Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 14:00:28 -0800 To: fayxx001@maroon.tc.umn.edu From: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting Subject: FAIR's Report on Rush Limbaugh The following is FAIR's report on Rush Limbaugh from the July/August issue of FAIR's magazine, EXTRA! FAIR's rebuttal to Limbaugh's "reply" also follows. 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'S REPLY TO LIMBAUGH'S NON-RESPONSE October 17, 1994 Rush Limbaugh's long-touted "5,000 word response" to FAIR's "Reign of Error" report has been released -- after nearly three and a half months. Unfortunately for Limbaugh, it doesn't rebut; mostly it changes the subject, dodges and wastes thousands of words on tangents and what-I-really-meant-to-say digressions. Whereas the FAIR report offered facts to specifically rebut Limbaugh's claims, his response relies on off-point quotes, non-responsive texts, even passages from opinion columnists. It's telling that Limbaugh doesn't bother to rebut our original report -- which we provided to him two days before its public release. Instead, his response works from (sometimes incomplete) press accounts of our report. As a result, Limbaugh ignores almost half of the errors that we pointed out. (He also ignores one of our items printed in the Washington Post, a smear of conservative commentator Cliff Kincaid.) The response is in many ways more disturbing than the original false claims -- because it reveals that even after his accuracy has been specifically challenged, Limbaugh (along with his multi-million dollar broadcasting and publishing operation) is utterly incapable of engaging in factual discourse. In his "Dear Mr. Journalist" cover letter, Limbaugh writes that "there has been no double checking; there have been no questions asked of FAIR. Journalists were handed a list of items by this group, and they simply repeated them." In fact, journalists repeatedly asked tough questions of FAIR, sought added documentation, and did their own reporting. It is clear from Howard Kurtz' Washington Post piece (7/1/94), for example, that he did his own independent research and interviews. Even the brief cover page of Limbaugh's response contains errors. In furtherance of a conspiracy theory that was apparently too good to check out, Limbaugh writes that FAIR "was launched in the summer of 1987 with the financial assistance of The New World Foundation." He goes on to say that Hillary Clinton chaired the foundation. In fact, FAIR was founded not in 1987, but 1986 -- and the foundation played no role in the launching. Limbaugh makes reference to a 1987 grant of $2,500; he doesn't say that it was a discretionary grant conferred by the foundation's executive director, a decision that did not involve the chair or the board. These are simple facts that anyone could have learned by calling FAIR or the foundation. (Anyone who's done even a cursory review of FAIR's work would know that we are far from flacks for the Clinton administration, and that we've frequently criticized mainstream media for soft treatment of the president on various issues.) Limbaugh's cover letter also repeats the claim that FAIR found 43 errors in more than 4,000 hours of broadcasts. As our report noted, our list was far from exhaustive. We assembled those errors from easily available sources -- mainly his books and transcripts of several weeks' worth of his TV show. What follows is a point-by-point reply to Limbaugh's non-response. We retract nothing -- since Limbaugh has been unable to show that we were wrong on a single point. Limbaugh's "rebuttal" is a sad commentary on a broadcaster who has 20 million listeners per week, but can't document his claims. 1. STUDENT LOANS: Limbaugh asserted that "banks take risks in issuing student loans and they are entitled to the profits." In reality, as FAIR pointed out, these loans are federally insured. His "rebuttal" is to offer a quote from a bankers' association spokesperson, who asserts that the "risk" bankers face is that they might fail to comply with federal procedures, and therefore not receive the reimbursement that the federal government would otherwise give them. This is a novel use of the concept of "risk" in lending, which is generally considered to be the chance that a borrower will not repay a loan. With student loans, the federal government assumes this risk. 2. AMERICAN HEALTH CARE: Limbaugh urged a comparison of "American health care to other industrialized nations." FAIR did so, and found the U.S. running near the bottom on such matters as life expectancy and infant survival. In attempted rebuttal, Limbaugh offers a quote from "Dr. Elizabeth McCaughey" (not a medical doctor, the Manhattan Institute's McCaughey has a PhD in constitutional law), who writes that high infant mortality and lower life expectancy "have almost nothing to do with the quality of American medical care. Both statistics reflect the epidemic of low-birth-weight babies born to teenage and drug-addicted mothers, as well as the large numbers of homicides in American cities and