2011 Activism home
Media Wars
490,046
petition signatures
1
talk show
host fired
14,776
letters
On the media front, CREDO waged some battles to minimize the polluting effect of extremist rhetoric on the public discourse. In 2011, we targeted two of the virulent sources of such rhetoric: Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan. And just as important, CREDO members pushed hard to defend public broadcasting, especially National Public Radio, from the budget axe wielded by right-wing legislators.
National public broadcasting is remarkably cost effective, providing local news and information, free of charge, for millions of viewers while only receiving about .0001% of the federal budget. But that didn’t stop House Republicans from trying to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds NPR, PBS, Pacifica and many other public stations. This outraged CREDO members, and 490,046 of them signed petitions calling for full funding for public broadcasting.
Meanwhile, over at Fox News, Glenn Beck was continuing his hateful, violence-inducing, race-baiting rhetoric, and CREDO members had long wanted it stopped. Working with our friends at Media Matters for America and Color of Change, we pushed Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes at Fox to stop Beck’s vitriolic rants. Finally, on the weekend of Independence Day, the nation was freed from Beck’s presence on Fox. CREDO members also sent 14,776 letters to Clear Channel asking that Glenn Beck be taken off the air on the radio network.
Pat Buchanan has spouted his xenophobic and racist views while masquerading as a mainstream commentator. He has First Amendment rights to speak his mind, but MSNBC doesn’t have to pay him to air his racist views. CREDO joined with Color of Change and delivered more than 275,000 petition signatures urging MSNBC to fire Buchanan. Although he was not fired, Buchanan has not appeared on MSNBC since our campaign began.
And more than 90,000 CREDO activists targeted Orbitz, the online travel site that touts eco-tourism, green hotels and hybrid rental cars, to drop its ads from Fox News, a pernicious source of climate science misinformation. Orbitz responded, saying it will reconsider its ads on FOX.
2011 Activism home