We know Media Matters hates Rush Limbaugh. It’s an obsession second only to the fixation on Fox News.
Media Matters was behind the astroturfed Stop Rush campaign targeting advertisers, which ended in a complete failure.
Nonetheless, the Limbaugh obsession continues at Media Matters.
The latest iteration is an article published yesterday claiming that Rush Limbaugh’s ratings are so bad, Limbaugh’s taken to claiming ratings don’t matter, After Getting Bad Ratings News, Limbaugh Tries To Prove “Ratings Don’t Matter”
Rush Limbaugh used CBS’ decision to hire comedian Stephen Colbert as the new host of The Late Show as evidence that ratings are irrelevant following reports that the talk radio firebrands’ own ratings have collapsed.On the May 1 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh declared that CBS’ decision to replace David Letterman with Colbert is proof that “ratings don’t matter in a lot of television.” Limbaugh latched onto recent comments by CBS president Les Moonves to repeatedly gloat that he was right when he claimed that “it’s not about ratings anymore” but rather about coolness. In fact, during the entire first segment of his show, Limbaugh repeated the phrase “ratings don’t matter” a total of nine times….
Media Matters provided a 7 minute audio, and a partial transcript, to back up its claim.
I happened to listen to that segment live when I was in the car yesterday, so I knew what Media Matters readers were not informed: The audio and transcript were edited to end just before Limbaugh made clear that the type of approach the networks can take for late night TV does not apply to him.
Here’s the part of the transcript Media Matters did not include:
And if the network can promise you that so many eyeballs are gonna see it, CBS says, “Oh, no, we’re not doing that anymore. We’re not selling ratings.”So they’re not even buying ratings. They’re buying hip. They’re buying cool. Now, we on the other hand, can’t. We can’t do any of that. We’re not allowed to be hip and cool here. We have to exist in the real world. We have to have ratings, and we have to sell advertising that has to work. If we don’t, then nobody’s gonna keep us on with no evidence here. It isn’t gonna happen….We have to work in the real world here where real success is real success, and where real audience is real audience, and real ratings are real ratings. We can’t live in some artificially created universe here of buzz and hipness. We couldn’t survive. We are, for what it’s worth, mired in reality here. That’s why I’m called the mayor of Realville.
By cutting of the audio, Media Matters was able to attribute to Limbaugh a view exactly the opposite of what Limbaugh had stated.
When I saw Eric Boehlert, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters tweet out the story (which he did not author), I called his attention to the deception and requested a correction:
As of this writing, there has been no correction.
Update: DailyRushbo has the audio Media Matters cut out:
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