April Fools? Media Matters caught in a web of lies in their war on Glenn Beck!

April 01, 2011

Writer

Yesterday, in what must have an early April Fool joke, a Media Matters employee posted a poorly researched article on their website that baselessly claimed that The Glenn Beck Program had fallen short of 400 radio affiliates. Almost immediately after the article was posted, multiple media outlets debunked the lies. Glenn addressed the issue on radio this morning.

“There's nobody more credible on numbers than Media Matters. Nobody more credible. I mean, you can take their numbers directly to the bank and deposit them,” Pat said.

“Not in the sense that they have any value,” Stu said.

“I mean, really now that you think about it, you might not want to take their numbers to the bank directly. You might want to stop at a garbage can between your house and there and deposit it there,” Pat suggested.

When Pat brought up the Media Matters article on air, Glenn asked what was said. Stu explained to Glenn that the article claimed the show had dropped below 400 affiliates (editor’s note: it would still be the third largest radio show in America even if this was true). Stu said that Business Insider, on the other hand, had actually done research and found that the show had over 430 affiliates.

“May I ask you this? Because everybody's focusing like, what have we lost? Like seven stations? But haven't we gained in the same period, haven't we gained like 88 stations?” Glenn asked.

“Apparently Media Matters forgot to add to their count the 88 stations that have acquired Beck in the past year,” Stu said.

“What you have to take into account on, you know, radio networks like ours, like national shows that gain and lose affiliates on a pretty regular basis,” Pat explained.

“ Yeah, we have over 430 affiliates, and what that probably means is we've had in our lifetime probably 630 affiliates and we've probably lost 200,” Stu said.

“People just don't understand the instability of the radio industry,” Pat explained.

Despite the fact that the Media Matters article has been proven to be a fabrication, the progressive organization has refused to issue a correction. (editor’s note: I don’t really expect them to issue a correction. Legitimate news sources lead with their mistakes. Fake news sources close their eyes and hope no one notices.)

While we won’t be updating our website and marketing materials to reflect the lies contained in the Media Matters article, listeners may hear Glenn trumpeting the fact that they were absolutely, 100% incorrect. As Mediaite pointed out in a short, but funny, article:

Earlier today, Media Matters reported that Glenn Beck’s radio show had lost enough stations that he could no longer claim, as he does on his website, that the show is “heard on over 400 stations.” However, it appears they got some of their math wrong. This is terrible, terrible news, obviously. This means that, for the next three weeks, we’re going to have to listen to Beck go on and on about how Media Matters has “86 employees trying to get me and they still can’t get their facts right!”

While that may be an issue down the road, Glenn decided to take the controversy and use it to promote local radio stations and local radio advertisers.

“These radio stations are fighting for their life to stay on the air,” Glenn said. Glenn and Pat said that when they first started, people could make a lot of money in radio, but that’s not the case anymore. “You can't now. You really can't. They have cut things so far to the bone.”

“It is the only medium besides the Internet, it is the only medium where you actually have a say. It's the only medium where you actually can call in and have your voice on a national program,” Glenn said.

“We do celebrate when a station goes local, even though it can hurt us. Local people are going to be the people that eventually replace me. I was a local guy. We need local hosts. And the only way that happens is if you go to the advertisers that you hear on this station and you frequent their business and you tell them, thank you, thank you for sponsoring these people,” Glenn said.

And while Media Matters may go out and try and attack national and local businesses that advertise on Glenn’s programs, Glenn explained his very simple philosophy on partnering his show with advertisers. “My philosophy is if it's right for me, if it's right for the advertiser and it is right for the consumer, if all three of us can walk away and say that was a good deal, then it's right. Once one of those three legs goes, then the table can't stand anymore.”

And Glenn warned the businesses that work with him not to abuse his audience. “Don't you ever screw them. Don't you ever do anything. I'll expose you if I ever find out that you guys are doing something. I will expose you nationally. You'll never be able to start a business because you have people's trust and I do, too, and you must honor that.”

To read more about how wrong Media Matters has been on this story, you can check out The Blaze, Business Insider, and Mediaite. (editor’s note: Media Matters, please feel free to print and frame any of these pieces to keep at your desk)

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VIDEO: Both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama are radicals, but there's one HUGE difference

Biden backs yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences

The number of people serving life sentences now exceeds the entire prison population in 1970, according to newly-released data from the Sentencing Project. The continued growth of life sentences is largely the result of "tough on crime" policies pushed by legislators in the 1990s, including presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Biden has since apologized for backing those types of policies, but it seems he has yet to learn his lesson. Indeed, Biden is backing yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences—mandatory drug treatment for all drug offenders.

