More on Glenn Beck and the FEMA Conspiracy: Crooks and Liars Lives Up To Its Name

After my post on Paul Krugman’s spurious attack on Glenn Beck, a reader emailed me this posting from David Neiwert of the blog Crooks and Liars that attempts to rehabilitate Krugman and defend his misrepresentations. As the following will show in extreme detail, Neiwert is as guilty as Krugman. They both bend over backwards to distort Beck’s views in order to serve their agenda of slandering and marginalizing conservative voices.

The starting point for Neiwart’s analysis is Beck’s March 3rd appearance on the morning show Fox and Friends. Neiwart relies on a short video containing a snippet (about 45 seconds) of Beck’s appearance that day. Normally, I would insert the video here so that my readers could view the source material firsthand, but Cooks and Liars uses a proprietary system for videos that does not allow for sharing or embedding. Readers can view the video firsthand, but here is the relevant passage from Beck:

I have to tell you, I am doing a story tonight, that I wanted to debunk these FEMA camps. I’m tired of hearing about them—you know about them? I’m tired of hearing about them. I wanted to debunk them.

We’ll we’ve now for several days been doing research on them—I can’t debunk them! And we’re going to carry the story tonight.

…It is our government—if you trust our government, it’s fine. If you have any kind of fear that we might be headed toward a totalitarian state, there is something going on in our country that it’s—it ain’t good.

Let’s look at this passage two different ways, out of context and in context, to see if it supports the Krugman/Neiwart claim that Beck is an extreme right-winger who was fomenting conspiracy theories against the Obama administration.

Let’s start by looking at it acontextually: if this was the only thing you ever knew, saw, or heard about Glenn Beck’s views on FEMA camps, could you fairly conclude that Beck was supporting the conspiracy theory?

The answer is no. Beck doesn’t endorse the conspiracy theory. He says he can’t “debunk” it. Now, that statement isn’t a picture of clarity. We all learned in grade school not to use double negatives (such as “can’t debunk”) because they are inherently vague and can lead to confusion. Of course, we all do it anyway, at least occasionally. But we all understand that saying “I can’t disprove x” doesn’t mean that I believe x to be true. To the contrary, it implies that the validity of x is, at the very least, in question.

Of course, Beck didn’t say “I can’t disprove x”; he said “I can’t debunk x.” That is significant. “Disprove” means “to prove (an assertion, claim, etc.) to be false or wrong.” “Debunk” means “to expose or excoriate (a claim, assertion, sentiment, etc.) as being pretentious, false, or exaggerated.” A speaker chooses the loaded word “debunk” over the neutral and more common “disprove” in order to signal his own skepticism. For example, imagine that the Pope and Richard Dawkins both agreed that there is no way verifiable way to prove that a supreme being does not exist. Which would say, “there is no way to disprove the existence of God” and which would say “there is no way to debunk the existence of God”? The Pope would say “disprove.” Dawkins, the self-professed atheist, would say debunk.

Neiwert recognized this obvious weakness in his argument and tried to preempt the objection I am making by appealing to context. He concedes that “Beck did indeed run a noteworthy segment that actually debunked the FEMA concentration-camp theories. But,” Neiwart continues, “it was something akin to running a single correction on A23 for a series of sensationally bannered stories on A1.” Neiwart furthers this argument with an off-colored example:

Now, that’s modern media ethics for ya: Broadcast to the world that “you can’t disprove” a cockamamie, half-baked and wild-sounding theory, do it several times, and then quietly run a story in fact disproving the theory four weeks later.

So, I keep hearing that Glenn Beck fellates Bill O’Reilly under the anchor desk each week just prior to his regular appearance on The O’Reilly Factor (why do you think they call it “At Your Beck and Call”?). And you know what, I’ve set my staff about finding out the truth, and they can’t disprove it!

We’ll get back to you in about four weeks with the real scoop on that one. Have lots of brain bleach handy. In the meantime, we’ll repeat this several times: We hear Beck fellates BillO, and we can’t disprove it! (Emphasis in original.)

Putting aside the inappropriateness of Neiwert’s example (and whatever personal issues it might reflect), he could have a compelling argument here if the factual predicate he sets up is accurate. In others words, if Beck “sensationally bannered” on “A1″ “several times” his inability to debunk the FEMA conspiracy and then later ran “a single correction on A23,” then Beck should rightly be criticized.

But just the opposite is true. A review of the extensive (though incomplete) public record on the issue shows that Beck’s in-artful, double negative, “can’t debunk” statement on Fox and Friends on March 3rd was the one and only time that he failed to forcefully and unequivocally denounce the conspiracy theory. To reiterate, as I argued above, I think that the most natural reading of the March 3rd statement is that Beck was expressing his skepticism by using the word “debunk.” But the March 3rd statement is still the most incriminating statement that Krugman and Neiwert can come up with.

And that says something. Beck talks to a national audience for 20 hours every week, with the 15 of those 20 hours that represent his radio show being completely unscripted. If Beck engaged in a “series” of “sensationally bannered” stories on his inability to debunk the conspiracy, then why is the best—indeed, only—evidence that Neiwert can point to a single clip of Beck from another program that is well-shy of a full minute?

Why? Because that’s all there is. Let’s look at the full television record beginning with the March 3rd Fox and Friends appearance (which was quoted in its relevant entirety above). Immediately after saying “I can’t debunk them,” Beck added, “And we’re going to carry the story tonight.” Did Beck “sensationally banner” the issue that evening? You can guess the answer from the fact that Neiwert doesn’t link to or quote from the March 3rd episode of Beck’s show.

