Limbaugh's Reign of Error

[Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting]

The following is FAIR's report on Rush Limbaugh from the
July/August issue of FAIR's magazine, EXTRA!

THE WAY THINGS AREN'T:
RUSH LIMBAUGH DEBATES REALITY

I do not lie on this program. And I do not make things up for the
advancement of my cause. And if I find that I have been mistaken or
am in error then I proclaim it generally at the top of--beginning
of a program--or as loudly as I can."
--Rush Limbaugh, (Radio show, 8/30/93)

"Most of us here in the media are what I consider infotainers....
Rush Limbaugh is what I call a disinfotainer. He entertains by
spreading disinformation."
--Al Franken at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (4/23/94)

Rush Limbaugh has gotten a lot of mileage out of his claim that
volcanoes do more harm to the ozone layer than human-produced
chemicals. He featured it in his best-selling book, The Way Things
Ought to Be (paperback edition pp. 155-157): "Mount Pinatubo in the
Philippines spewed forth more than a thousand times the amount of
ozone-depleting chemicals in one eruption than all the
fluorocarbons manufactured by wicked, diabolical and insensitive
corporations in history.... Mankind can't possibly equal the output
of even one eruption from Pinatubo, much less 4 billion years'
worth of them, so how can we destroy ozone?" Limbaugh calls concern
about the ozone layer: "balderdash. Poppycock." The only people who
worry about it are "environmental wackos," "dunderheaded alarmists
and prophets of doom."

Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell (New York Post, 1/14/94) used
the volcano theory as Exhibit A to illustrate Limbaugh's "very
well-informed and savvy understanding of the political issues of
our time." "While far more pretentious people have been joining the
chorus of hysteria over 'global warming,'" Sowell wrote, "Limbaugh
pointed out in his [first] book that one of the high readings of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere came right after a volcanic
eruption--and volcanoes can put more gases into the atmosphere than
the entire human race." The alert reader will notice that Sowell
has mixed up global warming and the ozone layer, two different
problems. Still, Sowell concluded of Limbaugh, "It is obvious that
the man has done his homework--and done it well."

Ted Koppel must have thought so, too, when he invited Limbaugh to
be on Nightline (2/4/92) as an environmental "expert," opposite
then-Sen. Al Gore. "If you listen to what Senator Gore said,"
Limbaugh proclaimed, "it is man-made products which are causing the
ozone depletion, yet Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of
chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of man-made
chlorofluorocarbons in one year."

On his radio show, his syndicated TV show, and in two best-selling
books, Limbaugh has advanced the idea that volcanoes are the real
ozone culprits. This theory, like so many of Limbaugh's claims, has
only one problem: Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about.

A MOUNTAIN OF DISTORTION

"Chlorine from natural sources is soluble, and so it gets rained
out of the lower atmosphere," the journal Science explained
(6/11/93). "CFCs, in contrast, are insoluble and inert and thus
make it to the stratosphere to release their chlorine."

Science also noted that chlorine found in the stratosphere--where
it can eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer--is always found
with other byproducts of CFCs, and not with the byproducts of
natural chlorine sources.

"Ozone depletion is real, as certain as Neil Armstrong's landing on
the moon," Dr. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist at the
University of California at Irvine, told EXTRA!. "Natural causes of
ozone depletion are not significant."

But Limbaugh didn't rely on atmospheric scientists for his
information about the ozone layer--he dismissed them as the
"agenda-oriented scientific community." Instead, he turned to Dixy
Lee Ray, a former Washington State governor and Atomic Energy
Commission chair, who wrote Trashing the Planet--"the most
footnoted, documented book I have ever read," Limbaugh says.

If you check Ray's footnotes, you'll find that the main source for
the volcano theory is Rogelio Maduro, the associate editor of 21st
Century Science & Technology, a magazine published by the Lyndon
LaRouche network. Maduro is evidently not part of the "agenda-
oriented scientific community"--even though he does have a
bachelor's degree in geology.

The volcano theorists can't even keep their stories straight. In
his book, Limbaugh claims that the 1991 Pinatubo eruption put 1000
times as much chlorine into the atmosphere as industry has EVER
produced through CFCs; yet on Nightline, Pinatubo is alleged to
have produced 570 times the equivalent of ONE YEAR'S worth of CFCs.
Both can't be right. It turns out neither are.

The figure 570 apparently derives from Ray's book--but she said it
was Mount Augustine, an Alaskan volcano that erupted in 1976, that
put out 570 times as much chlorine as one year's worth of CFCs.
Ray's source is a 1980 Science magazine article--but that piece was
actually talking about the chlorine produced by a gigantic eruption
that occurred 700,000 years ago in California (Science, 6/11/93).

