WashPost Ombudsman Rules: Columnist Was Wrong on Rush Limbaugh, But He Defines Unkindness and Bombast

March 18th, 2012 6:41 PM

Washington Post columnist (and occasional humorist) Alexandra Petri had to apologize this week for wrongly reporting disreputable advertisers like Ashley Madison (who recruit people to cheat on their spouses) advertised on the Rush Limbaugh show. Still, she said, “the whole point of the piece was that the people most eager to be associated with Rush Limbaugh’s show are — well, advertisers seeking jerks. This has not changed.”

On Sunday, Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton wrote a column tited "Never hurry to be like Rush." He approved of Petri’s correction (although not this snide part) and launched into how Limbaugh is not a journalist and no reputable journalist should ever want to be like him:

Journalists at The Post must be the un-Limbaugh. Because he blusters and insults is all the more reason for The Post not to follow suit. Because he broad-brushes people is all the more reason for Post journalists not to categorize and label. [Perhaps Pexton had already filed before he saw Lisa Miller trashing Rick Santorum as prehistoric and utterly unqualified for high office.]

Rush Limbaugh is many things — comic and entertainer, talk-show host and rabble-rouser, and a quasi-politician who never seeks office. But he is not a journalist.

He doesn’t cover city councils or planning boards, courthouses, cops or crime scenes. He doesn’t cover banks or businesses, nor a governor, a legislature, Congress or the White House. He doesn’t brave bullets or battlefields as a foreign correspondent. He doesn’t sift through reams of documents and testimony, or call dozens of sources, to try to find the truth. He has no written code of ethics.

Let us never be in a hurry to be like Rush.

There's a really flagrant superiority dance going on in this passage. Those journalists who actually cover city councils or crime scenes aren't superior to Rush Limbaugh simply by reporting from these locations. They have to earn praise and trust by finding the important news in these scenes and conveying it accurately. Some Post reporters and columnists are on the scene and still load up their copy with insults. Mr. Pexton, meet Dana Milbank. His copy sits only inches from yours every Sunday.

He's apparently missed the Petri snarkfests like this one: "No sex please, we're Republicans." She wrote "with the best efforts of self-dubbed Conservative Voices like Rush Limbaugh, it’s turning into the party of Men Who Don’t Want You To Be Having Any Sex. Not themselves, mind. Just you." Does that pass an accuracy test? Or is it rude, unkind, and bombastic? (We'll come back to that.)

That said, Limbaugh is a commentator not unlike the Post's columnists. He certainly has interviewed politicians on the air and off the air (as in the Limbaugh Letter). He is very effective at highlighting stories that liberal journalists don't want to talk about. In that instance, many conservatives would find him far more reliable a journalist than those congressional or White House reporters who can pretend Obama didn't start the contraceptive mandate fight or who can pretend "Medicare cuts" are actual spending reductions or who can laugh along Obama as he attacks the Republicans for attacking green energy (without noting the solar company failures that have cost the taxpayers billions.)

Pexton also loathed the way Limbaugh scorned Petri on the air:

Petri told me in an interview that she acted in haste, as do so many journalists today in the Web age, and she looked at the Politico stories and assumed that what they implied was true. It wasn’t. “I always try to get my facts right,” Petri said. “Just because I’m trying to be funny, it doesn’t absolve me of the obligation to get the facts right.”

I agree. I think it is incumbent on every Post reporter and columnist not to use Limbaugh’s tactics.

In his condemnation of Petri, Limbaugh was rude, boorish, unkind and bombastic, nothing new there. And he also got his facts wrong. He called Petri’s column a “news story.” It wasn’t. He called her a “so-called reporter.” She isn’t; she is a columnist. And Limbaugh threw in a gender slur to make it clear how he really felt. “You’ve written something that’s patently false, it’s an out-and-out lie complete with your b-i-itchy opinion in it, and it is untrue,” according to a transcript on his Web site.

Limbaugh could have seen Petri writes on a blog called “ComPost,” which can describe very well what you’re about to find. But the Post could be clearer by actually including a credit line at the end to announce what Petri’s job is at the Post. Pexton also ignores the enormous gap in experience between these two commentators: Limbaugh's been a national radio host for more than 20 years, while Petri scored her first Post byline in June of 2010.