The most trusted name in news has also become one of the most hateful outlets in the media. One of CNN’s up-and-coming and most heavily promoted broadcasters has made his name not on precise presentation of the news (which should be the only function of a broadcaster) or on astute commentary, but on a hateful message. The man is right-wing talkshow host and CNN personality Glenn Beck and his target of hate is Islam.

Glenn Beck routinely makes Muslims, not just radical Muslims but Muslims in general, his object of scorn. He was in the passed compared the Muslim practice of jihad (which can mean a Holy War, but mostly means a personal struggle for, say, aiding one’s parents in old age) to Hitler’s Mien Kampf due to the fact that both mean, to one degree or other, “struggle”.

Glenn has compared the war with Islamic fundamentalists to “World War III,” creating a very dangerous lack of understanding of the threat of Islamic fundamentalist. If the United States is involved in a war that is truly the third World War rather than a war with a bunch of scattered extremists than the proper response is full-scale military engagement rather than intelligence and law-enforcement operations. Glenn’s position favors more wars in the Arab/Islamic world.

Even though Glenn Beck claims that he is hostile to only those Muslims who mean America harm and is respectful toward, his words, “good Muslims”; his own general hostility to all Muslims can be exhibited through his own words. Glenn constantly asks his Muslims quests to prove the patriotism and lack of support for Al’Qeada. In October 2007 show, Glenn asked a Muslim quest and organizer of the Muslim Peace March: “How do we know the difference between you and those that are trying to kill us?”

That question almost seems decent when one reads what Glenn asked Keith Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress, “to rove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” When Ellison gracefully laughed away the question and stated that no one is more patriotic then him, Glenn then responded: “I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.” Which Americans? And I suppose that asking some to prove in detachment from a terrorist group in not, in fact, accusing someone of being an “enemy”.

Glenn does not stop there, on his radio show he threatened Muslims by alluding to rounding them up into concentration camps.

I’m telling you, with God as my witness... human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it.... When people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

And as for the growing presence of Muslims in America, Glenn had this to say: “the seeds of destruction are being planted.”

Why is this man still on t.v.? Why is prejudice towards Muslims now deemed acceptable in polite company? Is this the face of the self-defined most respected name in news?