PC Simon Harwood back-tracks on claim that Ian Tomlinson had been acting ‘defiantly’ at G20 protests The police officer who pushed and struck Ian Tomlinson shortly before his death was accused of lying under oath after stating that the newspaper seller had been “almost inviting a physical confrontation” at the G20 protests. Giving evidence to the Tomlinson inquest for the third and final day, PC Simon Harwood initially told the jury that the father of nine had been defiantly obstructing a police line. Tomlinson, 47, collapsed and died moments after the confrontation near the Bank of England on 1 April 2009. Harwood initially maintained he had not pushed Tomlinson from behind – despite video footage that showed he did. His insistence that Tomlinson did not have his back turned when he struck him prompted Matthew Ryder QC, for the Tomlinson family, to accuse him of giving “absurd” testimony. “The problem is that we have video of that day when you were there,” Ryder said. “That is rubbish, I suggest to you, PC Harwood, and you know it.” The police officer replied: “I was there and I saw what I saw.” The judge presiding over the inquest, Peter Thornton QC, told the police officer he did not have to answer any questions he believed would incriminate himself. However by the end of the day, Harwood had back-tracked. After further questioning from Thornton, he accepted that Tomlinson was walking away from police. He also accepted the newspaper seller was not acting “defiantly” and had his back turned to him when he struck him with a baton and pushed him to the ground. When Harwood, a member of the Metropolitan police’s territorial support group, appeared to give the jury a loose explanation of when he could use his baton, Ryder sought clarification. “Does your training tell you if someone is not a threat to you or any other person it is acceptable to baton them? Is that your training? “Yes,” replied Harwood. He believed he could use his baton when not under threat “in some circumstances”. But Samantha Leek, counsel for the Met, told Harwood she was not aware of “any training” that permitted such behaviour. Harwood referred to the instructions on use of force he said he received at the Met’s public order training centre in Gravesend, Kent. Harwood told the jury he had not expected Tomlinson to fall to the ground as a result of the push, which came immediately after his baton strike. Ryder asked: “Someone who has his back to you, you push him with that force, from behind and you didn’t expect he might fall to the ground?” Harwood replied: “No.” The barrister again accused him of lying and asked if the officer had intended to “make an example” of Tomlinson – which Harwood denied. “Because that would be a pretty horrible thing to do, do you agree? Just to make an example of them. Do you agree with that?” “Yes,” said the officer. Questioned by his own barrister, Patrick Gibbs QC, Harwood said he had found it difficult to distinguish in his evidence between his recollections of the day and what he had since seen in video. “It is for me almost impossible, very, very difficult … to be able to ascertain the differences between what I remember then, on the day, to now,” he said. The inquest continues. Ian Tomlinson G20 Sam Jones Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Glenn Beck predicts imminent revolutionary violence from the Left this summer — just like he did in 2010. And in 2009.
