For over a year, Glenn Beck has been one of right-wing media's loudest and most consistent misinformers on the subject of net neutrality. He's so far gone that even the Christian Coalition and the Cato Institute have corrected his blatantly false claim that net neutrality regulations would require conservative websites to display content from liberal sources. In December, fellow Fox News host Bill O'Reilly also rejected Beck's claim that the FCC would control internet content through net neutrality regulations. Here's an exchange that Beck and O'Reilly had on Beck's radio show:
O'REILLY: Tell me what this FCC vote says to you. What does it say? What's going to happen?
GLENN: Well, if you go to Cass Sunstein, what net neutrality means is now if you go to FoxNews.com, you will have Arianna Huffington, a little box pop up with her showing that Bill O'Reilly is wrong on this or here's an opposing view of Bill O'Reilly.
O'REILLY: They are going to force, they are going to force people on the Net to do those things. See, that's unconstitutional. It's not going to happen.
[...]
O'REILLY: Beck, you're not going away, I'm not going away. Our websites aren't going away. Arianna Huffington is not going to appear on my website ever.
In fact, O'Reilly was correct to question Beck's claims about net neutrality. But that didn't stop Beck from declaring on his radio show today that he was right and O'Reilly was wrong since the FCC approved net neutrality rules on December 21, never mind that the regulations don't dictate internet content, as Beck had repeatedly claimed. From his radio show today:
BECK: I said last year, for how long, that the FCC-- I've said this, I think, for about a year and a half. The FCC will just regulate the Internet. They'll just take it. They don't care. They will make Congress irrelevant, and they'll regulate-- Everyone, including people at the NAB. including broadcasters I respect, including, I think -- to include the broadcasters I respect -- Bill O'Reilly. All of them. Everyone. Don Imus. “They will not regulate the Internet, they won't do it.” They did it on December 21st. Did you even read about it?
PAT GRAY: You know, I didn't.
BECK: Nobody! Because nobody was paying attention. Nobody knows what it means. Nobody is paying attention. They're building a cage, gang. They're building a cage. And everybody is whistling in the graveyard. If they're even noticing that they're in a graveyard. Batten down the hatches and start charting a new course.
To Bill O'Reilly: “Whistling in the graveyard?” Are you really going to take that? You know Beck was wrong.
And to Glenn Beck: If you were right all along about what net neutrality means, when should we expect to see the Huffington Post pop up on your website?