There is a great post by Burns Strider today on Huffington about how Glenn Beck is using Fox News staff and resources to run his smear campaign against Rev. Jim Wallis.  I’d encourage you to read the entire thing, but here are some of the key parts:

 

Personal attacks aren’t uncommon from partisan commentators, but what is especially troubling about this most recent development is that Glenn Beck isn’t just planning to throw insults; he said that he has been using his FOX staff to research everything that Rev. Wallis has ever said or done and to dig up dirt on the people who work with the pastor.

Why is FOX funding research to discredit an American minister?

Clearly Beck knows that he doesn’t stand a chance of winning this debate about the proper application of Christian principles to the public square on Scriptural or theological grounds. And he clearly has no intention of following St. Paul’s command, found in Ephesians, that Christians “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice.” No, sir. Beck is on a mission to discredit and destroy the pastor who dared to question him … and he’s using FOX staff and resources to do so.

FOX needs to be called to account for this. They need to explain how a news organization can possibly justify funding an opposition research effort that has the stated purpose of destroying the credibility of an American pastor?

Does FOX agree with Beck’s statements and command that Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons leave their churches? Will FOX allow Beck to continue to use staff and FOX airtime to conduct his promised week-long campaign to discredit Rev. Wallis? Will they continue to let him use their resources to launch Twitter and blog posts attacking Rev. Wallis and attempting to discredit the power of social justice?

Burns is right.  FOX does need to be called to account.  Spread the word and sign the Sojourners pledge telling Beck and FOX that you aren’t willing to dismiss the Biblical call for social and economic justice simply because it doesn’t fit a worldly ideology.

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