drug-related deaths." This is misinformation. Infant mortality, far from having "almost nothing to do with" the quality of health care, is closely linked with the availability of prenatal care. According to figures from the National Center for Health Statistics, the mortality rate for infants whose mothers received little or no prenatal care is almost 10 times that of mothers who received frequent prenatal care. And the Centers for Disease Control estimate that homicide lowers U.S. life expectancy by about three months -- which would do almost nothing to improve our rank. "Drug related deaths" are far fewer than homicides, and would have even less impact on our life expectancy ranking. It's ironic that Limbaugh objects to using these statistics as measures of American health. They're the same two statistics he cites on the same page of his book to show that "the health of the American people has never been better." Limbaugh ignores the second half of FAIR's argument: "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)." 3. FOREST ACREAGE: "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?" said Limbaugh. In fact, in what are now the 50 U.S. states, there were at least 850 million acres of forest land in the late 1700s, vs. only 730 million acres today. Limbaugh's rebuttal is a lengthy dodge, which compares the amount of forest land in the U.S. today to that in 1920. But the Constitution was written in 1787, not 1920. 4. CHELSEA CLINTON: Limbaugh asserted that students at Chelsea Clinton's Sidwell Friends school were "required" to write a paper on "Why I Feel Guilty Being White" and added, "My source for this story is CBS News. I am not making it up." In reality, Limbaugh falsely claimed CBS News as his source, and there's no evidence that any such essay was ever assigned. Limbaugh actually took this claim from an infotainment tip sheet called CBS Morning Resource--which is not part of CBS News, any more than a CBS game show is part of CBS's news operation. Limbaugh also neglected to tell his listeners that his real source for the item, as stated in the tip sheet, was Playboy (which had cited Heterodoxy, a right-wing publication). As CBS News Vice President Larry Cooper wrote in a letter responding to Limbaugh (USA Today, 7/20/94): "Limbaugh's source was actually Playboy magazine. The story, crediting Playboy, was distributed to radio stations via the CBS Morning Resource.... Morning Resource is not associated with CBS News." Limbaugh seemed to sense -- correctly -- that an item would sound more credible to his listeners if sourced to "CBS News" than to Playboy. In Limbaugh's rebuttal, he ignores the difference between CBS News and CBS Morning Resource. He still asserts that his claim about the required essay assignment is "a true story," and that "my office did what no other journalist did: We tracked the story to its root and talked to the original reporter (for Washington's City Paper). He confirmed the story." Did Limbaugh's office do some pioneering research here? Not quite. FAIR's magazine EXTRA! had already tracked down the reporter who first wrote of the purported essay assignment, and published that fact five weeks ago (Sept./Oct. 94). After we asked the City Paper reporter, Bill Gifford, how an essay called "Why I Feel Guilty Being White" could be assigned to the roughly 25 percent of the school's students who are not white, he said he would doublecheck with his source, an unnamed disgruntled parent. Gifford got back to us and said that the actual title of the essay assigned to a 7th and 8th-grade class was "Should White People Feel Guilty and Why?" -- a different, more neutral topic. After claiming that "no other journalist" had talked to the original reporter, Limbaugh then contradicts himself by acknowledging that we HAD talked to Gifford. Limbaugh claims Gifford "says he told FAIR the same thing he told my office, that he stands by the story and it's true." Interviewed by a Washington Times reporter doing a story on the Limbaugh rebuttal (10/11/94), Gifford confirmed that his source now says the assignment was "Should White People Feel Guilty?" -- and not "Why I Feel Guilty Being White." Of course, the "root" of a story about a school assignment is not a reporter, or a shaky unnamed source -- it's the classroom. From inquiring repeatedly among administrators and faculty at the school, we have found no evidence of the essay assignment. Limbaugh and City Paper have produced no written documentation. The school maintains that the story is "apocryphal." 