I suppose we shouldn't be surprised given the source (AP), but it was still shocking to see so many easily provable falsehoods thrown into a "news" piece, which then got massive internet play from Yahoo's Front Page News to Breitbart, and everywhere in between.

AP reporter David Bauder reported that "33 Fox advertisers", and he includes WalMart and Clorox "directed that their commercials not air on Beck's show". In an email to DefendGlenn, Bauder claims he "spoke to several of the companies", yet if he had contacted ALL of them, as have we, he would have discovered that all but 11 have DENIED the claims of Color of Change that they had "pulled" ads from Beck or joined a "boycott", including WalMart, Clorox, Best Buy, and SC Johnson.

Bauder, laughably, even quotes CoC Executive Director James Rucker as calling Glenn Beck Fox's "toxic asset". This is the same group who endorsed Kanye West's statement after Katrina that "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" by selling t-shirts on ColorofChange.org which read "Kanye was Right". In addition, CoC said on its own website that Bush "would never have left rich, white people to suffer and die" (their emphasis). Who is the race-baiting "toxic" party here? If a right-leaning group had associated itself with such hate-speech, it would long ago have been dismissed as a racist hate group. Yet Bauder uses Rucker as his SOLE source on this so-called boycott. Incredible. Perhaps advertisers told C of C one thing and DefendGlenn.com another--but how about getting both sides of the story?

Bauder is now on vacation, "until Aug. 31" we are told, which might explain why the piece was rushed to web without the rigorous sourcing one would expect from a professional "journalist".

Last Updated: 09.20.09 17:31