by David Brock
The next day, Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton resigned from the paper and as CEO of Dow Jones over his role in covering up the scandal. Hinton previously was chairman of News International and, according to The Guardian, had “been accused of giving misleading information to parliament on two occasions, in 2007 and 2009, by saying there was no evidence of widespread malpractice within the company.”18
That same day, Rebekah Brooks, who some had said Murdoch closed down News of the World to save, resigned as chief executive of News International.
That weekend, News Corp. ran an advertisement in every major newspaper in the U.K. with the headline “We are sorry.” A day later, Brooks was arrested for her role in the scandal. Despite this fact, the Telegraph reported that “she remains on the company payroll.”19
On July 19, Rupert Murdoch and his son James, who ran the subsidiary of News Corp. that owned News of the World and approved settlement claims related to the hacking, were called to testify before Parliament. Rupert Murdoch called it “the most humble day of my life.”20 The father-son testimony did little to stem the scandal, as criminal probes widened and more were arrested in the U.K. The FBI opened an investigation to determine if any U.S. laws were broken and if any 9/11 victims’ phones had been hacked, as was alleged by one media organization. Many speculate that News of the World’s payments to members of the Metropolitan Police violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal to bribe foreign officials.
Fox News covered the testimony in full. This was a marked difference from its coverage the previous weeks. As the scandal emerged in the United States, Fox had barely mentioned the story in comparison to its competitors. From July 4 to July 13, CNN ran 108 segments on the phone hacking scandal, MSNBC ran
71 segments, and Fox News ran 30 segments on this fast-breaking story.21
Even Fox’s own weekend media criticism program, Fox News Watch, did not mention the scandal during its July 9 broadcast. Behind-the-scenes video revealed this was an act of intentional self-censorship, as opposed to an editorial oversight. FoxNews.com often posted “Behind the Breaks” videos of panelists conversing during commercial breaks. The following conversation occurred that day off-air:
CAL THOMAS (Fox News contributor): Anybody want to bring up the subject we’re not talking about today for the—for the [online] streamers?
JAMES PINKERTON (Fox News contributor): Sure. Go ahead, Cal!
THOMAS: No, go ahead, Jim.
(Laughter)
THOMAS: I’m not going to touch it.
JUDY MILLER (Fox News contributor): With a ten-foot [inaudible].22
CNN reporter Brian Todd later confirmed that the panelists were discussing the News of the World scandal during this segment.
Media Matters released a study highlighting Fox’s lack of coverage of the scandal that garnered significant attention, leading to a dramatic increase in reporting by the network. While Fox ran only 30 segments on the scandal in the ten-day period from July 4 through July 13, in the six days between July 14 and 19, it ran 72 segments. The 102 total segments the network ran still trailed MSNBC and CNN, which ran 138 and 199 segments, respectively.
Of course, several of these segments were simply defenses of News Corp.’s behavior. Bill O’Reilly led the charge on behalf of his employer, claiming on July 20, “You have The New York Times absolutely running wild with the story,” he said. “Front page, front page, front page. Column, column, column. Vicious stuff, vicious stuff. And it’s all ideological, is it not?”23
Regardless of coverage, the impact of the phone hacking scandal continues to spread. As of our writing, at least eleven News Corp. employees, among them several senior executives, have been arrested in connection with the scandal. Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of London, and John Yates, the assistant commissioner, were both forced to resign over the mishandling of the case and accusations that News of the World staff members paid police officers for information published in the paper.
In the United States, a shareholder suit filed earlier in the year challenging Murdoch’s acquisition of his daughter’s production company, Shine, for $675 million was amended to include the phone hacking scandal. The filings allege that the phone hacking “revelations show a culture run amuck within News Corp. and a Board that provides no effective review or oversight.”24
Some suggest that the phone hacking will mean the end of Rupert Murdoch’s reign over the company; he has been criticized for running it more like a family business than a publicly traded institution. Certainly, it has paused speculation that Murdoch’s son James would succeed him as CEO.
However, its effect on Fox News and its political actions remains unknown. Running an incredibly profitable division of the company, Roger Ailes would likely be untouched in any transition. The question is whether a new CEO would give him free rein to run Fox News as his own political fiefdom, as Murdoch has permitted.
The end of Glenn Beck’s tenure at Fox would also mark his departure from broadcast television and a renewed focus on developing a new platform. For years he had been more than just a television and radio host—Beck’s reach spanned nearly every media platform, each venue serving as a promotional vehicle for the others. Even while hosting his show at Fox, his largest audience and paycheck came from his syndicated radio show. Beck also was a prolific writer. In two and a half years at Fox, while broadcasting three hours of radio and an hour of television every weekday, he wrote seven books in multiple genres, including a novel, titled The Overton Window, and a self-help book called The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life.
Post-Fox, Beck also took his act on the road, performing at venues around the country, with crowds and ticket prices that matched bands on the Billboard Top 100.
But Beck’s largest area of growth was his online presence. In the fall of 2010, he launched TheBlaze.com, his version of The Huffington Post. He also began to provide his audience with original paid content such as “Insider Extreme,” which allowed subscribers to watch a live video feed of his radio show and an extra hour of content from his cohosts and producers, Pat and Stu.