5. BEER AND ALCOHOL TAXES IN 1993: "You better pay attention to the 1993 budget deal because there is an increase in beer and alcohol taxes," asserted Limbaugh during his July 9, 1993 radio show. In reality, there were no such increases in the budget deal. In "rebuttal," Limbaugh says that beer and alcohol taxes "were indeed considered" for the budget. This of course is very different from saying that alcohol tax increases are IN the budget deal. In fact, when Limbaugh made this statement, different budget packages had passed both the House and the Senate, and neither package included tax increases on beer or alcohol. It's noteworthy that Limbaugh's main source for the point that an alcohol tax was even considered is Bob Woodward's The Agenda, which hadn't been published when Limbaugh made his pronouncement. In an even wilder tangent, Limbaugh talks of prospective alcohol taxes to cover Clinton's health plan. This, again, has nothing to do with "the 1993 budget deal." 6. GAS LINES: "Those gas lines were a direct result of foreign oil powers playing tough with us because they didn't fear Jimmy Carter," Limbaugh wrote in his book See, I Told You So. In fact, FAIR pointed out, the most serious gas lines were in late 1973/early 1974, during the Nixon administration. Limbaugh says he "wasn't discussing the 1973 gas lines" -- just the "gas lines that Jimmy Carter was responsible for." But the passage that includes this statement begins, "I, for one, remember the long gas lines of the 1970s" -- with no distinction made between the more serious 1973-74 gas lines and the gas lines he blames on Jimmy Carter. 7. U.S. MILITARY/BOSNIA: Defending his claim that "for the first time in military history, U.S. military personnel [in Bosnia] are not under the command of United States generals," Limbaugh's rebuttal claims that "U.S. military personnel have served WITH forces from other countries throughout history, such as in World War I and II but U.S. generals have always been at the top of the command structure." In fact, in World War I, France's Marshal Ferdinand Foch was in overall command of Allied troops. This fact was noted in FAIR's report, but Limbaugh seems to have chosen to ignore it. 8. RODNEY KING: Limbaugh's claim that "the videotape of the Rodney King beating played absolutely no role in the conviction of two of the four officers" is clearly unsupportable. Nothing Limbaugh writes contradicts the jury foreman's statement that the video was "crucial" in the conviction -- a statement that Limbaugh says he simply "discounted." 9. C.C. MYERS: Limbaugh said that declaring the Santa Monica Freeway a disaster area "eliminated the need for competitive bids." In fact, C.C. Myers beat out four other contractors who bid on the project. Limbaugh said that Myers did not have to go through the "rigamarole...of giving 25 percent of the job to a minority-owned business and 25 percent to a woman." In fact, affirmative action rules applied. Limbaugh said that "government got the hell out of the way." In fact, state employees worked round the clock on the project, and the whole thing was government-funded. While not disputing any of the factual errors that we pointed out, Limbaugh's rebuttal irrelevantly argues that other statements he made about Myers were true. 10. FEMINISM: "Women were doing quite well in this country before feminism came along," Limbaugh said. FAIR pointed out that before feminism, women couldn't even vote -- since feminism "came along" in the 19th Century. "I was referring to contemporary militant feminism," Limbaugh now amends. But that is not what he said -- and "Words mean things," as Limbaugh proclaims in his "35 Undeniable Truths of Life." 11. ANITA HILL: Of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, Limbaugh declared: "She wanted to continue to date him." In response to FAIR's pointing out that Hill and Thomas never dated, Limbaugh said that his comment "actually demonstrates my recall of the Thomas- Hill episode," citing a statement by Thomas that Hill had invited him into her home after driving her home. But neither Thomas or Hill ever characterized these or any other interaction that the two had as anything approaching a "date." Hill has said that Thomas asked her out, and that she declined; Thomas denied strongly that "I ever attempted to date her." Limbaugh also said, "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." Angela Wright and Sukari Hardnett did not apply the term "sexual harassment" to what they had personally experienced while working for Thomas. But their descriptions of Thomas' behavior, if true, would almost certainly meet the legal definition of harassment. "Clarence Thomas did consistently pressure me to date him," Wright told Senate investigators. "At one point, Clarence Thomas made comments about my anatomy. Clarence Thomas made comments about women's anatomy quite frequently. At one point, Clarence Thomas came by my apartment at night, unannounced and uninvited.... He would try to move the conversation over to the prospect of my dating him." "If you were young, black, female and reasonably attractive, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female," Hardnett wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "You knew when you were in favor because you were always at his beck and call, being summoned constantly, tracked down wherever you were in the agency and given special deference by others because of his interest. And you knew when you had ceased to be an object of sexual interest -- because you were barred from entering his office and treated as an outcast, or worse, a leper with whom contact was taboo." 