From Kenneth P. Vogel's December 17 Politico article:
Glenn Beck may be blowing off concerns that he's gotten too cozy with gold-sellers who sponsor his shows, but Fox News is taking the gold endorsement issue a little more seriously.
On Thursday, the network indicated it would ask Rosland Capital, a gold retailer, to remove from its website the logo for Bill O'Reilly's Fox show, the O'Reilly Factor, which Rosland features along with an audio clip of O'Reilly urging listeners to buy gold because “The U.S. Dollar is under attack!”
Fox's concern was that O'Reilly's endorsement of Rosland was specific to the radio show he no longer does, and Rosland is not a sponsor of his television show.
Rosland spokesman Steve Getzug said the company had not heard from Fox but was already “in the process of pulling the reference down as part of an overall update of Rosland's website.” He called the O'Reilly endorsement “dated” and said “it's been a while since the company has updated its website.”
Last week, Fox, which also airs Beck's television show, requested that Beck clarify his relationship with another gold retailer, Goldline International, leading the company to tweak its trumpeting of Beck's endorsement. Goldline removed an identification of Beck as a “paid spokesman” from its website, but left the rest of the site - which prominently features his endorsement, photo and a radio interview he did with the company's president Mark Albarian - intact.[...]
In fact, Beck's critics have not suggested that he was actually influencing the price of gold, which had been rising steadily until this month, by encouraging his fans to buy coins from Goldline.
But some financial analysts and precious metals experts did tell POLITICO that potential gold investors would be wise to look into bullion or exchange traded funds intended to track the price of gold, rather than the coins sold by Goldline and a handful of other firms that advertise on Beck's shows and those of other conservative talkers. That's because those firms focus on collectible or antique coins, which they sell for many times the value of the intrinsic gold and promote as being exempt from a potential government seizure of gold like that which occurred under Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Beck has suggested that gold coins are a good buy now because President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are steering the economy towards disaster.And that feedback loop - Beck stoking fear of economic collapse, hyping gold as a hedge against collapse, and endorsing a company selling gold - prompted liberals from the watchdog group Media Matters to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to Comedy Central's faux-news hosts Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to allege a glaring conflict of interest.
Previously:
Glenn Beck promotes gold to audience while profiting from gold investment firms