Right Wing Desperate to Prove Limbaugh Strategy Not Working

The right-o-sphere is showing its big heart these days by trying to help the Democrats out of this whole Rush Limbaugh mess they’ve wandered into.  Since this thing started, conservatives have been proclaiming just how badly this will blow up in the Democrats’ faces.

Not content to wait until it actually does (or doesn’t), the right has manufactured its own evidence of said backfire.

My colleague at The Political Machine, Mark Impomeni, reports today that Rush Limbaugh’s ratings have doubled since the start of Operation Rush.  His claim is solid, in that a reliable news source printed the claim, so Mark’s hands are clean here, at least from a sourcing standpoint.

The sloppy reporting award here goes to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, who makes the claim in the opening paragraph of his article:

By one measure, Rush Limbaugh is a clear winner this week: His ratings have nearly doubled since his feud with the White House burst into the media limelight

This is a specific, measurable claim.  The word “ratings” is not some kind of pliable, esoteric concept.  It refers to a specific type of measurement.  So, what ratings was Kurtz using?  Arbitron?  Nielsen?  Zagat?

“The people who love him are a very small segment of the public,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, whose research indicates that Limbaugh’s weekly audience has spiked from 14.2 million to about 25 million since the controversy escalated. “A lot of people still think he’s a shock jock, a hatemonger (ed. where’d they get an idea like that?), a right-wing radical, or hold his personal baggage against him.”

Here’s how strong Harrison’s “research” is: His own magazine wouldn’t cite it without sourcing the quote to Kurtz’s article!  He’s the publisher of “Talkers” magazine, but they didn’t publish the “research,” quoting their own publisher from another publication.

In an article published by the Washington Post, Harrison cites Limbaugh’s spectacular estimated increase in audience as skyrocketing from 14.2 million listeners per week to somewhere in the 25 million range.

Even if Harrison’s figures come from someplace other than his ass, they do not qualify as “ratings,” and do no constitute a “near doubling” of anything.  Limbaugh’s imaginary “ratings increase” is in the 76% range.  They only “rounded up” by about 4 million listeners.

Keep in mind, too, that Harrison uses his “research” to make the point that it’s a “great time to be a radio advertiser.”  As the publisher of a radio trade magazine, he’s invested in inflating the Limbaugh effect.  The magazine has not returned requests for comment or documentation of Harrison’s “findings.”

I can’t fault Mark or the blog he linked to for amplifying this lie, as it was given legitimacy by being reported in  a real newspaper, but I can fault Kurtz.  This was worse than sloppy reporting.  This was a lie.

The right is jumping the gun and overselling the notion that Operation: Rush is backfiring, which tells me they’re afraid.  Very afraid.  The fact that Rush feels the need to play victim to Barack Obama, whom Rush called Massuh to Al Sharpton’s slave, indicates that He is equally desperate to talk his way out of this.  Sorry, Rush, no cigar.

Note:  The right is quick to debunk anti-Rush lies, as am I.  Let’s see what they do with this.

(More on this at AOL)

Talkers Magazine’s Michael Harrison has responded to my request for comment.  You can see the whole thing at AOL, but here’s the money quote:

Keep in mind, I was only referring to Limbaugh’s numbers this past week during the extraordinary media frenzy about him and that Talkers magazine is not in the business of selling ratings. They are only our thumbnail estimates based upon our contacts in the field, tracking of Arbitron estimates and understanding of the business. We make no claims as to “scientific” accuracy.

This is exactly what I’m saying, Harrison never represented this figure to Kurtz as “ratings” data. WaPo has a story up today that says that estimating Rush’s actual audience size is damn near impossible, even mentioning Kurtz’s story, but with no retraction.  Just because radio ratings suck doesn’t mean you can call a guesstimate “ratings.”

Update 2:  Harrison responds to my followup question, “To clarify, is it safe to say that the information you gave to Kurtz were not “ratings,” and were not arrived at in the same way that ratings are?”

Again, full text is at AOL, but he’s confirming that these are not ratings:

Yes, they are not “ratings” per se (as in Neilson or Arbitron). They are
Talkers magazine’s estimates of audience figures based upon our interpretation

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