Given Palin's inability, during an interview with CBS' Katie Couric, to name a single newspaper she reads, the fact that she is now a published author does have a certain man-bites-dog quality to it, so you had to figure it would get some media attention. But the past week's media Palin-palooza has been more than a little over the top, even for a news corps that devotes wall-to-wall coverage to a helium balloon that isn't carrying a small child.

Newsweek put Palin on the cover (with a poorly considered photo). The Washington Post ran four articles (and two columns) about her in Tuesday's paper alone and dedicated nine -- nine! -- online Q&A sessions to her from Friday to Wednesday. The Post was so desperate to squeeze a fourth article into Tuesday's paper, it gave Ana Marie Cox only four hours to read the book and write and submit a review. And at times on Wednesday, MSNBC seemed to be running an all-day infomercial for Palin's book.

Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports -- broadcast on location from a bookstore in Michigan where Palin was scheduled to appear many hours later -- began with Mitchell breathlessly announcing that she and her crew had gotten to the mall at the crack of dawn:

MITCHELL: Sarah Palin is kicking off her book tour right here with a signing later tonight, but the action is already here today. We've seen more than 1,500 people. When we got here early this morning, they were here overnight, camped out; they brought their blankets; they brought their chairs -- and the scene has been incredible, as they were waiting to get wristbands that would then enable them to get back in line and to come here for the signing, which will be between 6 and 9, we are told.

She's going to come here a little bit earlier. She may talk to an overflow crowd. We don't know exactly what she'll do when she gets here. But there's a lot of action here. And she's actually going to be up in the Mystery section of the bookstore, Barnes & Noble.

A little later, Mitchell took a stroll past a display of Palin books, explaining:

MITCHELL: We're actually in the Woodland Mall, in the Barnes & Noble, and in this curtained-off area to take you behind the scenes. This is the area where Sarah Palin is going to be signing books when she shows up here in a couple of hours.

While talking, Mitchell walked slowly in front of a big blue curtain, holding a copy of Palin's book. All that was missing was a flashing 800-number and an offer to get a second book for just $1 if you call now. Then Mitchell got to what appeared to be a folding table with a chair and a blow-up of the cover of Palin's book. Fascinating behind-the-scenes stuff! MSNBC viewers got to see the curtain in front of which Palin was going to sit in, like, six hours! And not just that: The chair she's going to sit in, too! We're talking really top-notch journalism here, folks.

Mitchell continued:

MITCHELL: There were people already lined up, some overnight, some at 3, 4 o'clock in the morning outside. The doors to the mall opened at 5. They could come in and warm up, those who could get in line that far. And then at 7, they were given wristbands to be able to come back, and then get in line again, for when Palin will be here later this evening.

The way Mitchell went on, you'd think she were covering a Beatles reunion tour featuring Michael Jordan and the Pope filling in for George and John. And this is where Paul is going to stand!

And not just Mitchell: MSNBC went all-in on its coverage of a shopping mall in which Palin was scheduled to appear hours later. Immediately after Mitchell finished, Contessa Brewer took over, announcing: "Massive lines to meet The Maverick herself, Sarah Palin."

Talk about a Palin-friendly framing. Politicians -- other than Sen. John McCain, of course -- aren't usually introduced by reporters using their self-selected nicknames. But that was nothing compared to this Hardball exchange from last Friday:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the Sarah Palin phenomenon. We can only judge these things fairly like a month at a time. This book's big-time. This promotion -- I've never seen anything like it, David.

DAVID GREGORY: It's extraordinary, and, I mean, she's extraordinary from that point of view of not just the book. I mean, all this year, it's as if she's like a senator or something. I mean, she issues statements and posts things on Facebook as if she's an incumbent or if she's a candidate for something.

MATTHEWS: She's got a position on the health care bill.

Got that? Palin "posts things on Facebook" and it's "as if she's like a senator or something." Yeah, "or something": There are about 300 million people who post things on Facebook. Posting things on Facebook doesn't mean you're behaving like a senator; it means you're behaving like someone who has a pulse and an Internet connection. But David Gregory finds it extraordinary and senatorial that Sarah Palin does so. And Chris Matthews is blown away that Palin has a position on health care reform.

