400 Rabbis Demand Fox News Sanction Beck And Ailes For ‘Unacceptable’ Holocaust Imagery
Today, 400 rabbis will mark International Holocuast Remberance Day with a letter demanding Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch sanction CEO Roger Ailes and incendiary host Glenn Beck “for repeated use of Nazi and Holocaust imagery” and for “airing attacks on World War Two survivor George Soros.” The letter will run as an ad in Thursday’s editions of the Wall Street Journal and other media owned by Murdoch’s News Corp.
The nonprofit advocacy group Jewish Funds for Justice is running the $100,000 ad that states, “We share a belief that the Holocaust, of course can and should be discussed appropriately in the media. But that is not what we have seen at Fox News.” Prompted by Ailes’ wanton vilification of NPR executives as Nazis and Beck’s three-part program accusing Soros of “sending his people to death camps,” the rabbis demanded Fox sanction them for continuing “unacceptable attacks” and “dismissive remarks”:
“It is not appropriate to accuse a 14-year-old Jew hiding with a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Hungary of sending his people to death camps,” says the ad. “It is not appropriate to call executives of another news agency ‘Nazis.’ And it is not appropriate to make literally hundreds of on-air references to the Holocaust and Nazis when characterizing people with whom you disagree.”
“We respectfully request that Glenn Beck be sanctioned by Fox News for his completely unacceptable attacks on a survivor of the Holocaust and that Roger Ailes apologize for his dismissive remarks about rabbis’ sensitivity to how the Holocaust is used on the air.”
Having catalogued “literally hundreds” of Beck’s Nazi on-air anti-Semitic “dogwhistling” and Ailes’ weak excuses and dismissal of Beck’s critics as “left-wing rabbis,” the rabbis told Murdoch “you diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit any individual or organization you disagree with. That is what Fox News has done in recent weeks, and it is not only ‘left-wing rabbis’ who think so.”
Though Fox “hasn’t seen the ad,” Fox News spokesman John Cheatwood offered these conciliatory remarks: “this group is a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes.” Update Responding to the rabbis' ad on his radio show today, Beck whipped out his new documentary about Iran, "Rumors of War," as conclusive proof that he's not anti-Semitic. As Mediaite' notes, Beck "thought the timing of the claim by rabbis against him was ironic" and "urged listeners" to instead see his documentary, "a piece of journalism he compared as being on par with Frontline." It's "amazing how anti-semitic I am on the day that we release Rumors of War," he said. Listen here: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/27/fox-news-rabbis/
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