UNCHALLENGED DEMAGOGUERY

This kind of sloppiness, ignorance and/or fabrication is run of the
mill in Limbaugh's commentary, both broadcast and print. From
dioxin to Whitewater, from Rodney King to Reaganomics, Rush
Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to twist and distort reality.

Limbaugh's facts are almost never challenged on his programs. A
hostile caller hardly ever gets through the screeners on his radio
show, and his TV show is just him doing a monologue in front of his
cheering audience. No one in the history of national television has
had such a political platform. He has almost never corrected
anything he's said--although he did apologize once to the aerosol
industry for implying that spray cans still had CFCs in them. (CFCs
were removed in 1978.)

Limbaugh's chronic inaccuracy, and his lack of accountability,
wouldn't be such a problem if Limbaugh were just a cranky
entertainer, like Howard Stern. But Limbaugh is taken seriously by
"serious" media--in addition to Nightline, he's been an "expert" on
such chat shows as Charlie Rose and Meet the Press. The New York
Times (10/15/92) and Newsweek (1/24/94) have published his
writings. A U.S. News & World Report piece (8/16/93) by Steven
Roberts declared, "The information Mr. Limbaugh provides is
generally accurate."

He's also taken seriously as a political figure. A National Review
cover story (9/6/93) declared him the "Leader of the Opposition."
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,who recently officiated at
Limbaugh's wedding, says he tapes Limbaugh's radio show and listens
to it as he works out (USA Today, 5/13/94).

FAIR is publishing a compilation of some of Limbaugh's more obvious
whoppers in order to convince journalists and political leaders
alike that when Limbaugh says, "I'm not making this up, folks,"
it's time to duck and cover.

Journalists, in particular, have an obligation to challenge
Limbaugh's brand of hysteria. Someone who has amassed a powerful
political following through the regular use of half-truth and
distortion is begging for tough media scrutiny. In 1954, Edward R.
Murrow confronted another demagogue who had a similar allergy to
facts and documentation. Today's TV networks don't ask themselves
how they can challenge Limbaugh's reign of error--but how they can
profit from him. CBS News, the platform from which Murrow denounced
Joe McCarthy, has been seeking to hire Limbaugh as a political
commentator.

Real democracy is built on debate. But Limbaugh has little use for
debates; he has forged a media empire largely on unchallenged
monologues. The following confrontation--Limbaugh vs. Reality--is
an attempt at stimulating (or at least simulating) a debate.

The list of fallacies compiled here is not exhaustive. It was
assembled from easily available sources--Limbaugh's books, The Way
Things Ought to Be and See, I Told You So; transcripts of several
weeks' worth of his TV show; gleanings from as much of his radio
show as we could take; and other published evaluations of
Limbaugh's accuracy. (There's a publication, the Flush Rush
Quarterly (FRQ), largely devoted to chronicling Limbaugh's
falsehoods, and a book, The Bum's Rush by Don Trent Jacobs, that
debunks his environmental rhetoric.) As Josh Shenk showed in the
New Republic ("Limbaugh's Lies," 5/23/94), scrutinizing the TV show
for a month results in errors too numerous to count.

"There's a pathology here, folks," is a phrase Limbaugh likes to
use when discussing President Clinton's alleged inability to tell
the truth. A psychiatrist might agree--and label it projection.

LIMBAUGH VS. REALITY
BOGUS ECONOMICS

LIMBAUGH: On California contractor C.C. Myers completing repairs 74
days early on the earthquake-damaged Santa Monica Freeway: "There
was one key element that made this happen. One key thing: The
governor of California declared the [freeway] a disaster area and
by so doing eliminated the need for competitive bids.... Government
got the hell out of the way." (TV show, 4/13/94) "They gave this
guy [Myers] the job without having to go through the rigmarole...of
giving 25 percent of the job to a minority-owned business and 25
percent to a woman." (TV show, 4/15/94)

REALITY: There was competitive bidding: Myers beat four other
contractors for the job. Affirmative action rules applied: At least
40 percent of the subcontracts went to minority or women-owned
firms. Far from getting out of the way, dozens of state employees
were on the job 24 hours a day. Furthermore, the federal government
picked up the tab for the whole job (L.A. Times, 5/1/94).

LIMBAUGH: "Banks take the risks in issuing student loans and they
are entitled to the profits." (Radio show, quoted in FRQ,
Summer/93)

REALITY: Banks take no risks in issuing student loans, which are
federally insured.

LIMBAUGH: "Don't let the liberals deceive you into believing that
a decade of sustained growth without inflation in America [in the
'80s] resulted in a bigger gap between the haves and the have-
nots. Figures compiled by the Congressional Budget Office dispel
that myth." (Ought to Be, p. 70)

REALITY: CBO figures do nothing of the sort. Its numbers for after-
tax incomes show that in 1980, the richest fifth of our country had
eight times the income of the poorest fifth. By 1989, the ratio was
more than 20 to one.