But for real soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations, you have to look to Palin's fellow conservatives, who apparently thought her book would be written in crayon paper placemat. How else can you explain how impressed they were with the actual book? Rush Limbaugh, for example, called it "one of the most substantive policy books I've read." And an apparently serious John Ziegler wrote: "I was simply blown away by Going Rogue on almost every level. For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime."

That is not a view shared by many, of course. What everyone did seem to agree on is that Sarah Palin is, as Chris Matthews said last Friday, a "phenomenon." Bill O'Reilly, Eugene Robinson, and writers for the LA Times, US News, and Reuters -- among others -- all used the same word.

But as political phenomenons go, Sarah Palin is a remarkably unpopular one. Not that you'd know it from much of the week's media coverage, but the American public as a whole really doesn't care for her:

• A CBS poll conducted this month found that only 23 percent have a favorable opinion of Palin; 38 percent have an unfavorable view. Only one in four Americans wants her to run for president; two out of three don't. One in four thinks she has the ability to be an effective president; more than 60 percent disagree. Only 43 percent of Republicans think she could be effective.

• An ABC poll, also conducted this month, found similar results: 43 percent have a favorable impression of Palin, 52 percent unfavorable. A whopping 53 percent of Americans would not even consider voting for her for president, and 60 percent don't think she's qualified for the job.

• A CNN poll conducted last month found that even more Americans -- 71 percent -- think Palin is not qualified to be president.

There is, in short, something very close to a national consensus that Sarah Palin should not be president and would not be effective in the job.

That's the "political phenomenon" that is Sarah Palin: She has pulled off the difficult task of uniting 60 to 70 percent of Americans behind a single political position. That position happens to be that Palin shouldn't be anywhere near the Oval Office, but it's still an impressively large coalition.

That's a fact that tended to get lost in the media's efforts to hype the Palin "phenomenon." To the contrary: Much of the Palin coverage has suggested exactly the opposite. Like Andrea Mitchell's declaration from the Michigan mall: "Here, in the heartland, this is Sarah Palin territory."

No, it probably isn't.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

At least that's the gospel according to Rupert Murdoch this month.

In truth, thanks to Murdoch's recent laundry list of public falsehoods, we now know that Fox News' misinformation culture starts at the very top, inside the corner office of Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp., Fox News' parent company. It turns out Murdoch functions as his own one-man misinformation machine. Who knew?

Of course, the Murdoch falsehood that recently generated the biggest headlines last week came when, sitting for a television interview with Sky News Australia, he agreed with the claim made by Glenn Beck that President Obama (aka "this guy") was a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Defending Beck, Murdoch stressed that Obama himself had made a "very racist comment" (which apparently only Rupert Murdoch heard), and that Beck was "right" to point out Obama's racist ways.

Murdoch's claim was so bizarre (and false) that soon his corporate flak was forced into damage control mode and issued a non-apology apology in an effort to smooth over Murdoch's smear against Obama. But with his "racist" claim, as well as a collection of other recent falsehoods regarding Fox News, a rather obvious question has been raised: How come Murdoch remains systematically uninformed about his controversial cable channel?

The sad truth is Murdoch either has no idea what kind of programming Fox News now produces, or he's too embarrassed to watch and acknowledge it. Neither scenario is particularly flattering for the aging CEO.

Murdoch's Sky News interview in particular proved to be a treasure trove of misinformation. (See below.) But as I watched Murdoch casually toss out falsehood after falsehood about Fox News, I wondered if Murdoch was trying to fool viewers or if he was really trying to fool himself. Was Murdoch completely whitewashing the hate and unethical behavior that Fox News routinely traffics in because Murdoch himself doesn't want to be forced to honestly defend it? My hunch is that the answer is yes.

Murdoch wants to pretend (at least to himself) that ratings are up because of the sterling and insightful news reports and opinion programs Fox News is producing. He doesn't want to sully his reputation by acknowledging the hate speech and faux journalism he profits off of because Murdoch, no doubt, wants very much to maintain his charter membership in the very clubby social circles that he's traveled in for years between Washington, D.C., and New York City (i.e. Murdoch likes being invited back to Charlie Rose's round table). It's where the very serious gather to discuss the very serious topics of the day. But, of course, Fox News today is a purposefully un-serious operation (i.e. Obama is nothing more than a lowly racist/communist/Nazi/fascist), which, if Murdoch publicly acknowledged, would reflect poorly on him.