April 6, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Glenn Beck devoted his show yesterday to predicting another “summer of rage” from the oh-so-violence-prone American Left: BECK: America, I want to warn you, this is the summer of revolution. Things are going to get worse, and I believe May is going to play a huge role, as will September. [draws breath] Oh, did I say something that I shouldn’t have, socialists and communists? Yes, we’re listening and we’re reading, sometimes right over your shoulder, and you don’t know it. Funny thing — that’s just what he predicted would happen last summer too! From June 2010: BECK: America, these guys joined with these guys — the politicians joined with the revolutionaries so they could gain power. Now it is time to break apart — because the summer of rage is about to begin. And another funny thing: He predicted the same thing in 2009 too : BECK: Now here is the One Thing that everybody seems to be missing: The extreme Left is actively calling for violence! As world economies go down the tank and unemployment continues to rise, disenfranchised people are set to explode. It kinda reminds me of those apocalyptic cults who periodically predict that the world is really about to end, so their followers all gather in the cult compound (often in remote places like Montana) to prepare for it, and then they either all drink Kool Aid and die, or they hold intensive prayer sessions and then, when the predicted Day of Doom comes and goes without event, announce that their prayers have saved the world — for now — and go home as though nothing had happened. Now that it’s Sayonara Beck at Fox News , look for him to become Alex Jones on steroids. Which means that someday we probably CAN figure on watching the armed FBI standoff from the GlennBeckian Cult Compound someday down the pike. Meanwhile, of course, Beck wants you to pay no mind to the picture of right-wing violence we’re getting :
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Actor says the police let her down by not telling her about evidence that tabloid hackers were targeting her The actor Leslie Ash has spoken out for the first time against the Metropolitan police for failing to investigate claims that a private investigator working for the News of the World had hacked into her mobile phone, even though the force had held evidence since 2006 that he had targeted her along with her husband and two children. Ash, a former star of Men Behaving Badly, told the Guardian: “I feel I’ve really been let down. I can’t understand their behaviour at all.” Ash and her husband, the former footballer Lee Chapman, are suing the News of the World for breach of privacy after the Met confirmed in January that in a 2006 raid on the investigator Glenn Mulcaire, it had seized notepads in which he had recorded their mobile phone numbers and those of their two sons. Despite holding that information, which Ash said includes phone numbers for her GP, bank and a teacher at her sons’ school, Scotland Yard failed to tell her that she was a target. “The police were actually withholding evidence,” she said. “I’ve been brought up to trust the police. It’s not a good time for the police at the moment.” Ash became a regular in the headlines as soon as she appeared in the hit laddish comedy Men Behaving Badly, but tabloid pressure reached its peak when cosmetic surgery left her with inflamed lips in 2003 and when she contracted a form of MRSA in hospital the following year. Her family feared she would die. Now Ash says that messages left on mobile phones belonging to her and her children at that time were used by newspapers. “That really came home to me because that is not in the public interest,” she said. “The most painful things … had been said, while I was in hospital, to my kids, to my husband [along with] things really, really personal to my agent – who wasn’t just my agent, she was my friend. “All those worries about if I was going to work again, if I was going to walk again … I just feel horrible thinking that someone’s been able to access my private messages.” Scotland Yard finally confirmed that Ash was “a person of interest” to Mulcaire three months ago. Her lawyer had written to the police last October after she sought a court order forcing the Met to make that information available. Yesterday, Ash accused the Met of deliberating seeking to suppress the truth about the scale of phone hacking at the News of the World by refusing to notify hundreds of potential victims following its original 2006 inquiry, which resulted in the arrest and conviction of Mulcaire and the former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman. “They are hand in hand with the press,” Ash said. “We’re trying to break through into something that’s basically corrupt.” Referring to evidence given to parliament in 2003 by Rebekah Brooks, the former Sun and News of the World editor who is now chief executive of the papers’ parent company, News International, Ash said: “Rebekah said that day: ‘Yes, we have paid police before.’ That shouldn’t happen. You should be able to trust the police. Who do you trust if you can’t?” A new police phone-hacking investigation, Operation Wheeting, is now under way. On Tuesday the Met made the first arrests in the case since Goodman and Mulcaire were charged nearly five years ago. The News of the World’s chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, and the paper’s former assistant editor (news), Ian Edmondson, were released on police bail without charge. Both men deny wrongdoing. However, Ash said she was not encouraged by the arrests. “No, not at all. They’re just scapegoats. That’s all it looks like to me. The News of the World are going to try and give sacrificial lambs here. They will be happy to draw the line under those two arrests and the police will as well.” Executives insisted after Goodman was jailed that he was the only reporter at the paper who acted illegally, paying Mulcaire additional