Newsmax.com
Backlash Against Boycott of Glenn Beck
Sunday, August 23, 2009 5:32 PM
By: David A. Patten
A leftwing group’s effort to intimidate corporate advertisers on Fox News’ Glenn Beck show appears to be backfiring as it triggers a wave of support from grassroots fans rushing to defend the popular TV personality from the attacks.
Even before the liberal boycott of Glenn Beck began this summer, the bestselling author and TV host had became a ratings superstar, with his 5 p.m. cable news program pulling mega prime time viewership numbers. Beck had also become a lightning rod for liberal groups who didn’t like his anti-Obama message and his staggeringly large audience.
But now Beck’s fame seems to be growing even more as a spontaneous, nationwide effort has sprung up among fans to defend their hero, including Web sites, Facebook groups, homegrown e-mail blasts, and individual telephone campaigns.
The reaction in support of Beck comes in the wake of the advertiser-boycott campaign launched by Color of Change, an African-American advocacy organization with close ties to the Obama White House.
While garnering some initial success, it appears the group is making claims that don’t match with reality, with several major companies claiming they never joined any boycott of Beck’s show.
According to Color of Change, major advertisers such as Wal-Mart, CVS, ConAgra, and Sargento have directed Fox News not to air their ads during the Glenn Beck Program.
The group would likely have been dismissed as a gadfly were it not for its high level connections to the Obama White House. Color of Change co-founder, Van Jones, now works in the Obama administration as the president's "green jobs czar."
Beck has been a fearless critic of both President Obama and Jones, whose association with Color of Change was said to have ended in December 2007.
Color of Change Executive Director James Rucker tells Newsmax that his organization wants Beck silenced for his July remark on Fox & Friends that Obama was "racist" – an opinion Beck voiced in the context of the president’s chastising of the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. James Crowley for acting "stupidly" in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.
"It's preposterous and absurd," Rucker tells Newsmax of Beck's utterance. "It's insulting to black Americans; and it corrupts honest debate. Anyone who uses such a platform to spew such vitriol, whether Glenn Beck or anyone else, has no place on the air, and we at Color Of Change would use every resource available to us to remove corporate sponsorship from their platform."
Conservative Backlash
Beck's enemies on the left, however, in their campaign to destroy Beck, have awakened a sleeping giant.
Like the town hall protesters, Beck's supporters are now rising up to declare they're fed up and not going to take it anymore. And joining in their counterattack are some of the most respected voices in conservative media.
"Glenn Beck is to be congratulated," New York Times best-selling author Peter Schweizer tells Newsmax. "They only go after you when you are being effective -- he must really be causing them problems."
"I think it tells us a lot about the style of politics coming from the organized left and this White House," says Rich Noyes, research director for the conservative Media Research Council watchdog organization. "They want to be so strenuous in going after their adversaries, they have a take-no-prisoners approach. I think it would be unthinkable if conservatives, particularly those affiliated with the Bush White House, had gone after a media figure associated with one of the other networks."
"That's Chicago politics," conservative icon and direct-marketing expert Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. "We're seeing the Chicago-ization of politics. We hear how dangerous it is for some of these people to come in the vicinity of the president with a weapon. Then we see the chairman of a powerful committee, Henry Waxman, issuing subpoenas to 5o insurance executives for their corporate records. That's how they play the game. They will use any method they can to attain power and then hold onto that power. They tried to do the same with Rush Limbaugh, but Rush Limbaugh is too big for them to handle. This is how Democrats operate."
On Thursday, DC Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott wrote: "Funny, I don't recall that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression to everybody except those whose opinions the four members of ColorofChange.org find ‘repulsive and divisive.’"
Tapscott called on readers to conduct a reverse boycott against the companies bowing to left-wing pressure, who are pulling their ads from Beck's program. Those companies, Tapscott says, "are aiding and abetting a vicious, political campaign to slander him by an outfit apparently created for just such a purpose."
A reverse boycott is precisely what's taking place.
On Sunday, August 16, Beck supporter John Hill launched a Web site, DefendGlenn.com. Five days later, according to Hill, the site had recorded 1.9 million visits, racked up 1,033 Twitter followers, and garnered 5,800 user comments on its "Support Wall."
"Let your voice be heard! Fight back against the lies and the extremist boycott of Glenn Beck," the site declares.
DefendGlenn.com provides contact information for companies that have pulled their advertising. It also lists and encourages the companies who have stuck with the Beck program.
"We launched DefendGlenn basically just to counter a lot of the distortions and lies that were put out by this group Color of Change, which we saw weren't being countered at all," Hill tells Newsmax.
Among the messages fans left on the DefendGlenn "Support Wall" to show their support for Beck:
# "Freedom of speech applies to all speech, even those from the right," wrote Matt Elmore of Woodbridge, Va.
# "You are not alone, but like Gen. Washington, out in front of the troops," wrote Michael Lyon of Estero, Fla.
# "Never give up,” Leonor Godwin of Stephenville, Texas wrote him. “They are trying to break you. You are our inspiration and our rock."
Hill also tells Newsmax he has received 5,000 e-mails from people who tell him they are cancelling their GEICO insurance policy because the company has joined the boycott against Beck, and about 6,500 e-mails from consumers who say they will never purchase a Sargento product again.
"I don't want to do that," Hill tells Newsmax. "I think boycotts are stupid. But if they're going to join the boycott, boycotts work two ways. Earlier in the week the companies were saying, 'Yeah we're dropping the ads.’ But as soon as people started getting in touch with them, they started denying they were dropping anything.'"