Neiwert didn’t, but I will. The following clip contains the relevant discussion of FEMA camps from that evening. I’m posting the full clip for the record, but its about 8 minutes long and less than 2 minutes of it is about FEMA, so I’ll quote the relevant part below. Here’s the video:

And here’s the transcript:

I got up this morning after a very long night of tossing and turning—If you watched Fox & Friends this morning or listened to my radio show, I told you that I was going to tell you about the FEMA camps or the FEMA prisons today.

This is something that I snapped on the air because somebody called me up and said, “Why don’t you talk about the FEMA prisons?” And I said, “Ugh, can we just settle the FEMA prison thing?” I don’t believe in the FEMA prison. If you don’t know, I tell you about it in a couple of days.

I was going to talk about it today, but as I came in and did the show this morning and then I went into my office and I was looking at all the research that had been compiled and it wasn’t complete and I am not willing to bring something to you that’s half-baked. If these things exist, that’s bad and we will cover it. If they don’t exist, it is irresponsible to not debunk this story. We have an independent group on this program looking into it, turning over every stone. I am going to bring you this story.

This program is not beholden—this is going to drive the conspiracy theorists crazy—watch this [funny voice] they’re making me say this, help! This program is not beholden to anybody. We answer to ourselves. I answer to me. I lost sleep last night worrying about this story, thinking about this story, and wanting to make sure I got it right. The only thing that I answer to is myself, and I just want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and also sleep at night. (Emphasis added).

After this monologue, Beck brought on his guest, Congressman Ron Paul, and said the following:

First of all, on the FEMA prison thing, I know we’ve been in contact with your office and we would appreciate any help that you have. I want to make sure that we’re turning over every stone on anything because there’s a lot of crazy stuff that is being said about these things. I appreciate you talk to us and we’ll be in touch with you again because I want to make sure that we have everything that you might be concerned with as well. Will you help us on that, sir?

After Paul gave his quick take on the issue, Beck added:

Congressman, I wanted to make it very clear, I’m not fearing these things are happening. I want to set the record straight because we’ve got to know what we can believe in.

None of this exactly supports the Krugman/Neiwert argument, does it? Instead of “sensationally bannering” the conspiracy theory, Beck:

• Unequivocally stated: “I don’t believe in the FEMA prison [theory]“;
• Sarcastically mocked the consiracy theorists with a funny voice;
• Stated that: “[T]here’s a lot of crazy stuff that is being said about these things”;
• Stated that: “I’m not fearing that these things are happening.”

Most importantly, these statements were made on the same evening as the Fox and Friends appearance, the one and only public statement that Neiwert cites in favor of his argument.

The television record doesn’t get any better for Neiwert from there. Beck never brought up the FEMA issue again until April 6th and April 7th when he ran the two-part report with James Meigs of Popular Mechanics that even Neiwert characterized as a “noteworthy” because it “actually debunked the FEMA concentration-camp theories.” That’s it for the television record.

Of course, Beck spends a lot more time on radio than on television. The radio show isn’t available on YouTube and (unlike Rush) Beck doesn’t publish transcripts of the show. But it is well known that MediaMatters, and similar organizations, listen to the show, transcribe it in real time, and immediately post the transcript if and when Beck says anything that they deem objectionable. Suffice it to say that if Beck had been trumpeting the FEMA conspiracy on his radio show, Neiwert wouldn’t be relying on a 45-second clip from Fox and Friends.

I should also add that I am a regular listener of Beck’s radio show and can unequivocally state that trying to peg Glenn as a FEMA camp conspiracists is ludicrous and Orwellian. Long before Krugman made this an issue, Beck spoke repeatedly and at length about the issue. His vague comment on Fox and Friends about his inability to debunk derived from the nature of conspiracy theories. As Beck explained it at the time, there was a thread of truth than ran through the conspiracy theorists claims, but the thread would quickly unravel. For example, I distinctly remember him discussing a federal statute (or maybe it was just a legislative proposal) that gave FEMA the ability to build emergency housing. The statute authorized FEMA to take such actions in some scenarios that were obviously related to genuine emergencies. Some of the enumerated circumstances, however, had nothing to do with emergencies. And the statute contained a very broad and vague provision that extended the power to other, unenumerated circumstances. Beck made the point that if you trust the government, the unenumerated circumstances provision is benign. But if you are a member of the black helicopter crowd, it proves the conspiracy. How do you “debunk” the manner in which the government will apply a vague statute in the future? (Especially given that our country has a too-often-overlooked history of running internment camps in times of crisis.) This is just one example that stands out in my mind, but it is representative of the steps Beck went through in debunking the conspiracy.

In other words, there was no “series of sensationally bannered stories on A1 “followed by “a single correction on A23.” Rather, there was a single in-artful and somewhat vague sentence on Fox and Friends that occurred during the course of a prolonged and careful examination of the issue. During the course of a month, Beck moved from obvious and overt skepticism of the conspiracy theory to a prolonged and forceful debunking of it. Simply put, no one on the public stage has done more to discredit the FEMA concentration camp theory than Glenn Beck, yet propagandist like Krugman and Neiwert are trying to discredit him and claiming that he endorsed it.

If either Krugman or Neiwert have a shred of decency, they will retract their attack on Beck and admit that they were wrong.

I’m not holding my breath waiting.