Via a tip from a user, Glenn Beck certainly thinks that mere video games influence behavior:
But he doesn't think that using the "news" as a platform for fearmongering day in, day out might cause unstable elements of society to presume they should take action based on his rantings and the other conservative rantings that so inundate the airwaves. At least, not if the fearmongering is done by Glenn Beck.
This isn't new, of course, and isn't confined to Beck. Media influence on individual actions has been a talking point for twenty some odd years. Conservatives believe Spongebob Squarepants, the PBS show 'Arthur' and one of Teletubbies -- you know, the gay pride one -- can turn kids homosexual, and they so believed that Murphy Brown encouraged single motherhood that a American vice president condemned the fictional character by name. According to conservatives, everything on TV influences behavior, whether it's promiscuity, violence, or thinking that an asexual cartoon sea creature is coming on to you. They think rap music causes violence, video games promote violence, and that Rachel Ray wearing a checkered scarf is a coded signal of terrorism's insidious grip on the Food Network.
But they don't believe that "news reporters" constantly questioning whether the president is really loyal or not to this country might cause some people to take violent action against that president? Or that constant talk of the imminent overrun of America by "one worlders", or government officials attempting to invoke sharia law, while supposing a simultaneous effort to confiscate guns might perhaps influence people to stockpile more guns and anticipate an imminent need to use them?
No, they're not that stupid. They just pretend to be so that they don't get called out on it irresponsible, conspiracy-theory-based fearmongering every damn second of the day, on every conceivable issue. Fox treats both news and government as if it's one of those daytime talk shows where the only goal is to get a bunch of no-good, paranoid morons together and then piss them all off until someone throws a chair. That is why O'Reilly is a star: that's why the Glenn Beck show exists. On the internet, rightwing bloggers both large and small expand upon the themes daily.
People like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly devote their days to talking about the supposedly un-American activities of liberals among us: one of their fans goes to a church and starts shooting people he believes to be liberals. People like Glenn Beck continually shout on-air about the supposed efforts of President Obama to surreptitiously take their guns: a unstable viewer starts shooting police officers that come to his house, and his friends cite his fear of the imminent "Obama gun ban" as one of the motivating factors.
Fearmongering -- being eager transmitters for whole hosts of the worst of right-wing conspiracy theories, so long as it brings in readers, viewers, or voters -- is a prime function of the conservative movement, from Glenn Beck's show to Sarah Palin rallies, from blogs to talk radio to the entire Fox News network. The language is deliberately panicked, exclusionary, and eliminationist, premised on constant, day-in-day-out assertions that liberals, Democrats, or others are not merely people of differing political opinions, but that they are less than American, are traitors to the country, or an imminent threat to the rights and freedoms of "true" patriots.
It seems hardly an outrageous presumption that some among their listeners will internalize the message of President Obama as traitor, and non-conservatives as enemies... and then act upon those beliefs with violence, either planned or spontaneous. Given the expanding list of examples of just that, in fact, it seems a proven connection.