money on top of his six-figure News of the World contract to hack into messages. It has since abandoned this “rogue reporter” defence in the face of claims made in civil actions brought by a series of public figures that others at the paper were involved. Mulcaire typically wrote the first name of the journalist who had commissioned him to target a particular public figure in the top left-hand corner of his notes. The fact that he wrote “Clive” in his notepad helped to convict Mulcaire and Goodman of illegally accessing voicemails belonging to members of the royal household. Ash said the notes Mulcaire made about her and her family, along with many of their associates, included the name of a person they believe is a News of the World journalist who has been publicly linked with the hacking affair but has not been arrested. Ash said she had feared for years that underhand tactics were being employed by newspapers, including the News of the World’s rivals. Her suspicions were aroused when intensely private stories began to appear, but initially she feared that the stories had been leaked from within her circle of friends. “There were just too many things happening. It’s just certain things that happened at strange times that no one else could have known – especially when I was in hospital. Something came out in the newspaper that no one would have known apart from this friend of mine. When it came out in the paper I obviously thought it was them who had sold it.” Ash is one of around 20 people who are pursuing the News of the World in court, along with other well-known figures including the actors Steve Coogan and Sienna Miller, the former Sky Sports presenter Andy Gray and the football agent Sky Andrew. “The way they’ve done the first investigation [in 2006], the police were obviously trying to keep something very quiet,” Ash said. The former Met police assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, who was in charge of the original inquiry, claimed there were only “a handful” of victims. The Met’s acting assistant commissioner John Yates, who reviewed new evidence unearthed by the Guardian in July 2009 before concluding there were no grounds for a new inquiry, has said on several occasions that the number of people targeted was low. Referring to the number of people suing, Ash said: “Now there are [dozens] of people involved they are not going to be able to keep it quiet because for one person to take the News of the World to court – to sue – would be almost impossible, but now thousands of people are.” Ash also criticised her mobile phone provider, Vodafone, who she says refused to hand over mobile phone records dating back to the time of Mulcaire’s alleged offence. “Vodafone weren’t really helpful to start with. I contacted them. They said I had to get the police to contact our solicitors [to confirm they could release the records]. The police weren’t giving us any information so how were we going to get them to help us?” Friends in showbusiness had warned Ash that hacking was commonplace. “Someone within the PR business just said get yourself a pay-as-you-go phone because they are listening in to things. So we just stopped having conversations on the phone, but it’s quite difficult.” She conceded that she gave interviews to the press during the course of her work as an actor and TV personality but said her treatment in the media was “almost like [being] eating alive. I can’t explain it.” She said her legal action was not motivated by money or a desire for revenge. “It’s not vengeance. Well, maybe a little bit. I can’t lie to you. It really hurt me. Some of the stuff said has really, really hurt me. And if that’s what they wanted to do then they’ve done it. Maybe it is a little bit of payback time. “I want to make sure this is sorted out once and for all. If it is brushed under the carpet and these two guys are the only ones arrested, questioned, they will have a little break – a little sabbatical – and then they will come back and start doing it again. The whole tabloid culture has got to change.” James Robinson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Time’s Grunwald Frets That ‘Paragon of Fiscal Responsibility’ Obama Receives No Credit
April 6, 2011 No Comment
Time Magazine senior correspondent Michael Grunwald on Monday lamented the fact that Barack Obama, “a paragon of fiscal responsibility compared to [George W.] Bush,” doesn't get accolades for all his successes. Grunwald's piece, entitled, “The Counterfactual President: Obama Averted Disasters, but Getting Credit Is the Hard Part,” sarcastically compared President Obama's record on terrorism with Bush: “Apparently there needs to be a spectacular terrorist attack on U.S. soil during your presidency before you can get credit for preventing another one.” The overall thrust of the article was explaining why, despite all these accomplishments, Obama's actions have not been properly heralded. At one point, Grunwald touted Obama's economic record, fawning, “He's been a paragon of fiscal responsibility compared with Bush, but he's still blamed for the megadeficits primarily created by Bush's tax cuts and the Great Recession.” (Hat tip to the MRC's Kevin Eder for noticing the story.) It's hard to square that with $9.5 trillions deficits and a CBO prediction that “national debt under Obama's proposals would double by 2021.” He also added more to the debt in 19 months than all Presidents from Washington through Reagan. With regard to Libya, Grunwald argued that the President should be credited with preventing an atrocity in that country: “It's hard to get credit for avoiding a disaster when it's impossible to prove the disaster would have happened without you.” Of course, the Time journalist seemed to accept this idea completely. Time.com labeld Grunwald's piece opinion, but the reporter has covered straight news for outlets such as the Washington Post, in addition to Time. — Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter .
