corporate heads--not the people.

[lisaman]

And thank you for reposting it.

[joebftsplk]

Thanks for doing your homework on the Constitution. Not many people do that these days. Our founding fathers established a system of checks and balances, but it requires some effort and creativity on citizens' part to make it work. We concerned folk need to start up counter-media with sane, balanced journalism that is "entertaining" enough to engage the interest of the great unwashed. What if MoveOn was to initiate a TV news program? Utilizing the Muppets? Featuring left-leaning celebrities? Stand-up comics? Animations? In prime time?

Also some handsomer talking heads than are on Fox news.

[lastpost]

“faux balance, false equivalencies, straw men, and omissions of important facts”

But all that's history, isn't it?

[NoSandwiches]

Time magazine had a crazy article on Sarah Palin that left out a lot of well-documented and pertinent information as well. I figured that her people only agreed to an interview if only favorable information was included--a Larry King sort of interview as it were. For example, they printed her assertion that all the ethics complaints about her were without merit and she had been absolved of any wrongdoing.

Someone thinks they will sell more magazines by leaning to the right?