LIMBAUGH: Comparing the 1950s with the present: "And I might point
out that poverty and economic disparities between the lower and
upper classes were greater during the former period." (Told You So,
p. 84)

REALITY: Income inequality, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau,
fell from the 1940s to the late 1960s, and then began rising.
Inequality surpassed the 1950 level in 1982 and rose steadily to
all-time highs in 1992. (Census Bureau's "Money Income of
Households, Families and Persons in the United States")

LIMBAUGH: "Oh, how they relished blaming Reagan administration
policies, including the mythical reductions in HUD's budget for
public housing, for creating all of the homeless! Budget cuts?
There were no budget cuts! The budget figures show that actual
construction of public housing INCREASED during the Reagan years."
(Ought to Be, p. 242-243)

REALITY: In 1980, 20,900 low-income public housing units were under
construction; in 1988, 9,700, a decline of 54 percent (Statistical
Abstracts of the U.S.).In terms of 1993 dollars, the HUD budget for
the construction of new public housing was slashed from $6.3
billion in 1980 to $683 million in 1988. "We're getting out of the
housing business. Period," a Reagan HUD official declared in 1985.

LIMBAUGH: "The poorest people in America are better off than the
mainstream families of Europe." (Radio show, quoted in FRQ,
Spring/93)

REALITY: Huh? The average cash income of the poorest 20 percent of
Americans is $5,226; the average cash income of four major European
nations--Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy--is $19,708.

LIMBAUGH: "There's no such thing as an implied contract." (Radio
show, quoted in FRQ, Spring/93)

REALITY: Every first year law student knows there is.

LIMBAUGH: "Ladies and gentlemen, we now know why there is this
institutional opposition to low tax rates in the liberal wing of
the Democratic Party. It's because [low tax rates] are biblical in
nature and in root. When you can trace the lowering of tax rates on
grain from 90 percent to 20 percent giving seven fat years during
the days of Pharaoh in Egypt, why then you are tracing the roots of
lower taxes and rising prosperity to religion.... You can trace
individual prosperity, economic growth back to the Bible, the Old
Testament. Isn't it amazing?" (Radio show, 6/28/93)

REALITY: Amazingly wrong. Genesis 41 is about the wisdom of
INSTITUTING taxes, not cutting them. After Pharaoh had a dream that
prophesied seven fat years to be followed by seven lean years,
Joseph advised him to "appoint officers over the land, and take up
the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous
years...and lay up corn under the hands of Pharaoh." In other
words, a 20 percent tax on the grain harvest would put aside food
for use during the famine. Pharaoh took Joseph's advice, and Egypt
avoided hunger during the famine.

WEIRD SCIENCE

LIMBAUGH: "It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive, the
same with cigarettes causing emphysema [and other diseases]."
(Radio show, 4/29/94)

REALITY: Nicotine's addictiveness has been reported in medical
literature since the turn of the century. Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop's 1988 report on nicotine addiction left no doubts on
the subject; "Today the scientific base linking smoking to a number
of chronic diseases is overwhelming, with a total of 50,000 studies
from dozens of countries," states Encyclopedia Britannica's 1987
"Medical and Health Annual."

LIMBAUGH: "We closed down a whole town--Times Beach, Mo.--over the
threat of dioxin. We now know there was no reason to do that.
Dioxin at those levels isn't harmful." (Ought to Be, p. 163)

REALITY: "The hypothesis that low exposures [to dioxin] are
entirely safe for humans is distinctly less tenable now than
before," editorialized the New England Journal of Medicine after
publishing a study (1/24/91) on cancer mortality and dioxin. In
1993, after Limbaugh's book was written, a study of residents in
Seveso, Italy had increased cancer rates after being exposed to
dioxin, The EPA's director of environmental toxicology said this
study removed one of the last remaining doubts about dioxin,s
deadly effects (AP, 8/29/93).

LIMBAUGH: "The worst of all of this is the lie that condoms really
protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20
percent. Would you get on a plane--or put your children on a plane-
-if one of five passengers would be killed on the flight? Well, the
statistic holds for condoms, folks." (Ought to Be, p. 135)

REALITY: A one in five AIDS risk for condom users? Not true,
according to Dr. Joseph Kelaghan, who evaluates contraceptives for
the National Institutes of Health. "There is substantive evidence
that condoms prevent transmission if used consistently and
properly," he said. He pointed to a nearly two-year study of
couples in which one partner was HIV-positive. Among the 123
couples who used condoms regularly, there wasn't a single new
infection (AP, 8/29/93).

