Yahoo news ran a story today about Fox news responding to a group of Rabbis who had expressed concern with Glenn Beck’s witch hunting of George Soros and general dislike of other prominent Jewish people.

The entire story is here: news.yahoo.com

But the most offending part is the official response of Fox News to the grievances of the Rabbis:

In a statement provided to The Cutline, Joel Cheatwood, senior vice president of development for Fox News, said: “We haven’t seen the ad, but this group is a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes.”

As someone who has a degree in marketing and communication, it absolutely astounds me that this could be the official response of any entity to a situation like this.

Now this was a senior Fox VP saying this, not a PR rep, but don’t think for a moment someone at Fox’s media relations department didn’t see this beforehand.

Public relations is supposed to be about tact, it’s supposed to be about measured response. Fox’s response is NOT the kind of statement you’d expect a major corporation to make.

I love how they just blow off the accusations completely. No “we’re looking into the matter further”, no “we welcome the opportunity for further dialogue with the concerned groups”, no “we are reviewing our programming decisions with regards to this matter”, instead they’ve basically said “You’re all paid Soros puppets trying to destroy us! We’re onto you! Ha ha!”

As if Glenn Beck and his anti-semitic undertones weren’t bad enough, this statement basically makes it appear as though Fox News as a whole is not too fond of pesky Jews. Heck if you didn’t look to close, you might think Beck himself wrote the reply!

It’s official. PR is completely non existent at Fox News.