12. JAMES MADISON: Limbaugh acknowledges that he misattributed the alleged quote from Madison (saying that Americans must "sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God"). The actual quotes from Madison, which Limbaugh supplies to suggest that Madison had said pretty much the same thing, are mostly about the need for the separation of church and state -- which is the OPPOSITE of the view that government ought to be based on the Ten Commandments. 13. NATIVE AMERICANS: Unable to provide any evidence to support his claim that "there are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived," Limbaugh quotes an article in the Heritage Foundation magazine that claims that "some Indian groups are more populous today than in 1492." 14. WHITEWATER COVERAGE: "I don't think the New York Times has run a story on [Whitewater] yet," Limbaugh said on February 17, 1994. "There has not been a big one, front-page story about this one that I can recall." FAIR noted that the Times had actually published the first major story on Whitewater -- a lengthy, front-page piece that appeared on March 8, 1992. Limbaugh defends this mistake: "The fact that I overlooked one Times article that ran 11 months earlier is hardly indicative of a 'reign of error.'" First, March 1992 is 23 months before February 1994, not 11 months. Furthermore, Limbaugh did not overlook one front-page New York Times story on Whitewater, he overlooked half a dozen. We cited the March 8, 1992 story to suggest that Limbaugh, who passes himself off as an expert on press coverage of Whitewater, should have known who it was that originally broke the story. 15. GULF WAR I: Limbaugh's original statement was that during the Gulf War, "everybody in the world was aligned with the United States except who? The United States Congress." After FAIR pointed out that both houses of Congress had voted to authorize the use of force in the Persian Gulf, Limbaugh responded on his radio show (7/5/94): "When I said it, it was true," he claimed -- implying he had said it while the debate was still ongoing. Actually, Limbaugh made the statement on April 18, 1994 -- more than three years after the vote. Limbaugh now admits that "Congress eventually went along with President Bush's policy -- but they had to be dragged along, kicking and screaming." Yet another "what I meant to say..." response. 16. GULF WAR II: "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." Limbaugh does not dispute our point that "our victories in the Gulf War," fought in 1991, could not have influenced Bush's 1990 approval rating. Only after the war did Bush's approval rating reach anything like 90 percent. 17. CANADIAN HEALTH CARE: Limbaugh says that his claim that "most Canadian physicians who are themselves in need of surgery...scurry across the border to get it done right; the American Way" was "an obvious humorous exaggeration." In fact, the passage it appears in -- on page 153 of See, I Told You So -- is completely sober and straightforward. In his rebuttal, Limbaugh is unable to produce even a single anecdotal example of a Canadian doctor who came to the U.S. for any kind of medical treatment -- though he does offer examples of Canadian doctors who moved south to WORK in the U.S. 18. THE NICOTINE CONTROVERSY: "It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive," Limbaugh declared. Nicotine's addictiveness is only controversial among scientists paid by the tobacco industry. When the New York Times (8/2/94) asked two independent experts to rank nicotine in terms of "dependence" -- defined as "how difficult it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm" -- both rated nicotine ahead of heroin, cocaine and alcohol. 19. OZONE AND VOLCANOES: There are many uncertainties about ozone depletion -- which makes it all the more important that the debate not be confused with inaccurate statements. Limbaugh claimed in his book The Way Things Ought to Be that "Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed forth more than a thousand times the amount of ozone-destroying chemicals in one eruption than all the fluorocarbons manufactured by wicked, diabolical and insensitive corporations in history." On Nightline, he said that "Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of the man-made chlorofluorocarbons in one year." Both statements can't be true; in fact, neither are. The "570 times" figure apparently derives from Trashing the Planet, an anti- environmental book by Dixy Lee Ray, but Ray was referring to a different volcano -- Mt. Augustine, an Alaskan volcano that erupted in 1976. Ray in turn gets the number from a 1980 Science magazine article -- but Science was talking about the chlorine produced by a gigantic eruption that occurred 700,000 years ago in California. 