Beck Unloads on ESPN, ABC for Firing 'Chink in the Armor' Writer: 'Look at How They Have Corrupted This System

Following the firing of the headline writer behind the controversial "Chink in the Armor" headline describing a weak game on the part of Jeremy Lin, and the subsequent suspension of the anchor who repeated it, Glenn had much harsher words for ABC and ESPN. You can watch the whole thing here:

The following highlight sums up the 12 minute long pile-on by Glenn, Stu and Pat:

And ABC, you think you’re going to get the news straight? Do you really think you’re going to get the truth from an organization that on the sports side will fire somebody for that? Do you think any, any news person worth their salt is going to step out of line and give any other view than the accepted view? Anybody going to take a chance? No way. No way,” Glenn said.

“Try to get them to say something actually important. Try to get them to say something actually risky. You think they’re going to do it?! Look at how they have corrupted this system.

The Hollywood Reporter apparently also caught the rant, and described it this way:

“We’re talking a little about freedom of speech, and let’s go to an unusual place: ESPN,” Beck said on his radio show Monday, listened to by an estimated 10 million people a week.

After making fun of ESPN for a while, Beck segued into some unrelated stories but also about racial insensitivity: Iran canceled a soccer game against a Serbian team when they discovered their coach was Israeli, and a 7-year-old boy in the U.K. was deemed a racist for asking a classmate, “are you brown because you come from Africa?”

His point was that stories such as those, and other examples he gave, are ignored or downplayed at ABC News where employees are ruled by fear of offending special-interest groups.

Glenn's defense of the headline writer centered on the unintentional nature of the headline's alleged racism. He argued that the phrase "chink in the armor" is enough of a well-known idiom that mistaking it for racism was oversensitive. He also cited the headline writer's deeply felt respect for Lin as a fellow Christian.

The Blaze reported on ESPN's apology earlier this afternoon.