LIMBAUGH: "Most Canadian physicians who are themselves in need of
surgery, for example, scurry across the border to get it done
right: the American way. They have found, through experience, that
state medical care is too expensive, too slow and inefficient, and,
most important, it doesn't provide adequate care for most people."
(Told You So, p. 153)

REALITY: "Mr. Limbaugh's claim simply isn't true," says Dr. Hugh
Scully, chair of the Canadian Medical Association's Council on
Healing and Finance. "The vast majority of Canadians, including
physicians, receive their care here in Canada. Those few Canadians
who receive health care in the U.S. most often do because they have
winter homes in the States--like Arizona and Florida--and have
emergent health problems there." Medical care in Canada is hardly
"too expensive"; it's provided free and covered by taxes.

LIMBAUGH: "If you have any doubts about the status of American
health care, just compare it with that in other industrialized
nations." (Told You So, p. 153)

REALITY: The United States ranks 19th in life expectancy and 20th
in infant mortality among 23 industrialized nations, according to
the CIA's 1993 World Fact Book. The U.S. also has the lowest health
care satisfaction rate (11 percent) of the 10 largest
industrialized nations (Health Affairs, vol. 9, no. 2).

LIMBAUGH: Denouncing Jeremy Rifkin of the Beyond Beef campaign as
an "ecopest": "Rifkin is bent out of shape because he says the
cattle consume enough grain to feed hundreds of millions of people.
The reason the cattle are eating the grain is so they can be
fattened and slaughtered, after which they will feed people, who
need a high protein diet." (Ought To Be, p. 110)

REALITY: Sixteen pounds of grain and soy is required to produce one
pound of edible food from beef (USDA Economic Research Service). As
for needing a "high-protein diet," the World Health Organization
and U.S. Department of Agriculture recommend that from 4.5 percent
to 6 percent of daily calories come from protein. The amount of
calories from protein in rice is 8 percent; in wheat it's 17
percent (USDA Handbook No. 456).

LIMBAUGH: "Do you know we have more acreage of forest land in the
United States today than we did at the time the constitution was
written." (Radio show, 2/18/94)

REALITY: In what are now the 50 U.S. states, there were 850 million
acres of forest land in the late 1700s vs. only 730 million today
(The Bum's Rush, p. 136). Limbaugh's claim also ignores the fact
that much of today's forests are single-species tree farms, as
opposed to natural old-growth forests which support diverse
ecosystems.

BROTHERHOOD...AND SISTERHOOD

LIMBAUGH: "The videotape of the Rodney King beating played
absolutely no role in the conviction of two of the four officers.
It was pure emotion that was responsible for the guilty verdict."
(Radio show, quoted in FRQ, Summer/93)

REALITY: "Jury Foreman Says Video Was Crucial in Convictions," read
an accurate Los Angeles Times headline the day after the federal
court verdict (4/20/93).

LIMBAUGH: "Anytime the illegitimacy rate in black America is
raised, Reverend Jackson and other black 'leaders' immediately
change the subject." (Ought to Be, p. 225)

REALITY: Jesse Jackson has been talking about and against "children
having children" in speeches and interviews for decades. So have
many other black leaders, especially in the clergy.

LIMBAUGH: Praising Sen. Strom Thurmond for calling a gay soldier
"not normal": "He's not encumbered by being politically correct....
If you want to know what America used to be--and a lot of people
wish it still were--then you listen to Strom Thurmond." (TV show,
9/1/93)

REALITY: In the America that "used to be," Strom Thurmond was one
of the country's strongest voices for racism, running for president
in 1948 on the slogan, "Segregation Forever."

LIMBAUGH: "There are more American Indians alive today than there
were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does
this sound like a record of genocide?" (Told You So, p. 68)

REALITY: According to Carl Shaw of the U.S. Bureau of Indian
Affairs, estimates of the pre-Columbus population of what later
became the United States range from 5 million to 15 million. Native
populations in the late 19th century fell to 250,000, due in part
to genocidal policies. Today the U.S.'s Native American population
is about 2 million.

LIMBAUGH: "Women were doing quite well in this country before
feminism came along." (Radio show, quoted in FRQ, Summer/93)

REALITY: Before feminism, women couldn't even vote.

LIMBAUGH: "Anita Hill followed Clarence Thomas everywhere.
Wherever he went, she wanted to be right by his side, she wanted to
work with him, she wanted to continue to date him.... There were no
other accusers who came forth after Anita Hill did and said, 'Yeah,
Clarence Thomas, he harassed me, too.' There was none of that." (TV
show, 5/4/94)

REALITY: Hill could not have continued to date Thomas, since they
never dated. Two other women, Sukari Hardnett and Angela Wright,
came forth in the Thomas case with similar charges.

