So how does a dictatorship deal with a journalist that holds you accountable? This is how:
Glenn Beck fans are fighting back against a campaign led by a black activist organization prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Beck's top-rated Fox News Channel program.
Last week, NewsBusters reported President Obama's "green jobs czar," Van Jones, is co-founder of ColorofChange.org, an activist organization that has led a furious campaign against Beck culminating in major companies such as Geico and Lawyers.com pulling their spots from the Fox News star's daily show.
In recent weeks, Beck has done several critical segments about Van Jones, who was appointed as the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Beck's segments were based in part on WND's reporting that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader.
Now a husband and wife team of Beck fans has launched a website – DefendGlenn.com – that lists the contact information for advertisers for Beck's and other Fox News programs and provides users with information and suggestions to contact those companies to urge their continued sponsorship. The site also asks users to contact Beck's current patrons to thank them for their loyalty to the Fox News star's program.
"Our goal is to hit advertisers hard with response from Beck fans with real purchasing power, unlike the instigators of this phony Astroturf boycott," the founder of DefendGlenn told WND.
"At some point they will realize they've been punked by a bunch of paid activists, college students and slacker bloggers in their parents' basements who don't purchase their products anyway," said the founder, who asked that his name be withheld.
ColorofChange, meanwhile,says it has garnered about 75,000 signatories for an online petition against Beck to be sent to advertisers.
Van Jones' group says the controversy stems from Beck's recent comment while a guest on another Fox News show that Obama is a "racist" with "a deep-seated hatred for white people."
Bill Shine of Fox News' programming department clarified Beck was expressing "a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions."
ColorofChange did not return a WND request for comment about whether its crusade is tied to Beck's recent reporting about Van Jones' radical connections.
NewsBusters exposed Van Jones is a co-founder of ColorofChange. The group's executive director is James Rucker, who previously served as director of Grassroots Mobilization for the radical MoveOn.org.
Immediately following the NewsBusters report, ColorofChange scrubbed its site of any mention of Jones. However, a Google cache of the site lists Jones as a founder.
After NewsBusters pointed out the deletion, ColorofChange added Jones back to its site but now claims "Van hasn't been active in the work of ColorofChange in recent years."
Comments