So, instead, he opts for the charade and he creates his own idea of what Fox News is today -- an idea that does not match reality.

In truth, Murdoch's outlandish claim about Obama's fictional "racist comment" is just one of many falsehoods the CEO has recently made, either during that Australian television interview or on a conference call with U.S. shareholders earlier this month.

Check out these recent greatest hits in which Murdoch:

• falsely characterized Sean Hannity as being an "academic";

• falsely characterized Glenn Beck as being "purely Libertarian";

• falsely claimed nobody on Fox News had ever compared Obama to Stalin (i.e. "No, no, no, not Stalin");

• falsely suggested Fox News' ratings shot up after its public dispute with the Obama administration began last month;

• falsely claimed that administration officials agree that Fox News has been "absolutely fair" in its White House reporting;

• falsely claimed the White House just doesn't like "two of our [Fox News] commentators";

• falsely claimed Fox News' television competitors "only have Democrats" on to debate the issues;

• falsely claimed Obama had made a "very racist comment"; and

• falsely implied that The O'Reilly Factor, Your World With Neil Cavuto, and Fox & Friends, among others, are not "commentary" shows.

Where do you even start? Sean Hannity, the hyper-partisan and paranoid shouter/whiner who's built a career off being allergic to facts (and professional ethics), is an academic? Good Lord, I doubt even Hannity could keep a straight face hearing that whopper.

Meanwhile, Fox News' competitors ban Republicans from the airwaves? On what planet does that booking policy exist? Fox News' ratings spiked after its dispute with the White House went public? That's just plain false. No Obama/Stalin comparison? False. And Murdoch's cable channel only hosts two programs that traffic in partisan opinion? That's odd, because many of the channel's overt bouts of partisan misinformation appear outside the confines of Hannity and Glenn Beck:

• Timeline of a [madrassa] smear

• After teasing story by saying "Obama makes a little girl cry," Fox News' Kelly acknowledged it was not true

• Fox News airs altered photos of NY Times reporters

• Fox passes off GOP press release as its own research -- typo and all

• REPORT: "Fair and balanced" Fox News aggressively promotes "tea party" protests

• EXCLUSIVE: Fox News seeks to confirm wildly inaccurate reporting that it's already aired on Jennings controversy; former student seeks Fox News correction

• Would a real news organization help GOP PACs raise money?

• Fox's news programs echo its "opinion" shows: Smears, doctored videos, GOP talking points

Murdoch's robust bouts of misinformation in recent weeks have been impressive in their totality. But it was Murdoch's answer to the question about Beck's "racist" attack on the president that was disconcerting in so many ways; ways in which you rarely see the CEOs of media companies behave in public.

The obvious tact for a person in Murdoch's position when asked to defend the avalanche of Beck's odious and paranoid rhetoric would have been to stress that Beck's views were his own, and note that the cable channel's a defender of the First Amendment. Murdoch could have simply pointed out that while he himself would never use that kind of incendiary rhetoric, he respects Beck's right to do so. (i.e. Yada, yada, yada.)

And it's not like Murdoch doesn't have practice cleaning up after his outlets' tasteless Obama attacks. Last spring, when his money-hemorrhaging New York Post published a cartoon that seemed to liken Obama to a bullet-ridden chimp shot dead on the sidewalks of NYC, Murdoch released this statement:

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Instead of taking that approach when pressed about Beck, though, Murdoch gamely defended the host by agreeing with him that Obama was a racist. Specifically, the CEO claimed Obama had made a "very racist comment" [emphasis added]:

MURDOCH: On the racist thing, that caused a [unintelligible]. But he [Obama] did make a very racist comment about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, and which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And, you know, that was something which, perhaps, shouldn't have been said about the president, but if you actually assess what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right.

This was the context of the "racist" nonsense, which is key to understanding just how blatant Murdoch's misinformation was. Beck's "racist" attack was made in the wake of last July's controversy involving professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer, Sgt. James Crowley. After Obama made news with his comments about the issue during a July 22 press conference, Beck called Obama a "racist." Fast-forward to November, and Murdoch claimed that in that context, Obama made "a very racist comment."