LIMBAUGH: "Now I got something for you that's true--1972, Tufts
University, Boston. This is 24 years ago--or 22 years ago. Three
year study of 5000 co-eds, and they used a benchmark of a bra size
of 34C. They found that the--now wait. It's true. The larger the
brasize, the smaller the IQ." (TV show, 5/13/94)

REALITY: Dr. Burton Hallowell, president of Tufts in the '60s and
'70s, had "absolutely no recollection" of such a study, according
to Tufts' communications office. "I surely would have remembered
that!" he exclaimed. Limbaugh's staff was unable to produce any
such study. A search of the Nexis database--while revealing no
evidence of a Tufts study--did produce a number of women theorizing
that the presence of large breasts caused a lowering of IQ in some
males.

THE CLINTON OBSESSION

LIMBAUGH: On Whitewater: "I don't think the New York Times has run
a story on this yet. I mean, we haven't done a thorough search,
but I--there has not been a big one, front-page story, about this
one that we can recall. So this has yet to create or get up to its
full speed--if it weren't for us and the Wall Street Journal and
the American Spectator, this would be one of the biggest and most
well kept secrets going on in American politics today." (TV show,
2/17/94)

REALITY: The New York Times BROKE the Whitewater story on March 8,
1992, in a front-page story by Jeff Gerth that included much of the
key information known today. The investigative article ran over
1700 words.

LIMBAUGH: "You know the Clintons send Chelsea to the Sidwell
Friends private school.... A recent eighth grade class assignment
required students to write a paper on 'Why I Feel Guilty Being
White.'... My source for this story is CBS News. I am not making it
up." (Radio show, quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times, 1/16/94.)

REALITY: When Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called CBS,
the network denied running such a story. Ellis Turner, the director
of external affairs for Sidwell Friends, told Roeper: "There is no
legitimacy to the story that has been circulating.... We're anxious
to let people know that this story is not true." The essay topic
would be particularly difficult for the 28 percent of the school's
student body that is not white.

LIMBAUGH: "You better pay attention to the 1993 budget deal because
there is an increase in beer and alcohol taxes." (Radio show,
7/9/93)

REALITY: There were no increases in beer and alcohol taxes in the
1993 budget.

LIMBAUGH: The lead item on a page of "Stupid Quotes" in the
May '94 Limbaugh Letter--subtitled, "Folks, I don't make this stuff
up"--was a quote attributed to Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin
Group: "Hillary and Bill Clinton cheating on their taxes was a
protest against the Reagan era tax breaks for the wealthy.... They
knew...the IRS would catch up to them and tack penalties.... If
more people had been as far-sighted and altruistic as the Clintons,
we could retroactively erase the deficit." Limbaugh commented,
"It's only May, folks, and we've got our Stupid Quote of the year."

REALITY: Rush Limbaugh, April Fool. The item came from the April
Fools Day issue of a right-wing newsletter Notable Quotables. Each
item in the newsletter was dated April 1 and the issue signed off
with the words "April Fools." (The Limbaugh Letter later printed a
correction on this and another April Fools quote used as fact.)

FRACTURED HISTORY

LIMBAUGH: Quotes President James Madison: "We have staked the
future...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern
ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to
the Ten Commandments of God." (Told You So, p. 73)

REALITY: "We didn't find anything in our files remotely like the
sentiment expressed in the extract you sent to us," David B.
Mattern, the associate editor of The Madison Papers, told the
Kansas City Star (1/16/94). "In addition, the idea is entirely
inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on
religion and government."

LIMBAUGH: "And it was only 4,000 votes that--had they gone another
way in Chicago--Richard Nixon would have been elected in 1960."
(TV show, 4/28/94)

REALITY: Kennedy won the 1960 election with 303 electoral votes to
219 for Nixon. Without Illinois' 27 electoral votes, Kennedy would
still have won, 276-246.

LIMBAUGH: On how to stop riots: "Richard Daley, in 1968, in the
Democratic National Convention, issued an order--where there were
rumors of riots--he issued a shoot-to-kill order. And there were no
riots and there was no civil disobedience and no shots were fired
and nobody was hurt. And that's what ought to happen." (TV show,
6/10/93)

REALITY: Mayor Daley's shoot-to-kill order was issued not at the
Democratic Convention, but following the April 4, 1968 Martin
Luther King assassination. Daley wasn't reacting to "rumors of
riots" since riots had already broken out. The shoot-to-kill order
hardly put an end to unrest--since four months after Daley's order,
protestors flocked to Chicago's Democratic Convention and engaged
in riotous civil disobedience. Protesters chanted, "The whole world
is watching." Except for Rush Limbaugh.

LIMBAUGH: In an attack on Spike Lee, director of Malcolm X, for
being fast and loose with the facts, Limbaugh introduced a video
clip of Malcolm X's "daughter named Betty Shabazz." (TV show,
11/17/92)

REALITY: Betty Shabazz is Malcolm X's widow.

