Limbaugh Echo Chamber: The Media Reports What They Want to Happen

Rush Limbaugh was really on a roll today, talking about the news media’s accuracy level.

It’s better heard than read (go here for transcript, here for audio/video archives) as Rush tends to be, but worth it either way.

A tiny selection of many choice comments:

…from a purely analytical point of view — the media prove time and time again they cannot be trusted to report the truth or the facts… First there was Katrina. We got forged documents, lies about the law regarding the NSA program; now this terrible mine accident. Time and again they report false information and spin. They rely on rumored sources. Somebody shouts out a rumor, they run with it. They take it to the air. The new standard in the media is: a guy runs up and tells you something, you don’t know who your sources are. You don’t know your source’s name. You don’t know anything about him but you report it as news, and then when it’s all proven to be untrue. You get, “Oh, how awful…”…let’s take a look at the media. This is an industry that supposedly trades on facts, supposedly trades on truth, and if it can’t be trusted how is it any different than Enron or WorldCom?

We are the consumers of this information, and if the information is repeatedly unreliable then the product is defective and those people selling it are dishonest…

…self-policing isn’t working, either. There is no accountability. Where are all the editors? Where are all the levels in this miner story, for example? We keep hearing that you can’t trust talk radio. “You can’t trust Matt Drudge. You can’t trust the Internet, because there aren’t any filters! It’s just a bunch of wackos doing what they want to do, advancing their own agenda.” How is that really any different from what the mainstream media, the old media, is today? Where are the filters? Who are the filters? Well, the filters are no different than the reporters. They got the same agenda. They have the same purpose. But they deny it. The last thing they’re interested in is fact. The last thing they’re interested in is truth. They don’t report what happened. They report what they want to happen.

…I don’t think they give a damn about the news at all.

…The point is that we should take note of the fact that the media are not what they say they are. They are not journalists seeking the truth and seeking facts. That is false advertising. They have a defective product. They are losing the respect of the public. They’ve lost it in West Virginia now. They are losing credibility, the way any dishonest company and profession does. I mean, you go to bed thinking 12 miners are alive only to wake up the next day to find out that all but one of them is dead. It’s shocking.

The man’s right.



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