Other Beck supporters are getting into the act as well. They include an upstate New York stay-at-home mom who became alarmed when she saw the orchestrated campaign to make one of the most independent voices in American media a pariah. Already a member of the 912 organization Beck initiated to recapture the non-partisan spirit of unity the nation experienced after the 9/11 terror attacks, she created SupportGlennBeck.com.
The site includes a petition which states: “Through his radio and television show, he promotes God, family, and country -- which resonates with a majority of Americans.
“There are some people who have an ideological problem with Glenn Beck. These people will not be satisfied until voices such as Glenn’s are silenced. For the millions of us who share Glenn’s values, there is nothing more frightening than losing our forum,” the petition states.
The growing pro-Beck movement has also reached social networking sites. One example: Beck supporter Doug Edelman of St. Louis, Mo., has established a new Facebook group, “Defend Glenn Beck Against Thug Inspired Boycott.” In its first week, over 790 members joined the group, which includes a statement of support for Beck and lists contact information for companies that are said to be boycotting his show.
Exaggerated Boycotts
The anti-Beck activists claim over 20 advertisers have dropped the Beck program. Hill and others on the pro-Beck side dispute say Color of Change has greatly exaggerated the effect of its boycott.
Many of the companies the organization lists now deny they have anything to do with the boycott. Newsmax contacted Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, SC Johnson, and Radio Shack, all of which said they have not directed Fox News to pull their ads from the Glenn Beck Program as Color of Change has stated.
In fact, these companies’ representatives tell Newsmax that as a matter of corporate policy they never did advertise on the Glenn Beck Program, and ask how they could boycott a program they never placed an ad on in the first place.
Another company, State Farm, tells Newsmax their ad was never supposed to air on the Glenn Beck program. Their spokesman says State Farm has a longstanding company policy against advertising on any "political or opinion programming."
Having discovered the error, State Farm says, it will not be advertising on any cable talk show. And it is careful to emphasize it is not singling out Beck in this regard.
As State Farm’s response suggests, the net effect of the anti-Beck crusade will probably be fewer advertisers willing to advertise on the talk shows of any cable network.
Consider for example the corporate response from Clorox. On Thursday, company executives wrote Hill stating: “After a comprehensive review of political talk shows across the spectrum, at this time we have made a decision not to advertise on political talk shows.”
Assuming the pro-Beck backlash continues, that probably means the activist campaign intended to hurt Beck will, ironically, damage Beck’s progressive competitors more than it hurts him.
Lost ads will impact smaller networks like MSNBC far more than it will affect ratings juggernaut Fox News, industry sources say.
According to Mediabistro’s TV Newser, nearly 2.5 million viewers tuned in to Beck’s show in its 5 p.m. ET timeslot last week. Beck’s ratings on Fox exceeded those of CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News combined.
All of which calls into question whether advertiser boycotts work anyway. “It’s funny because I think their calculation is that by going after advertisers they are going to affect his bottom line,” Schweizer says. “But this is a common misperception of liberals. Beck isn’t in this for the money. So even if they could succeed, they won’t silence him.”
Michael Harrison has seen plenty of media campaigns come and go as publisher of Talkers Magazine. “My guess,” he says, “is he will weather this storm.”
“Beck expected to get hostile feedback, and a whole bunch of publicity, and he succeeded on both counts,” Harrison says. “People have the right to be offended and businesses have the right to spend their advertising dollars however they choose. Free speech guarantees the right of having an opinion without government censorship. It doesn’t guarantee that people won’t be angry and withhold their support. The free marketplace of ideas is not for the faint hearted!”
And for ratings giant Fox, Beck’s remarkable connection with viewers has made the free market a profitable one indeed. “The advertisers referenced have all moved their spots from Beck to other programs on the network,” a Fox spokesman recently told Ad Age, “so there is no revenue lost.”
Below are companies listed on the DefendGlenn site as having joined the Color of Change boycott against Glenn Beck:
Ally Bank
President & CEO Mark B. Hales
(877) 247-2559
6985 Union Park Center
Midvale, Utah 84047
-------------------
Broadview Security (Brinks)
Robert B. Allen
(800) 445-0872
8880 Esters Blvd
Irving, TX 75063
-------------------
CVS Caremark Corporation
Thomas M. Ryan
(401) 765-1500
One CVS Drive
Woonsocket, RI 02895
------------------
GEICO
Chairman & CEO Tony Nicely
(800) 861-8380
5260 Western Ave.
Chevy Chase, Md. 20815
-------------------
Healthy Choice Foods
A subsidiary of
ConAgra Foods, Inc.
President and CEO Gary M. Rodkin
(402) 595-4000
1 ConAgra Dr.
Omaha, NE 68102-5001
-------------------
Lawyers.com
A subsidiary of
LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell
CEO Andrew Prozes
(800) 526-4902
121 Chanlon Road
New Providence, NJ 07974
-------------------
Men's Wearhouse
Chairman and CEO George Zimmer
(281) 776-7200
6380 Rogerdale Rd
Houston, TX 77072
-------------------
Sanofi-Aventis U.S.
President and CEO Gregory Irace
(800) 981-2491
55 Corporate Drive
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
-------------------
Sargento Foods Inc.
Chairman and CEO Louis Gentine
(800) 243-3737
One Persnickety Place
Plymouth, WI 53073
-------------------
State Farm
Chairman and CEO Edward B. Rust Jr.
(877) 734-2265 (Ask for a “Representative”)
1 State Farm Plaza
Bloomington, IL 61710-0001
United States
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.