LIMBAUGH: "Those gas lines were a direct result of the foreign oil
powers playing tough with us because they didn't fear Jimmy
Carter." (Told You So, p. 112)

REALITY: The first--and most serious--gas lines occurred in late
1973/early 1974, during the administration of Limbaugh hero Richard
Nixon.

LIMBAUGH: On Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh: "This
Walsh story basically is, we just spent seven years and $40 million
looking for any criminal activity on the part of anybody in the
Reagan administration, and guess what? We couldn't find any. These
guys didn't do anything, but we wish they had so that we could nail
them. So instead, we're just going to say, 'Gosh, these are rotten
guys.' They have absolutely no evidence. There is not one
indictment. There is not one charge." (TV show, 1/19/94)

REALITY: Walsh won indictments against 14 people in connection with
the Iran-contra scandal including leading Reagan administration
officials like former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and
former national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John
Poindexter. Of the 14, 11 were convicted or pleaded guilty. (Two
convictions were later overturned on technicalities--including that
of occasional limbaugh substitute Oliver North)

LIMBAUGH: Explaining why the Democrats wanted to "sabotage"
President Bush with the 1990 budget deal: "Now, here is my point.
In 1990, George Bush was president and was enjoying a 90 percent
plus approval rating on the strength of our victories in the
Persian Gulf War and Cold War." (Told You So, p. 304)

REALITY: In October 1990, when the budget deal was concluded the
Gulf War had not yet been fought.

LIMBAUGH: On the Gulf War: "Everybody in the world was aligned with
the United States except who? The United States Congress." (TV
show, 4/18/94)

REALITY: Both houses of Congress voted to authorize the U.S. to use
force against Iraq.

LIMBAUGH: On Bosnia: "For the first time in military history, U.S.
military personnel are not under the command of United States
generals." (TV show, 4/18/94)

REALITY: That's news to the Pentagon. "How far back do you want to
go?" asked Commander Joe Gradisher, a Pentagon spokesperson.
"Americans served under Lafayette in the Revolutionary war."
Gradisher pointed out several famous foreign commanders of U.S.
troops, including France's Marshall Foch, in overall command of
U.S. troops in World War 1. In World War 2, Britain's General
Montgomery led U.S. troops in Europe and North Africa, while
another British General, Lord Mountbatten, commanded the China-
Burma-India theatre.

PERSONAL ATTACKS

LIMBAUGH: Limbaugh constantly tells his audience that he doesn't
make personnel or ad hominem attacks. To a caller who had a problem
with his personalized attacks, Limbaugh responded with a denial:
"Give me a specific example: who, what, when, where, and what
exactly did I say?" (Radio show, 2/18/94)

REALITY: One hour before that call, Limbaugh was telling his
audience that a 5,000-year-old man found buried in ice--pictured on
the cover of Time magazine--was really Sally Jesse Raphael: "This
is just what Sally Jesse Raphael looks like without makeup!"

MORE REALITY: Columnist Molly Ivins reported (Arizona Republic
10/17/93) this incident from Limbaugh's TV show--"Here is a
Limbaugh joke: Everyone knows the Clintons have a cat. Socks is the
White House cat. But did you know there is a White House dog?" And
he puts up a picture of Chelsea Clinton. Chelsea Clinton is 13
Years old.

LIMBAUGH: Assailing a journalist who had criticized Nixon: "Michael
Gartner, portraying himself as a balanced, objective journalist
with years and years of experience faking events, and then
reporting them as news--and doing so with the express hope of
destroying General Motors in one case and destroying businesses
that cut down trees, the timber industry, in another." (TV show,
4/27/94)

REALITY: Gartner, the NBC News president who resigned in the wake
of the GM truck explosion episode on NBC's Dateline, had no
hands-on role in it- -nor had he expressed a hope of destroying any
company.

LIMBAUGH: Equally accurate when denouncing a fellow conservative,
he said of right-wing journalist Cliff Kincaid: "He's written all
kinds of pieces about how I don't go make speeches for free, for
the cause.... He's just one more of these little gnats out there
trying to sink a Boeing 747 that's leaving him in a cloud of dust."
(Radio show, 11/19/93)

REALITY: Kincaid's only published piece on whether Limbaugh does
speeches "for the cause" was in Human Events (7/27/91): "He does
his bit for conservatives when the movement calls. He waived his
fees, for instance, when he emceed at roasts for Oliver North and
Paul Weyrich and addressed the National Right to Life convention."