That's pure fantasy. Obama did say that the Cambridge Police Department acted "stupidly" in arresting Gates in his own home; a comment Obama quickly walked back. But there's no way that was a "racist" comment. Murdoch's claim that the president made a "very racist comment" last summer was a pure fabrication.

Again, for the head of a media and "news" company to go on international television and peddle that kind of racially tinged misinformation about the president of the United States is really quite stunning. It's more akin to what Obama's partisan political enemies would do, not a businessman.

Question: Why won't Murdoch just stand up and proudly defend what Fox News has actually become? Instead of defending what Fox News really is, Murdoch goes on television and pretends it's something else entirely. Murdoch doesn't want to talk about what Fox News has transformed itself into. He doesn't want to talk about how it's become a hothouse for the most hateful and ill-informed elements in our society. Murdoch doesn't want to acknowledge what Fox News has become because the CEO thinks of himself as a serious man, and a very serious man would be embarrassed to be associated with today's Fox News.

And who knows? Maybe deep down, Rupert Murdoch is.

LIMBAUGH: But if we're going to ask, "Why did [Hasan] do it?" knowing full well that he's in the same mosque in 2001 with the radical preacher going nuts, we're going to also have to believe that the guy was just like Obama and didn't hear Reverend Wright's words when he was in his church.

You read/heard that right. Rush Limbaugh likened the president of the United States to a mass-murdering lunatic.

Usually when Limbaugh says something that outrageous, he kicks up a media frenzy and has a chorus of conservatives all making a similar point. For example, when he went through his little health-care-reform-is-like-Nazism phases, it was pretty much in line with what other conservatives were saying. His rhetoric in that case wasn't even in a league of its own. If you take a trip down memory lane to this past summer, you'll remember how it was a race to the bottom for conservatives when it came to criticizing health care reform.

But this week, Rush was alone in his extreme criticism of the president's handling of the Fort Hood shooting.

True, there was some criticism lobbed at President Obama from the right for his two-minute "shout-out" preceding his first public remarks about the shooting. And a lot of conservatives have hammered the press and Obama alike for their reluctance in labeling the tragedy an act of "terrorism."

However, outside of The Rush Limbaugh Show, it's hard to find much ire over how Obama handled the situation; and many conservative commentators who usually make no bones about their dislike for the president thought that Obama's speech at the Fort Hood memorial service hit the right notes.

"I think it was a very sober speech. It was respectful to the fallen, and he did have that reference that we saw to the element of jihadism in this attack," said Fox News "All Star" Charles Krauthammer on a recent broadcast of Special Report.

"A good speech with a superb ending," wrote conservative blogger Allahpundit.

But Rush reverted to kneejerk, angry partisanship, calling the speech "empty" and "meaningless" and using it as an opportunity to trash former President Bill Clinton. Granted, we're not predisposed to liking Rush, but it sounded gratuitous and grating.

On Friday's show, Rush doubled down on his weeklong efforts to paint himself into the fringiest part of the fringe conservative movement. For example, he tried to suggest that the trials of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers somehow led to the 9-11 terrorist attacks:

LIMBAUGH: There've been all kinds of people on television today being asked, but, wait, you're bringing them into New York, doesn't that make New York any -- a bigger terrorist target? Hey? And they all say, well, no, no, New York's always a terrorist target. Look at '93. We tried those guys in 1993 and nothing happened. What do you mean, nothing happened? You ever heard of 9-11? We tried these guys and convicted the Blind Sheikh in 1993 and nothing happened except 9-11.

On the upcoming criminal trials for 9-11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and other Guantánamo detainees, Rush found himself at odds with a flotilla of actual conservative scholars. Rush declared Obama's decision to try KSM in the U.S. criminal justice system a "disgusting travesty." He later added that the trials were "being done to satisfy the rabid radical far left that hates this country, that hates George W. Bush, that hates the U.S. military."

But numerous prominent conservative scholars and statesmen disagree. Take for instance the "Bipartisan Declaration" by the Constitution Project, "Beyond Guantanamo," which states that "[c]ivilian federal courts are the proper forum for terrorism cases." And what kind of pinko-commie leftists would sign such a declaration? Just to name a few: Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, former Rep. Thomas B. Evans Jr., a former co-chairman of the RNC, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union and National Rifle Association board member, and former Reps. Bob Barr and Barry Goldwater Jr.