Proponents of this policy argue that forced drug treatment will reduce drug usage and recidivism and save lives. But the evidence simply isn't on their side. Mandatory treatment isn't just patently unethical, it's also ineffective—and dangerous.

Many well-meaning people view mandatory treatment as a positive alternative to incarceration. But there's a reason that mandatory treatment is also known as "compulsory confinement." As author Maya Schenwar asks in The Guardian, "If shepherding live human bodies off to prison to isolate and manipulate them without their permission isn't ethical, why is shipping those bodies off to compulsory rehab an acceptable alternative?" Compulsory treatment isn't an alternative to incarceration. It is incarceration.

Compulsory treatment is also arguably a breach of international human rights agreements and ethical standards. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made it clear that the standards of ethical treatment also apply to the treatment of drug dependence—standards that include the right to autonomy and self-determination. Indeed, according to UNODC, "people who use or are dependent on drugs do not automatically lack the capacity to consent to treatment...consent of the patient should be obtained before any treatment intervention." Forced treatment violates a person's right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.

It's a useless endeavor, anyway, because studies have shown that it doesn't improve outcomes in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism. A review of nine studies, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, failed to find sufficient evidence that compulsory drug treatment approaches are effective. The results didn't suggest improved outcomes in reducing drug use among drug-dependent individuals enrolled in compulsory treatment. However, some studies did suggest potential harm.

According to one study, 33% of compulsorily-treated participants were reincarcerated, compared to a mere 5% of the non-treatment sample population. Moreover, rates of post-release illicit drug use were higher among those who received compulsory treatment. Even worse, a 2016 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that people who received involuntary treatment were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those with a history of only voluntary treatment.

These findings echo studies published in medical journals like Addiction and BMJ. A study in Addiction found that involuntary drug treatment was a risk factor for a non-fatal drug overdose. Similarly, a study in BMJ found that patients who successfully completed inpatient detoxification were more likely than other patients to die within a year. The high rate of overdose deaths by people previously involuntarily treated is likely because most people who are taken involuntarily aren't ready to stop using drugs, authors of the Addiction study reported. That makes sense. People who aren't ready to get clean will likely use again when they are released. For them, the only post-treatment difference will be lower tolerance, thanks to forced detoxification and abstinence. Indeed, a loss of tolerance, combined with the lack of a desire to stop using drugs, likely puts compulsorily-treated patients at a higher risk of overdose.

The UNODC agrees. In their words, compulsory treatment is "expensive, not cost-effective, and neither benefits the individual nor the community." So, then, why would we even try?

Biden is right to look for ways to combat addiction and drug crime outside of the criminal justice system. But forced drug treatment for all drug offenders is a flawed, unethical policy, with deadly consequences. If the goal is to help people and reduce harm, then there are plenty of ways to get there. Mandatory treatment isn't one of them.

Lindsay Marie is a policy analyst for the Lone Star Policy Institute, an independent think tank that promotes freedom and prosperity for all Texans. You can follow her on Twitter @LindsayMarieLP.

BOMBSHELL: 'It wasn't just Hunter,' Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden was target of Ukraine corruption investigation — and he has the evidence to prove it

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani joined Glenn Beck on Tuesday's radio program discuss the Senate's ongoing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and reveal new bombshell documents he's currently releasing.

Giuliani told Glenn he has evidence of "very, very serious crime at the highest levels of government," that the "corrupt media" is doing everything in their power to discredit.

He also dropped some major, previously unreported news: not only was Hunter Biden under investigation in 2016, when then-Vice President Biden "forced" the firing of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, but so was the vice president himself.

"Shokin can prove he was investigating Biden and his son. And I now have the prosecutorial documents that show, all during that period of time, not only was Hunter Biden under investigation -- Joe Biden was under investigation," Giuliani explained. "It wasn't just Hunter."

Watch this clip to get a rundown of everything Giuliani has uncovered so far.

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Revealing Bernie’s dark side — one 1980s quote at a time

For most Americans, the 1980s was marked by big hair, epic lightsaber battles, and school-skipping Ferris Bueller dancing his way into the hearts of millions.