LIMBAUGH VS. LIMBAUGH

LIMBAUGH: Limbaugh frequently denies that he uses his show for
political activism: "I have yet to encourage you people or urge you
to call anybody. I don't do it. They think I'm the one doing it.
That's fine. You don't need to be told when to call. They think you
are a bunch of lemmings out there." (Radio show, 6/28/93)

REALITY: Just an hour after making the above claim, he was--as
usual--sending his troops to the trenches: "The people in the
states where these Democratic senators are up for reelection in '94
have to let their feelings be known.... These senators, you let
them know. I think Wisconsin's one state. Let's say Herb Kohl is up
in '94. You people in Wisconsin who don't like this bill, who don't
like the tax increases, you let Herb Kohl know somehow."

LIMBAUGH: On the poverty line: "$14,400 for a family of four.
That's not so bad." (Radio show, 11/9/93, quoted in FRQ, Winter/94)

REALITY: Just a few months earlier, Limbaugh was talking about how
tough it was to make 10 times that: "I know families that make
$180,000 a year and they don't consider themselves rich. Why, it
costs them $20,000 a year to send their kids to school." (Radio
show, 8/3/93, quoted in FRQ, Winter/94)

LIMBAUGH: On Bill Clinton: "Never trust a draft dodger." (Radio
show, quoted in FRQ, Summer/93)

REALITY: Although a supporter of the Vietnam War, Limbaugh used a
minor physical impairment to avoid the draft (Minneapolis Star
Tribune, 9/27/93).

LIMBAUGH: In frequent broadcasts, Limbaugh offers impassioned
advocacy for Paula Jones, who charged Bill Clinton with sexual
harassment. (TV and radio, April-May/94)

REALITY: Limbaugh boasted that a sign on his office door reads,
"Sexual harassment at this work station will not be reported.
However...it will be graded!!!" (USA Weekend, 1/26/92).


RUSH LIMBAUGH: CHAMPION OF THE OVERDOG

Who says Rush Limbaugh is abusive to minorities? He champions
various minority interests: multi-millionaires, bankers, owners of
private planes and yachts, drug companies. It's only those other
"minorities"--women, workers, the poor, racial minorities, gays--
that he has no use for. Here's a sampling:

"One of the things I want to do before I die is conduct the
homeless Olympics...[Events would include] the 10-meter Shopping
Cart Relay, the Dumpster Dig, and the Hop, Skip and Trip." (L.A.
Times, 1/20/91)

On NAFTA: "If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid
people--I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs, let the kinds of jobs
that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do--let stupid and
unskilled Mexicans do that work." (Radio show quoted in FRQ
Fall/93)

Speculating on why a Mexican national won the New York marathon:
"An immigration agent chased him for the last 10 miles." (USA
Weekend, 1/26/92)

This is asinine! A Cesar Chavez Day in California? Wasn't he
convicted of a crime?" (Quoted in FRQ, Winter/94)

"Kurt Cobain was, ladies and gentleman, I just--he was a worthless
shred of human debris..." (TV show, 4/11/94)

"When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an
insult ; it's an invitation." (Quoted in FRQ, Summer/94)

"Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier
access to the mainstream." (Quoted in FRQ, Summer/93)

"Militant feminists are pro-choice because it's their ultimate
avenue of power over men.... It is their attempt to impose their
will on the rest of society, particularly on men." (Ought to Be,
p.53)

"Why is it that whenever a corporation fires workers it is never
speculated that the workers might have deserved it?" (Ought to Be,
p.275)


KOPPEL COVERS FOR LIMBAUGH'S RUMOR-MONGERING

Ted Koppel's special (ABC Viewpoint, 4/19/94) on press coverage of
Whitewater was a perfect opportunity to take Rush Limbaugh to task
for spreading unfounded conspiracy theories. But instead, ABC
journalists Koppel and Jeff Greenfield let Limbaugh off the hook.

On his March 10 radio broadcast, Limbaugh had announced the
following in urgent tones: "OK, folks, I think I got enough
information here to tell you about the contents of this fax that I
got. Brace yourselves. This fax contains information that I have
just been told will appear in a newsletter to Morgan Stanley sales
personnel this afternoon.... What it is is a bit of news which
says...there's a Washington consulting firm that has scheduled the
release of a report that will appear, it will be published, that
claims that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by
Hilary Clinton, and the body was then taken to Fort Marcy Park."

After he returned from a commercial break, Limbaugh began referring
to the story as a "rumor," but continued to claim that the story
was that "the Vince Foster suicide was not a suicide."

Limbaugh was referring to an item in a newsletter put out by the
Washington, D.C. firm of Johnson Smick International. The
newsletter, relating a rumor that has no apparent basis in fact,
reported that White House attorney Foster's suicide occurred in an
apartment owned by White House associates, and that his body was
moved to the park where it was found.