In 2010, Beck had launched an online “university” offering courses focused on faith, hope, and charity that used guests from his show as teachers. One of them was David Barton, who had previously been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. The organization wrote in its 1994 book The Religious Right that his “ostensible scholarship functions in fact as an assault on scholarship: in the manner of other recent phony revisionisms, the history it supports is little more than a compendium of anecdotes divorced from their original context, linked harum-scarum and laced with factual errors and distorted innuendo.”25 Most damningly, the ADL wrote that “Barton’s ‘scholarship,’ like that of Holocaust denial and Atlantic slave trade conspiracy-mongering, is rigged to arrive at predetermined conclusions, not history.” At Glenn Beck University, Barton taught a series of courses titled Faith 101, 102, and 103.
Though Beck’s salary from Fox was near the bottom of his list of revenue sources, the network did provide him with his most influential platform. Because of the network’s position as the go-to place for conservative news, it opened up Beck to an entirely new audience. With frequent guest appearances with Bill O’Reilly and on Fox & Friends, Beck took full advantage of his television home.
When Fox executive Joel Cheatwood left the network to join Beck’s production company, Mercury Radio Arts, there were rumors that Beck would attempt to form his own television network. The New York Times went so far as to speculate that Beck “could follow a road paved by Oprah Winfrey when she started OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network in January.”26
At the time, we asked a senior executive at a major cable company if he believed Beck was launching his own network. The executive responded that this was extremely unlikely. While Beck had proven himself a ratings star, he had not shown the ability to create the additional stream of attractive programing required to operate a ca
ble network. It was suggested Beck might try to create an On-Demand channel or go the more lucrative route of an Internet subscription model.
Sure enough, on June 6, just after Fox announced his departure date, Mercury Radio Arts announced the creation of an online network called GBTV. In spite of his professed disdain for the “liberal” New York Times, Beck gave it the exclusive story on the formation of his channel. Media reporter Brian Stelter wrote, “On Tuesday, Mr. Beck will announce a first-of-its-kind effort to take a popular—but also fiercely polarizing—television show and turn it into its own subscription enterprise.” Stelter, who interviewed Beck for the story, concluded, “It is an adaptation of the business models of both HBO and Netflix for one man’s personal brand—and a huge risk, as he and his staff members acknowledged in interviews in recent days.”27
Beck’s press release described the network’s content by stating that it “will feature an exclusive behind-the-scenes reality show about the making of GBTV. GBTV subscribers will also get access to a video simulcast of Glenn’s daily three-hour radio program, original documentaries, and in-depth coverage of live events, such as Glenn’s ‘Restoring Courage’ event in Israel on August 24th.”28
By the day of GBTV’s launch on September 12, 2011, Beck had already signed up more than 230,000 customers. While comprising 10 percent of his television audience, at a cost to subscribers of $9.95 per month, Mercury Radio would earn more than
$25 million in revenue, nearly ten times his reported salary at Fox News. If he managed to enlist one million subscribers, the company would earn more than $100 million a year, making Beck one of the highest-paid broadcasters in history. The question was whether Glenn Beck’s brand was strong enough to bring in such astronomical numbers. It’s one thing to attract a primarily passive radio and television audience; it is completely another to attract an audience willing to shell out a monthly fee to watch your programming. Furthermore, no regularly scheduled online program has ever achieved such a large audience.
Glenn Beck, however, was ready to test the strength of his brand. Following up on his Restoring Honor rally a year earlier, Beck would now host another mega-event—this time, outside the United States. He would journey to Israel at the end of August to host a rally he titled “Restoring Courage.”
Ever the showman, Beck announced the event in mid-May using the same self-aggrandizing language he had a year earlier for the Restoring Honor event and two years earlier in the announcement of the 9/12 Project. He called the Restoring Courage rally “a life-changing, life-altering event” and said, “This will be a—
I think, a pinnacle moment in your life. It will define you. In the end, this event will define you.”29 He even borrowed from the Gettysburg Address, saying that “possibly for the first time in man’s history, God will remember and make note of what we do there.”30
In the run‑up to the event, Beck began linking himself to members of the far right of Israel’s conservative Likud Party. In July, he was even invited to testify before a committee of the Knesset. Danny Danon, a member of the body, became one of Beck’s principal advocates in Israel. He was warmly received, save for an awkward conversation in which Beck expressed his concern about not wearing a tie before the legislative body.
Beck’s hyperbole continued throughout the promotion of the event, turning more and more messianic as the date drew closer. On August 12, he told his radio audience, “Somebody sent this to me last night—a religious figure that I respect. He said it was sent in by somebody else and he said, ‘I’ve looked into this, and I think this might be right.’ ” Beck continued, “He said, ‘The Restoring Courage event,’ he said, ‘I believe may be, may be, a fulfillment of Zechariah prophecy.’ Listen to this from Zechariah. He’s talking about, and in the days when all hell breaks loose this is what the Lord Almighty says.”31
This followed Beck’s August 10 broadcast, on which he proclaimed, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this did alter the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if a pillar of fire showed up. Sky is the limit. I have seen miracles on this.”32
The pillar of fire never appeared. In fact, Beck’s presence in the country became somewhat unwelcome. His record of statements about the Holocaust and references to anti-Semitic literature were too much for many Israelis.
