Monday, April 18, 2011

Glenn Beck accused of using work of conservative bloggers and others without attribution


Glenn Beck, the outgoing Fox News personality who was bothered with a blade of wheat grass recently in an attempt to maintain a vegan diet, is being accused by conservative bloggers of a long-running practice of taking some of their material and using it without crediting them.
"This is the most ridiculous charge I've ever heard," Beck said Monday, quickly adding that if he has inadvertently taken something without credit that he is sorry. "If I have not attributed someone, I apologize for that. I can't imagine how it has happened other than thousands of hours of broadcast," Beck said, and then went back to joking about how he "stole" from his best friend when he paid him for a catchphrase. 
Big Government's Andrew Breitbart told The Daily Caller that Beck's unethical ways and most recent slogan make it hard for him not to appear as a hypocrite. "Sometimes he also uses other peoples' work without crediting them, making it appear as though it were his own," Breitbart, who runs several conservative blogs said. "But especially since adopting 'The Truth Has No Agenda' slogan – and trying to deliberately re-position himself as the pious conscience and judge of many of those he took content from – he has exposed himself to his new motto’s unforgiving standard."
The Daily Caller fielded complaints from conservative blogs like AtlasShrugs.com, Jihad Watch, and RebelPundit.com who all accused Beck of using their research and know-how, sometimes even promising to credit the blog on television, but in the end failing on the promise.
Douglas Stewart, of Yahoo's Associated Content, sent some insights to Beck surmising how the State Department probably knew about the Egyptian uprising before it went down, he told TheDC. Beck read the information on air but never credited Stewart or Associated Content, Steward said.  In fact Stewart later found some of the content as part of a "study guide" about Egypt on GlennBeck.com.
The Beck camp apparently finds all of this amusing. A blog post on GlennBeck.com has a headline that reads "Glenn Beck is a thief! Or something…" along with a video (seen below) from Monday's radio show where Beck and his sidekick laugh at the claims.

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