20. EFFECTIVENESS OF CONDOMS: When Limbaugh says that a one-in-five fatality rate is a "statistic [that] holds for condoms, folks," that is NOT "distinctly different from saying that condom users have a one-in-five AIDS risk," as he claims in his rebuttal. He is clearly suggesting to his readers that if they allow their children to use condoms, there is a one-in-five chance that they will die. In fact, studies have shown that when a person with HIV uses condoms consistently during sex with an uninfected partner, long- term transmission rates are relatively low -- generally 2 percent or less. 21. U.S. POOR VS. EUROPE'S MAINSTREAM: Limbaugh initially had made the absurd claim that "the poorest people in America are better off than the mainstream families of Europe." In support of this, he cites a Heritage Foundation study that unscientifically compares statistics that were collected several years apart, and singles out a few commodities that U.S. citizens are likely to have more of. A broader comparison of living standards is available from the World Bank's World Development Report 1994, which calculates "Purchasing Power Parity" -- a comparison of how much people in each country can buy with their money. (Limbaugh has touted this method as the "most reliable measurement of economic strength" -- Limbaugh Letter, 1/94.) The residents of four major European nations -- France, Germany, Italy and Britain -- can purchase the equivalent of $18,568 with their average incomes. The poorest 20 percent of Americans can purchase $5,433 worth of goods. In some countries, like Germany, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands, the poorest residents are significantly better off than their poor counterparts in the U.S. According to World Bank figures, poor Americans are not even better off than mainstream families in many Eastern European countries, such as Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. 22. IRAN-CONTRA: Watch Rush Limbaugh backpedal. He originally said that there was "absolutely no evidence... not one indictment... not one charge" resulting from the Iran-contra investigation. Now he says, "I obviously misspoke when I said there were no indictments - - I clearly meant to say there were no CONVICTIONS, a point I have made on many occasions." But he immediately begins backing off from that claim, since there WERE convictions -- nine, including guilty pleas, plus two other convictions that were reversed on technicalities. But these were not on "substantive points," Limbaugh says, or, as guest expert Ed Meese says, they were "generally on minor offenses." Are felony convictions minor? 23. MICHAEL GARTNER: Limbaugh accused former NBC president Michael Gartner of deliberately faking news "with the express hope of destroying General Motors" and other businesses. He has still offered no evidence to back up this serious charge. * * * POSTSCRIPT: Limbaugh's expectation of how reporters should cover his rebuttal speaks volumes about his understanding of journalism. Here's a verbatim transcription from his October 11, 1994 radio show: "Two weeks ago -- a week and a half ago -- we sent out over 150, maybe 200 copies of this to various columnists, newspapers which had printed the FAIR report originally and so forth. "To this date, only one newspaper, the Washington Times, has sought to do a story on my response. And the way that it happened was laughable. We sent our response out, a reporter from the Washington Times gets it, and immediately calls FAIR, and says what do you think of this? They then call us and say all right, here's what FAIR thinks of your response, what do you think of what they said? And we got on the phone and we said, 'Listen, bleep-head, you have your response in our hands, that's all you're going to get, run our response.' "That's what I think is called for here. We're not going to get into a tit-for-tat, blow-by-blow, it's not the point. The point is we've responded to these charges, you have them in their hands and there they are. "Well, it is my thought, my, my premonition here, that most columnists, and Doonesbury, for example, which ran a whole week- long series in his cartoon strip on this, and the newspapers who ran it are not going to run it as we sent it out or even an abbrieviated version of it, our response. They're just not going to do it, for who knows whatever reasons, but leading the list would be bias." (For the record, the Washington Times did not run a news report on FAIR's original report.) * * * If you would like to support FAIR's work and regularly get its critique of the media, you can subscribe to its magazine, EXTRA! Call our subscription service at 800-847-3993, 9:00-5:00 Eastern Time. Let them know you got the number on the internet. Or send $30 to: FAIR/EXTRA! Dept V4-CN PO Box 911 Pearl River, NY 10965-0911 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. 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 on FAIR's weekly radio program, CounterSpin, (which airs on over 80, mostly non- commercial, stations -- e-mail to counterspin-info@igc.apc.org for a list) 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, send e-mail to fair-info@igc.apc.org or to get a human being, fair@igc.apc.org. Feel free to post this on any appropriate place on the internet. Thank you. FAIR 130 West 25th Street New York, NY, 10001.