Topic: NewsBusters
In an Oct. 5 NewsBusters post, Jeff Poor uncritically repeated Glenn Beck's "impassioned plea to stop looking into his past" and his complaint that the media has "looked into Glenn Beck's past - and not corruption in government." But isn't a demand by someone that the media stop examining them de facto evidence that said person has something to hide and that, in fact, his past should continue to be dug into?
Poor went on to state that "the McClatchy-owned The News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash. and the left-leaning Salon.com ran stories questioning whether or not Glenn Beck's mother, Mary Beck committed suicide. It was later propagated by the left-wing storefronts." But Poor is buying into Beck's framing of things. The issue is not whether Beck's mother committed suicide; it's whether Beck is insisting she did when the official evidence is at best inconclusive.
Instead of regurgitating what Beck says, shouldn't Poor be asking why Beck is suddenly getting squeamish about media attention?
Poor's link on "left-wing storefronts," by the way, goes to Media Matters. But isn't NewsBusters, not to mention the rest of the Media Research Center, a right-wing storefront?
