Glenn Beck's flawed gold standard

Fox has said its legal department will look into Glenn Beck's business relationship with Goldline. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

The Fox commentator seems to have run up against his own principles by pitching the metal to viewers while making a profit from one such company.

James Rainey
LA Times
December 9, 2009

Radio and TV host Glenn Beck likes to talk about the potential collapse of the American economy. He also likes to talk about buying gold as a hedge against the unknown.

The proximity of those ideas, the plethora of gold ads around his Fox program and Beck's work as a paid pitchman for one gold firm have some in the media wondering whether the conservative commentator has a conflict of interest.

Since conflicts are in the eye of the beholder, Beck should consider himself lucky if the public doesn't judge him by the where-there's-smoke-there's-fire standard he uses to condemn his own adversaries.

The conservative commentator has become something of a phenomenon since moving this year from CNN sister station Headline News to cable leader Fox News. The onetime comic's brand of broad theatrics and his foreboding take on America -- rendered nearly unrecognizable by immoral, spendthrift liberals -- has been a big hit. His audience has multiplied roughly fivefold since his HLN days to 2.6 million nightly viewers.

(More here.)