Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck, “suddenly one of the most powerful media voices for the nation’s conservative populist anger,” is featured in a front page story in the New York Times today.
“With a mix of moral lessons, outrage and an apocalyptic view of the future, Mr. Beck, a longtime radio host who jumped to Fox from CNN’s Headline News channel this year, is capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans,” writes Brian Stelter and Bill Carter.
Beck says the times are “so serious now that I find myself sometimes being the guy I don’t want to be — the guy saying things that are sometimes pretty scary, but nobody else is willing to say them.”
Several people give their take on Beck’s sudden surge, including MSNBC president Phil Griffin: “That’s good dramatic television. That’s who Glenn Beck is.” And conservative commentator David Frum who calls Beck’s rise, “a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility.”
Beck has said viewers should make up their own mind on issues rather than take his opinion outright. “I say on the air all time, ‘if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot,'” he says.
This morning on the Media Menu podcast, Stelter told us he thinks the ratings success will sustain. “A month ago I was more skeptical than I am now,” he said, adding, “March has been a pretty average month by news standards and he’s still knocking it out of the park.”
And while he’s featured on the front page today, Beck had a different use for the New York Times last week. Click continued to see a fishy segment from his FNC program…