During a recent interview with Bill O’Reilly, radio host Glenn Beck blasted Fox News over what he called their “stupid” attack on CNN’s Jake Tapper and his description of the phrase “Allahu Akbar.”
Beck, who was once a star anchor at the network before founding his own media shop, TheBlaze, said the incident was motivated by people “blinded” by “hate.”
“It was a stupid and completely wrong thing. But people spread it. Agreed with it. And it’s because of an unreasonable hatred of the media,” he told O’Reilly. “Hatred is the problem. We can’t be blinded by our hate for the media.”
On Wednesday, Tapper spoke about the arabic phrase in its historical context. In a tweet they later deleted, Fox News erroneously reported that Tapper was saying the expression was “beautiful.” That led to a nasty tweetstorm from the CNN host against the network. The issue was revived later that night by Sean Hannity.
On his program, Beck said he liked Tapper and insisted he was one of the only mainstream media reporters who regularly asked tough questions of President Obama.
“On CNN the only one was Jake Tapper,” said Beck. “I think he’s getting a raw deal now.”
O’Reilly conceded the story — which Beck pointed out originated on the conspiracy-oriented website InfoWars — was dumb but said Beck was pushing a dangerous moral equivalency by comparing the matter to O’Reilly’s broader indictment of the anti-Trump media.
“You’re doing a moral equivalency here and it’s not even close and I would warn you, if you have a national media that is dominated by people who want to destroy the presidency that pales, that pales to people reacting to people against it.”