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Court rules participants on shows should be treated as salaried staff, though day rate more than French monthly minimum wage It’s a tough life being a reality TV contestant in France. Those scantily clad figures slaving away on sun-toasted beaches and expending sweat and tears around luxury swimming pools might look as if they are having fun – mais non. In fact, it is extremely hard labour for which they deserve to be paid handsomely, France’s highest appeal court has decided. And the going rate for this relentless toil at the coal face of light entertainment?: €1,400 (£1,230) a day, slightly more than the French monthly minimum wage. The court has declared the contestants must be treated as salaried staff, paid a fixed wage plus social charges and overtime and be allowed a 35-hour working week. The decision could cost French television companies over €52m. Now the French lawyer who brought the case says it has opened the way for claims by those taking part in reality shows the world over. Jérémie Assous is already in talks with legal firms in Britain, America, Spain and Israel over future lawsuits. “The principle is universal and simple. You cannot make people work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is slavery, even in a country where the laws are more liberal,” he said. “And as far as I’m aware slavery is banned, even in Britain.” Assous brought a test case on behalf of 56 participants in L’île de la Tentation, the French version of Temptation Island. In it several couples were transported to a beach near the Thai resort of Koh Samui, separated and subject to temptation from scantily clad members of the opposite sex. They sued the private French channel TF1, which makes this and several other reality shows, saying that while it looked like a piece of gateau to those watching and while they may have appeared to be enjoying themselves, the demands of bossy producers made it a daily grind, like any other. “It’s incredibly tough. It’s like a film shoot except actors go to a location do their work then go back to their trailers or hotels for the evening. Now reality TV stars have the same rights.” Judges in the case, that had taken six years to resolve, set a legal precedent two years ago when they ruled that appearing in a reality show constituted work, but it was down to the appeal court to decide how much contestants should be paid. Assous had demanded €400,000 for each contestant, which television companies warned would spell the end of reality TV. He said he and the former contestants were “very happy” with the ruling and he had another 300 former participants ready to make claims. He said if every one of the 1,500 people who had taken part in a French reality TV show lasting an average 25 days claimed their €1,400 a day it would land the production companies with a €52.5m bill. “It’s a great victory. Now the contestants have to have a proper work contract and be given salaries and overtime and all the other benefits,” he said, suggesting they might also be entitled to demand a maximum 35-hour working week, as enshrined in French labour law. “I have no moral objection to reality TV and it has never been my intention to destroy it, but participants have to be treated fairly,” he said. France Reality TV Europe Television Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
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Entire country loses internet for five hours after woman, 75, slices through cable while scavenging for copper An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday. The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March. As Georgia provides 90% of Armenia’s internet, the woman’s unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours as the country’s main internet providers – ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa – were prevented from supplying their normal service. Television pictures showed reporters at a news agency in the capital Yerevan staring glumly at blank screens. Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected. “It was a 75-year-old woman who was digging for copper in the ground so that she could sell it for scrap,” said a spokesman for Georgia’s interior ministry said yesterday. Dubbed “the spade-hacker” by local media, the woman – who has not been named – is being investigated on suspicion of damaging property. She faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted. A spokesman for Georgia’s interior ministry said the woman was temporarily released “on account of her old age” but could face more questioning. The damage was detected by a system monitoring the fibre-optic link from western Europe and a security team was immediately dispatched to the spot, where the woman was arrested. The interior ministry said she had no accomplices. The cable is owned by the Georgian railway network. It is heavily protected, but landslides or heavy rain may have exposed it to scavengers. Pulling up unused copper cables for scrap is a common means of making money in the former Soviet Union. Some entrepreneurs have even used tractors to wrench out hundreds of metres of cable from the former nuclear testing ground at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Georgia Armenia Internet Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
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WAP4 Tamil Nadu WAP4 Kerala WAP7 AP Screams At Cam We don’t believe in political vendetta: Antony Sonia Gandhi slams LDF rule in Kerala Lashing out at the ruling CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala , Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday charged the state government with failing to carry out developmental works. – AndhraNews.net. Kerala backwater tourism | Enjoy Your Vacation Kerala is really a wonderful destination for all types of travellers. The place is known for its beauty and rich culture. In the southern part of India, Kerala Holidays – A Dream Destination for Leisure Vacations … Kerala is no wonder the most demanding tourism destination in India. It is one such tourist place in India that is visited by great number of visitors not only. Kochi Tuskers Kerala (KTK) IPL 4 2011 Team Squad | Players List … This year a new entry from the south Indian side . A new team has step this years IPL season 4 Battle that is non other then the team of the Kochi Tuskers Kerala . Kochi Tuskers Kerala have a good squad and they have sped allots of their … Kerala Holidays A Dream Destination For Leisure Vacations Kerala is no wonder the most demanding tourism destination in India. It is one such tourist place in India that is visited by great number of visitors not only from inside the country but from across … vengoorans says: @SushmaSwarajBJP Its quite easy handle Hindus kerala , a good speaker can do it easily,do not look on the heads just grab sup from Folowers.
