Fox News

Fox News personality Glenn Beck has been on the radar of progressive groups for some time.

In August, the organization Color of Change organized a boycott of his show's advertisers after Beck, known for his incendiary comments, said on Fox News that he believed President Obama was a racist.

Beck has also used inflammatory rhetoric to advocate against the passage of clean energy legislation and to deny climate change, even hosting a 2-hour CNN special in 2007 on global warming, Exposed: The Climate of Fear, that was dominated by climate change doubters and deniers. I asked Karl Frisch, senior fellow with Media Matters for America, a long time Glenn Beck critic, to tell me a little about the history of Beck and environmental issues.

“I hate to use the word history with Glenn Beck because he gets history and science so completely wrong,” said Frisch. “Glenn Beck is one of the leading champions of science denying in the media today. He confuses climate for weather, he misrepresents scientific reports, he routinely hosts climate science deniers and he shows no shame about doing so.

"You have to put that in the proper context of a man that is so consumed with conspiracy theories and malicious style rhetoric that this would be expected. His climate science denial is just an extension of his paranoia that everyone is out to get him and take away his liberty and freedom.”

Still, Beck was mostly just another irritant to the climate activist community — until recently.

How much more rope can Rupert Murdoch afford to give Glenn Beck and his brand of race-baiting demagoguery?

Back in February, when his New York Post published a cartoon widely perceived to be a racist slur on the new president, the media grandmaster himself issued a statement of apology:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

So where is Rupert Murdoch now that Glenn Beck has brought the issue of racism to the company's doorstep again with his attacks on President Obama and the president's green jobs adviser Van Jones?