But for Bernie Sanders — who, by the way, was at that time the oldest-looking 40-year-old in human history — the 1980s was a period of important personal milestones.

Prior to his successful 1980 campaign to become mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was mostly known around the Green Mountain State as a crazy, wildly idealistic socialist. (Think Karl Marx meets Don Quixote.) But everything started to change for Sanders when he became famous—or, in the eyes of many, notorious—for being "America's socialist mayor."

As mayor, Sanders' radical ideas were finally given the attention he had always craved but couldn't manage to capture. This makes this period of his career particularly interesting to study. Unlike today, the Bernie Sanders of the 1980s wasn't concerned with winning over an entire nation — just the wave of far-left New York City exiles that flooded Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s — and he was much more willing to openly align himself with local and national socialist and communist parties.

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Over the past few weeks, I have been reading news reports of Sanders recorded in the 1980s — because, you know, that's how guys like me spend their Saturday nights — and what I've found is pretty remarkable.

For starters, Sanders had (during the height of the Soviet Union) a very cozy relationship with people who openly advocated for Marxism and communism. He was an elector for the Socialist Workers Party and promoted the party's presidential candidates in 1980 and 1984.

To say the Socialist Workers Party was radical would be a tremendous understatement. It was widely known SWP was a communist organization mostly dedicated to the teachings of Marx and Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Among other radical things I've discovered in interviews Sanders conducted with the SWP's newspaper — appropriately named The Militant (seriously, you can't make this stuff up) — is a statement by Sanders published in June 1981 suggesting that some police departments "are dominated by fascists and Nazis," a comment that is just now being rediscovered for the first time in decades.

In 1980, Sanders lauded the Socialist Workers Party's "continued defense of the Cuban revolution." And later in the 1980s, Sanders reportedly endorsed a collection of speeches by the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even though there had been widespread media reports of the Sandinistas' many human rights violations prior to Sanders' endorsement, including "restrictions on free movement; torture; denial of due process; lack of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; denial of the right of association and of free labor unions."

Sanders also traveled to Nicaragua and met with socialist President Daniel Ortega. He later called the trip a "profoundly emotional experience."

Comrade Bernie's disturbing Marxist past, which is far more extensive than what can be covered in this short article, shouldn't be treated as a mere historical footnote. It clearly illustrates that Sanders' brand of "democratic socialism" is much more than a $15 minimum wage and calls for single-payer health care. It's full of Marxist philosophy, radical revolutionary thinking, anti-police rhetoric, and even support for authoritarian governments.

Millions of Americans have been tricked into thinking Sanders isn't the radical communist the historical record — and even Sanders' own words — clearly show that he is. But the deeper I have dug into Comrade Bernie's past, the more evident it has become that his thinking is much darker and more dangerous and twisted than many of his followers ever imagined.

Tomorrow night, don't miss Glenn Beck's special exposing the radicals who are running Bernie Sanders' campaign. From top to bottom, his campaign is staffed with hard-left extremists who are eager to burn down the system. The threat to our constitution is very real from Bernie's team, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before in a U.S. election. Join Glenn on Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern on BlazeTV's YouTube page, and on BlazeTV.com. And just in case you miss it live, the only way to catch all of Glenn's specials on-demand is by subscribing to Blaze TV.

Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is editorial director of The Heartland Institute and editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.

Candace Owens blasts leftist cancel culture: 'Godless', 'societal atom bomb'

Candace Owens, BLEXIT founder and author of the upcoming book, "Blackout," joined Glenn Beck on Friday's GlennTV for an exclusive interview. available only to BlazeTV subscribers.

Candace dropped a few truth-bombs about the progressive movement and what's happening to the Democratic Party. She said people are practically running away from the left due to their incessant push to dig up dirt on anybody who disagrees with their radical ideology. She explained how -- like China and its "social credit score" -- the left is shaping America into its own nightmarish episode of "Black Mirror."

"This game of making sure that everyone is politically correct is a societal atom bomb. There are no survivors. There's no one that is perfect," Candace said. "The idea that humanity can be perfect is Godless. If you accept that there is something greater than us, then you accept that we a flawed. To be human is to be flawed."

Enjoy this clip from the full episode below:

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BlazeTV subscribers can watch the full interview on BlazeTV.com. Use code GLENN to save $10 off one year of your subscription.