Urge CNN not to provide a platform for conservative misinformation and hate speech
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CNN Headline News has hired Glenn Beck -- a nationally syndicated right-wing radio host known for making controversial and offensive statements -- for a "new prime time program." Recently, Beck commented that it took him "about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families," described individuals suffering in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina as "scumbags," and contemplated whether to hire someone to kill filmmaker Michael Moore or to do it himself.
CNN's decision to hire Beck, along with its reported hiring of controversial radio host Bill Bennett as a political analyst, raise serious questions about whether CNN has made a high-level decision to support and promote right-wing individuals, even those who have a history of promoting conservative misinformation and offensive rhetoric.
Take Action! Click here to contact CNN and urge them to stop providing a platform for conservative misinformation and hate speech.
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January 17: CNN reportedly hires radio host Glenn Beck
If CNN is hiring these two klowns, CNN is trying to out FAUX Fox News. Give me a break!! I've listened to Beck's radio show and it's juvenile to say the least. And amateurish.
cnn and fox are one and of the same. we cant trust any news outlet, we can only trust certain reporters. Also this doesn't suprise me that cnn is doing this, they need ratings.
I've heard Glenn Beck's comments on Media Matters and am surprised that CNN, which I've trusted pretty well, would give in to the right to try to bolster it's image to them. Bush and the Right are just reaping the grim and absolutely real harvest they've sown. If you don't pay attention to those absolute facts, you're in the dreamland of the right.
Absolute facts: 1) Saddam (an atheist) wasn't Al Queda's "friend" as Bush said (under the "Mission Accomplished" sign). 2) Niger didn't have enriched uranium, which was obvious to our information sources well ahead of time, when Bush quite plainly lied to Congress about it on Jan 28, 2003 (a federal offense). 3) The Downing street memoes detail quite clearly Bush's framing of his own personal war to set up. 4) Bush always had the opportunity to spy domestically, as long as he had others (a court order) okaying it.
Bush was just one vote shy of having an absolute majority backing him up right after 9-11. So why, with that majority, did he feel he had to be so sneaky in setting up his domestic spy operation?
Bush in my view is without a doubt a criminal liar, as detailed by his own actions. It's time he owned up to it.
Take a look at the results of our very own "Christian Inquisition:"http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405 All this thanks to Bush. He's brought disgrace and unbelievable shame down on the US.
Take a look at factual web sources (where the facts are actually detailed to show their validity, as opposed to the right wing emotional rants of liars like O'Reilly and Rush) like www.aclu.org or www.mediamatters.org.
The right wing's very good at making a big commotion about the left's arguments, but depends big time on trying to overwhelm us, as they certainly haven't been able to truthfully deny facts as listed above.
Please CNN, don't fall for dreamland.
It is predictable that CNN would turn to the right with MSNBC now FOX-2, and the object is the bottom line and not news it was just a matter of time.
Okay, I sent my protest comment to CNN. I started to send an email to protest the hire of Bennett a week or two ago but I got turned off by all the personal information they require. I sent one today though. I remember sending them a negative comment years ago, on my own,. no prompting needed, and I thought the same thing today as I thought then: the form requires you to choose whether your comment is "positive" or "negative", so it makes me wonder if they don't just throw all the "negatives"into some black hole, never to see the light of day.
I have sent over a dozen E-mails to CNN and to specific anchors complaining about their right-wing bias, yet, I've never heard back from them. I start to wonder if they even read our comments. I usually check my comments as "positive" hoping they would not discard them, but I guess after seeing my name over a dozen times, they know what I have to say to them is unflattering criticism.
I, too, trusted CNN--longer than I should've. Turner's orginal concept is long gone, but I guess I kept watching for those few flickers of good reporting. No more. The reporters who know better are cowed and craven, and others have been replaced by pretty bobbleheads.
Question: Where do all of you get your daily information?
My two online faves:
[link to www.guardian.co.uk]
[link to www.truthout.org]
I think I'm just beginning to realize that people have to work a lot harder to learn the real deal!
Dear CNN:
I was very distressed by reports of your decision to hire the conservative radio show host Glenn Beck for a new show on the Headline News Channel. Mr. Beck has a lengthy history of making extreme, inflammatory comments which contribute absolutely nothing to his listeners' understanding of current issues and fall far outside the range of what has traditionally been considered acceptable public discourse. MediaMatters.org has compiled some of these statements, and I encourage you to visit that site to truly understand who it is you're hiring.
Among other things, Mr. Beck has fantasized about assassinating the filmmaker Michael Moore, has characterized the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan as a "prostitute," and has called the father of the executed American hostage Nick Berg a "scumbag." This singularly loathsome rhetoric is of course protected by the First Amendment and is, perhaps, acceptable by the nearly nonexistent journalistic standards of right-wing talk radio. But that does not mean that it deserves to be featured on a CNN outlet.
Do you really want to go down the dangerous path blazed by the Fox News Channel and more recently trod by MSNBC? Our country is in crisis precisely because the major media have allowed objective, reliable news to be crowded out by infotainment and punditry, thereby making it far more difficult for citizens to make informed decisions at the ballot box. CNN, which I started watching a decade and a half ago because of its excellent coverage of the first Gulf War, was once a welcome antidote to this trend. Now, regrettably, it seems that you have enthusiastically joined it.
Until and unless CNN stops participating in this race to the bottom by news organizations and renews its commitment to serious journalism, I will no longer watch CNN or Headline News on TV or visit the CNN website. And trust me: I am not the only longtime viewer alienated by your current direction. History will not look kindly on you for abandoning your principles and weakening our democracy.
Sincerely, [...]