In early August, Knesset members Nachman Shai and Danny Danon debated about Glenn Beck on the popular Israel Defense Forces Radio program Ma Boer. Danon tried to defend Beck, claiming, “Yes, he has made problematic comments and let me tell you a secret. He is going to make problematic comments in the future also.” The show’s host asked Nachman Shai, “Does this man do more harm to Israel than good?” To which Shai responded, “Of course! Of course!”33
Prominent Israeli blogger Noam Sheizaf published an op-ed in The Jewish Daily Forward summing up the Israeli case against Beck, writing, “This is not the kind of help Israel needs. Beck’s religious rhetoric, his radical conservative positions and his fondness for the idea of Armageddon present a real danger to the well-being of Israelis and Palestinians alike.”34
Not only did the Israeli left object to Glenn Beck’s rally, but many on the right in Israel were not welcoming either. Several rabbis and religious figures called for a boycott of the rally, led by Mina Fenton, “a former Jerusalem council woman for the National Religious Party.”35
In the lead‑up to the event, Beck and his allies in Israel promoted the idea that U.S. politicians, led by Joe Lieberman, would attend. As the day drew closer, this became less and less likely. The only presidential candidate publicly committed to appear was Herman Cain, who at the time was trailing far behind in the Republican field.
AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations sponsored trips to the nation for more than eighty lawmakers in August. Many assumed that these leaders would participate in Beck’s rally. However, the House ethics committee told lawmakers they couldn’t attend a political event while on official travel. Beck was informed of this on air by Representative Joe Walsh, who told him, “Lo and behold, ethics yesterday said—did not approve the trip … They said your portion of the fact-finding mission had the appearance of a political event.”36
Beck lashed out at Speaker of the House John Boehner, saying, “Speaker Boehner, you should be ashamed of yourself. The Republican Party should be ashamed of themselves. They don’t have to attend my event. Let them come to our biggest ally and our only friend in the Middle East in their hour of need. They don’t have to attend my event! In fact, I’ll ban them. Does that make you happy?”37
After several back-and-forth reports, Lieberman confirmed he would not attend Restoring Courage, and early supporters such as Eric Cantor, the Republican House Majority Leader and highest-ranking Jewish officeholder in the United States, also declined Beck’s invitation.
Ultimately, Beck’s series of Israel events would each be attended by only several thousand people. Most telling, however, was the fact that the event was mentioned only once on Fox, not by a network employee, but by Herman Cain, during an interview. It did not receive the banner coverage or promotion that Beck’s previous efforts had been granted on Fox and other news channels. Without the broadcast platform of Fox, Beck had been relegated to a crank in the swamps of talk radio and the Internet. Observer David Weigel wrote in a post at Slate, “Post–Fox News, I meet conservative activists in primary states who say they miss Beck. Without Fox, his imprint on the culture is barely noticeable.”38
It had been a wild two-and-a-half-year ride to prominence, but the consequence to Beck after losing his platform on Fox was evident. Even though he still hosted one of the top radio programs in the country, within two months of leaving the network he was no longer culturally significant.
As the summer of 2011 began, the Republican presidential primary was finally in full swing, with a multitude of candidates competing to challenge the president. All eyes turned to the first test of the election, the Iowa Straw Poll, held every four years in the city of Ames. Though the event awards no convent
ion delegates, the media has inflated its importance over the years, seeing it as a critical first test of how well candidates can organize a successful campaign for the upcoming caucuses. Consequently, candidates spend tens of thousands of dollars on staff and tents, complete with food and entertainment, hoping to make a good first impression. In 2007, Mitt Romney trounced the competition, receiving more than 31 percent of the vote. Mike Huckabee, who would ultimately win the caucuses, received just over 18 percent. Four years later, Mitt Romney, now the overwhelming front-runner, would choose not to compete in the straw poll.
It did not matter. With voters casting ballots, even meaningless ones, the political media had a story to report. Fox News positioned itself at the center of the event, hosting a debate with The Washington Examiner in Iowa on August 11, just two days before the straw poll. Ignoring the first debate, which was full of second-tier candidates, Fox vice president Michael Clemente announced the event by stating, “FOX News is proud to partner with The Washington Examiner and the Iowa GOP to kick off the 2012 election season and provide viewers the most thorough coverage of this important debate.”39
The debate was moderated by Fox hosts Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, who were joined by The Washington Examiner’s Byron York and Susan Ferrechio. When it was done, several observers seemed more focused on Fox’s performance than the candidates’, declaring the news network the winner of the debate based on the performance of its staff. The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik praised Baier, writing, “I cannot remember seeing a moderator this side of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who opened a debate with a more focused, well-researched barrage of questions … He set the bar high for every moderator who follows this presidential season.”40