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Guardian reader fought year-long freedom of information battle to disclose contents of report so critical it was kept under wraps Britain’s military machine was ill-prepared for the Iraq invasion, failed to prepare for counterinsurgency warfare and was slow to adapt to situations it did not foresee, according to a damning internal Ministry of Defence report. “The MoD is good at identifying lessons, but less good at learning them,” it says. “In comparison with the US, the UK military was complacent and slow in recognising and adapting to changing circumstances.” Moreover, the government failed to provide a coherent defence or explanation of what it calls “an unpopular war”, with potential damaging impact on the reputation of Britain’s armed forces. The report, by Lieutenant General Chris Brown, was commissioned by defence chiefs but is so critical that it was suppressed by Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock (now Lord) Stirrup, the former chief of defence staff. It has been released, with many redactions and after months of argument, under the Freedom of Information Act, nearly a year after a reader, Michael Bimmler, heard about it in the Guardian. Military personnel who bore the brunt of the failures of top policy-makers in the Foreign Office and Department for International Development – as well as the MoD – were furious that Brown’s report was being suppressed. Assumptions within the MoD that the armed forces should train and equip simply for high intensity conflict and then quickly adapt for “peace support” were discredited in Iraq, Brown says. Such an expectation “proved illusory”… “very significantly, we were not prepared for counterinsurgency”. The report adds: “A widespread sense that Operation Telic [the UK name given to the invasion of Iraq] was a temporary distraction from normal defence business was reinforced by a mistaken belief that the campaign would be short-lived and compounded by the limited engagement of other [Whitehall] departments.” While it criticises the MoD for being “slow to adapt”, the report notes that the invasion and its aftermath “highlighted the paucity of training in cross-Whitehall teamwork at ministerial level”. The absence of any British strategy for Iraq undermined its ability to provide support for the emerging Iraqi government and was compounded by a “paucity of military Arabic speakers” forcing commanders at all levels to rely on contracted interpreters. It would have been better for British troops to have bought off-the-shelf and more reliable US communications equipment rather than British kit, Brown’s report says. Shortages of up-to-date equipment meant service personnel had to “revert to obsolete equipment in training”. The report continues: “Inevitably, given the timescales of defence procurement, the majority of the equipment used in the initial stages [of the Iraq invasion] stemmed from the cold war. An exception was the RAF “whose involvement in continuous operations in the region since 1990 had at least ensured that the majority of their equipment was not climatically suitable and interoperable with the US”. Furthermore, the report says – referring to “an unpopular war” – that “no serious attempt appears to have been made to forge a convincing coalition-wide strategic narrative”. It warns: “The planning of strategic communications must address what it means to fight an unpopular war and what additional effort is required to compensate for this. It is crucial that an unpopular war does not undermine support for other operations, or indeed for the UK military’s wider reputation.” Military Defence policy Iraq Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Japanese nuclear power plant operator hopes to prevent explosive buildup of hydrogen gas Japan has begun pumping nitrogen gas into a crippled nuclear reactor, refocusing the fight on preventing an explosive buildup of hydrogen gas at Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Workers started injecting nitrogen into the containment vessel of reactor No 1 on Wednesday last night, after a morning breakthrough in stopping highly radioactive water leaking into the sea at another reactor in the six-reactor complex. “It is necessary to inject nitrogen gas into the containment vessel and eliminate the potential for a hydrogen explosion,” an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) told a news briefing. The possibility of another hydrogen explosion like those that ripped through reactors 1 and 3 early in the crisis, spreading high levels of radiation into the air, was “extremely low” he said. But Tepco suspected that the outside casing of the reactor vessel was damaged, said the official. “Under these conditions, if we continue cooling the reactors with water, the hydrogen leaking from the reactor vessel to the containment vessel could accumulate and could reach a point where