Glenn Beck Apologizes (sort of) For Taking Content From Conservative Bloggers Without Attribution

On Monday this week, The Daily Caller released a piece about conservative bloggers who have had their content used by mega media giant Glenn Beck, and have had a pattern of not receiving attribution for their content.

From the Caller:

A number of conservative activists and bloggers say they’re furious at media magnate Glenn Beck for what they call content theft. Over the past several years, Beck has relied on video, audio and written content from others to fill his radio and television shows, as well as his websites. Often he has credited his fellow conservatives for their work. Yet in many other instances say dozens of conservative journalists who spoke to The Daily Caller, he has not, often taking elaborate steps to cloak the origins of the material.

Publisher Andrew Breitbart has seen a number of his stories surface on various Beck media properties over the past few years. While he describes himself as “grateful for the many times he has credited me and my sites,” Breitbart says that “sometimes he also uses other peoples’ work without crediting them, making it appear as though it were his own. 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.”

We at Rebel Pundit were one of those bloggers. On at least three occasions Mr. Beck has used our interviews on the Glenn Beck Program (radio show) and twice on the Glenn Beck Show (T.V.). You can here one radio occasion of this audio here, where no credit is given. We have received proper credit each time on Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze, however, on only one occasion has Mr. Beck given the proper credit we believe we deserve on the television show, which was by leaving our watermark on a video he played during the program.

Again, from the Caller:

A remarkably large number of conservative writers say they feel robbed. During the March 18 airing of his television program, for example, Beck ran a portion of video created by a Chicago-based blogger who calls himself Rebel Pundit. The blogger, who does not publicly reveal his name, says he was initially pleased to see Beck running his video, which featured left-wing protesters demanding amnesty for illegal immigrants. He was soon shocked, however, to see that Beck’s staff had obscured the watermark logo of his website, RebelPundit.com, from the tape.

“I put my website name on there for a reason – to bring people from the movement to my website so they can see the other stuff that I’ve done,” the man behind Rebel Pundit told TheDC. “You’ve got pretty much the biggest guy in the movement take your stuff and actually have his editors spend the time to scrub my name off of it.”

Ironically, while Beck’s staff had gone to the trouble of removing any trace of the phrase “rebelpundit.com” from the video, they apparently missed an obvious obscenity in the background of the frame. Clearly visible on a sign held by one of the protestors was the demand, “Open the fucking border.” When it appeared on his show, Beck said, “Oh, don’t show that please.”

We were most displeased to see him use 35 seconds of our video footage of an immigrant socialist rally in downtown Chicago a few weeks ago, and show the footage cropped on his display in the studio, which removed our watermark. You can see for yourself in the following footage.

Following the release of the Daily Caller’s article Mr. Beck did address the accusations on his radio program and issued the following the apology. At Rebel Pundit, we accept this apology and understand the challenge Mr. Beck faces. He has been a tremendous influence on us and we know compiling thousands of hours of footage and research for his programs is an immense amount of work. We hope Mr. Beck can understand our frustrations and will make sure to not let this happen in the future.

Here is footage of Mr. Beck addressing the issue. See what you think of the apology…

See the full Daily Caller article here: The DC Exclusive