Topic: Accuracy in Media
Ella Carroll-Smith complained in a Feb. 17 Accuracy in Media post:
Rush Limbaugh, one of the most influential voices in the history of conservative talk radio, died Wednesday following a year-long battle with lung cancer. HuffPost immediately jumped at the opportunity to run this headline: “Rush Limbaugh, Bigoted King of Talk Radio, Dies at 70.”
The “obituary”, which reads more like a hateful tirade, goes on to claim that Limbaugh “saturated America’s airwaves with cruelty bigotries, lies and conspiracy theories for over three decades.”[...]
Even now, after his death, the media still can’t help but pile on their hatred of Limbaugh. NBC ran with this as the subhead for his obituary: “The Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree outraged critics with his long history of sexist, homophobic and racist remarks.”
NowThis reported that “[d]uring his decades-long media career, he used his platform to promote racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and conspiracy theories.”
The Washington Post, which famously described ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar” upon his death, covered Limbaugh as a man whodeployed comic bombast and relentless bashing of liberals, feminists and environmentalists to become a cultural phenomenon and lead the Republican Party into a politics of anger and obstruction.”
All of this is but a small sampling of the hateful rhetoric that’s making its way across mainstream news outlets Wednesday.
At no point, however, did Carroll-Smith dispute the accuracy of any of those "hateful" descriptions of Limbaugh -- perhaps because she can't. He indisuputably was bigoted and promoted racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and conspiracy theories. Which means that this AIM post is all about being mad that the truth was told about Limbaugh.
Nevertheless, AIM created an action alert over this:
We lost a titan of the conservative movement. But within hours of his passing, radical left-wing “journalists” began to smear Rush Limbaugh.
HuffPost called him the “Bigoted King of Talk Radio.” Rolling Stone ran the headline, “Rush Limbaugh Did His Best to Ruin America.”
Rush stood up for our beliefs throughout his entire career.
I hope you’ll take just a minute out of your day to stand up for Rush.
Use the box on this screen to send one prewritten message that goes to the editors of these publications, as well as the board of directors of their parent company. Or modify our message and send your own.
We should be able to respectfully disagree about politics in America. There’s no reason for them to use hateful rhetoric to smear a dead man.
Again, AIM does not dispute the accuracy of those descriptors of Limbaugh. Again, AIM is mad that the truth was told.
Also, it's rich to hear AIM declaring that "We should be able to respectfully disagree about politics in America" given that a key AIM employee for decades was Cliff Kincaid.