it could explode,” he added. Although engineers succeeded after days of desperate efforts to plug the leak at reactor No 2, they still need to pump 11.5m litres of contaminated water back into the ocean because they have run out of storage space at the facility. The water was used to cool overheated fuel rods. Nuclear experts said the damaged reactors were far from being under control almost a month after they were hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami on 11 March. The growing concerns of nearby South Korea and China about radioactive fallout from Japan were underscored when China’s health ministry reported trace amounts of radioactive iodine in spinach in three Chinese provinces. The two western neighbours of Japan have reportedly complained that they have not been fully informed about Tepco’s plans to release radioactive water into the Pacific. “We are instructing the trade and foreign ministries to work better together so that detailed explanations are supplied, especially to neighbouring countries,” chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference. Experts insisted the low-level radioactive water to be pumped into the ocean posed no health hazard to people. “The original amount of radioactivity is very low, and when you dilute this with a huge body of water, the final levels will be even lower than legal limits,” said Pradip Deb, senior lecturer in medical radiations at the school of medical sciences, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Japan disaster Japan Natural disasters and extreme weather Nuclear power guardian.co.uk
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Fox News and Glenn Beck announced Wednesday that Beck will “transition off of his daily program” later this year. In a joint news release, Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Beck’s production company, said that they will “work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties.” Beck, the statement said, would “transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.” It is not clear what the programs will be, or how many of them there will be. Both Beck and Fox News have been publicly hinting that a split could be forthcoming. One month ago, the New York Times reported that Fox News was “contemplating life without” Beck. Later that month, Beck told his radio listeners that, no matter what happened, they would “continue to find each other.” The announcement ends months of speculation about whether or not Beck would continue his Fox News show when his contract was up in December. Beck has drawn high ratings and huge attention to his time slot and to the channel, but he also became a lightning rod, drawing frequent and furious criticism for some of his statements and causing widely-reported tension behind the scenes at the network. Over 300 advertisers also stopped airing their commercials on Fox News during Beck’s hour. Still, Beck’s television show allowed him to increase his profile substantially. More than many other television hosts, Beck has a very large media empire of his own to fall back on. His radio show is the third-highest rated in the country, he has written many best-selling books, and has a large and devoted fan base. Joel Cheatwood, a senior Fox News executive who Beck hired away to his own company, will serve as the main liaison between the two networks. A source at Fox News told the Huffington Post in March that Mercury was playing a “dangerous game” by allegedly leaking the news of the hire to the media. The full release appears below: NEW YORK– FOX News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck’s production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the FOX News Channel (FNC) as well as content for other platforms including FOX News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year. Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of FOX News said, “Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody’s standards. I look forward to continuing to work with him.” Glenn Beck said, “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and FOX News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.” Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at FOX News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with FOX News. Ailes said, “Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the business. Over the past four years I have consistently valued his input and advice and that will not stop as we work with him in his new role.” “Glenn Beck” is consistently the third highest rated program on cable news. For the 27 months that “Glenn Beck” has aired on FOX News, the program has averaged more than 2.2 million total viewers and 563,000 viewers 25-54 years old, numbers normally associated with shows airing in primetime, not at 5pm. “Glenn Beck” has dominated all of its cable news competitors since launch.
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