Limbaugh took this baseless rumor from a small insiders' newsletter
and broadcast it to his radio audience of millions, adding his own
new inaccuracies: The newsletter did not report--as Limbaugh
claimed--that Foster was murdered, or that the apartment was owned
by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Limbaugh's repetition of an unfounded
rumor has been credited (Chicago Tribune, 3/11/94; Newsweek,
3/21/94) with contributing to a plunge in the stock market on the
day it was aired.

Appearing as an "expert" on the Viewpoint special, Limbaugh denied
twisting the rumor: "Never have I suggested that this was murder,"
he said. ABC's Jeff Greenfield, in a taped segment, further covered
for the talkshow host, claiming that Limbaugh "broadcast the rumor
as an example of the more wild stories circulating."

Later in the broadcast, host Ted Koppel also stuck up for Limbaugh
when his role in spreading the story was challenged. "As I recall,"
Koppel said, "you didn't present it as accurate, did you? You
represented it as one of the rumors that was going around."

The executive producer of Limbaugh's TV show, Roger Ailes (a
Republican campaign consultant and president of the CNBC cable
network), didn't claim that his star had debunked the rumor--he
boasted that Limbaugh's report of "a suicide coverup, possibly
murder" was a scoop. On the Don Imus radio show, Ailes remarked:
"The guy who's been doing an excellent job for the New York Post
[Chris Ruddy]...for the first time on the Rush Limbaugh show said
that...he did not believe it was suicide.... Now, I don't have any
evidence.... These people are very good at hiding or destroying
evidence."

But Limbaugh doesn't seem so proud of his scoop. When a caller to
the radio show (3/10/94), who identified himself as a pediatrician
from Memphis, articulately criticized Limbaugh for spreading false
reports about Vincent Foster's death, the host seemed to take it
personally: "One thing I'm not is a rumor-monger," he said.

Limbaugh later went on to imply that the pediatrician had been
calling from the "West Wing of the White House" (even though he had
also attacked the Clinton health care plan and endorsed a single-
payer approach). "I think that what is going to happen during the
course of this year," Limbaugh said, "is that a bunch of people are
going to call this show that have been given marching orders....
What's going to happen is there will be numerous attempts, and
they've gone on all the time, to discredit what occurs on this
program."

The next day (3/11/94), apparently still smarting from the Memphis
caller's remarks, Limbaugh instructed his staff on the air: "You
guys be on the lookout in there for more calls from the White House
disguised as pediatricians from Memphis."

FAIR associate Jonathan Eagleman tracked down the "Memphis
pediatrician" and found that he was...a Memphis pediatrician. The
pediatrician had received a number of hate calls from outraged
dittoheads--apparently some of them hadn't believed their leader's
claim that he was actually calling from the White House.

(c) FAIR
* * *

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) is the national media watch
group offering well-documented criticism in an effort to correct
bias and imbalance. FAIR focuses public awareness on the narrow
corporate ownership of the press, the media's allegiance to
official agendas and their insensitivity to women, labor,
minorities and other public interest constituencies. FAIR seeks to
invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater media
pluralism and the inclusion of public interest voices in national
debates.

FAIR is a membership-based organization. If you would like to
become a member and receive FAIR's magazine, EXTRA!, where
this report originally appeared and which features such well-
documented media criticism in each issue, call our subscription
service at 800-847-3993, 9:00-5:00 Eastern Time. Let them know you
got the number on the internet. If you would like a copy of the
original report, send an e-mail message to FAIR (fa...@igc.apc.org),
and we'll tell you how you can get one.

ACTION: Each TV or radio station that carries Limbaugh has a
responsibility to the community it serves. They can be held
accountable if they broadcast fabrications. They must find a way
to correct the record if they allow Limbaugh to spew falsehoods.
Contact the station manager of your local Limbaugh outlets. Let
them know you take Limbaugh's disinformation seriously...and so
should they.

An obvious antidote to Limbaugh's brand of distortion would be to
have a genuine debate. That would give the facts a chance -- and
provide some political balance. When you call radio stations, you
could note that stations can provide some debate and balance by
broadcasting the talkshows hosted by populist Jim Hightower and
iconoclast Jerry Brown -- two hosts who do not seem to be allergic
to the facts.

The debunking of Limbaugh is also featured this week on FAIR's
weekly radio program, CounterSpin, (which airs on over 70 stations)
and in the "Media Beat" column by FAIR associates Jeff Cohen and
Norman Solomon. Their column is distributed by Creators Syndicate.
If you would like to hear CounterSpin on a local radio station, let
them know. If you'd like to see "Media Beat" in your local paper,
let the editorial page editors know.

For more information on FAIR, write to: Sam Husseini, FAIR, 130
West 25th Street, New York, NY, 10001. (fa...@igc.apc.org) Please
send FAIR any letters you write or any newspaper reports you see on
this subject. Feel free to post this on any appropriate place on
the internet. Thank you.