Limbaugh also spent the week pushing some pathetic falsehoods that failed to get any mainstream traction, even with a heavyweight like himself behind them. First, he ran with Jerome Corsi's flat-wrong scoop that Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan advised the Obama transition team. Nothing enhances your credibility like repeating a smear that was debunked from the start by Corsi himself.

Then, doing his best to buck up Politico's claim that RedState is an influential conservative blog, Rush ran with the website's false claim that the Obama administration was trying to purge Republicans from civil service positions. Unsurprisingly, the claim turned out to be completely baseless, and despite Limbaugh's best efforts, the smear never really garnered much attention outside the fringe blogs.

So we've established that Rush has begun to run contrary to prominent conservative thinkers on constitutional issues, that he's ineffective at pushing new smears into the mainstream, and as we addressed last week, he has shown impotence in helping to get conservative politicians elected. Could it be that all of these factors have contributed to Republicans no longer showing fear of him?

Last Friday, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) criticized Limbaugh's aforementioned Nazi rhetoric. Earlier in the year, that would have been cause for Rush to call Cantor out on the air. And following such public humiliation, Cantor would have issued some sort of apology to Maha Rushie and cowered away from the spotlight with his tail between his legs. We remember vividly the days when Limbaugh left a trail of Republicans in his wake begging for forgiveness. But that didn't happen this week. Cantor, a reliably conservative Republican, faced no repercussions from Rush, who even returned to the Nazi imagery during the week, but with no mention of Cantor or his remarks.

That he no longer crusades against the Republicans who dare speak out against him is telling, as is the fact that Cantor didn't feel the need to kiss Boss Limbaugh's ring in forgiveness. But, of course, that's what happens when you put yourself on the fringe -- people stop listening to you, and you stop listening to them.

The controversy stems from conservative claims that proposed health care reforms would undermine or circumvent the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits direct federal payments for abortion services (with exceptions for pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest, and for those that are necessary to save a woman's life). Those claims are incorrect: The proposed legislation would have maintained the status quo.

It is important to keep in mind that the status quo -- the Hyde Amendment -- already constitutes a compromise by supporters of abortion rights. Abortion is a legal medical procedure; a ban on federal funding for it is a substantial concession by abortion-rights advocates. (You might be tempted to think of Hyde as a similarly substantial concession by abortion-rights opponents, as they want the procedure to be illegal. But it isn't really a legislative concession, as the preferred outcome of abortion-rights opponents -- an outright ban on abortion -- is unconstitutional, and thus off the table.)

So, that's the background: Proposed health care reform would maintain the status quo when it comes to federal payments for abortion services -- a status quo that already represents a significant concession by abortion-rights advocates.

But those basic facts haven't been reflected in Chris Matthews' coverage. (Matthews' comments about abortion and health care reform have by no means been unique; I focus on him here because he has addressed the subject regularly over the past several months, and because it serves as yet another reminder that, despite conventional wisdom, neither Matthews nor MSNBC is really "liberal.")

To begin with, Matthews portrays progressives who oppose a change in the status quo as rigidly insisting upon "a clear statement supporting a woman's right to choose" and describing them as people who "don't want any fudging" and refuse to compromise. This ignores the reality that maintaining the status quo is already a significant concession. It makes the compromise position seem like the far left and a conservative position seem like a middle, compromise position.

(This may remind you of the broader health care debate, in which many in the media have portrayed the public option as the far-left position, when, in fact, it represents a massive concession on the part of liberals who support single-payer and other, more fundamental, reforms.)

Matthews' comments about abortion are premised on the idea that abortion should be treated differently from other medical procedures. He doesn't explain, or even ask, why that should be -- why we should ban federal funding for a perfectly legal medical procedure. He doesn't explain, or even ask, how that is consistent with the concept of insurance. (Answer: It isn't. If we can all veto coverage for procedures we don't want covered, insurance doesn't work.)

There is no great controversy over whether government health care funds should be spent treating lung cancer or broken arms or influenza or sprained ankles or erectile dysfunction. And Matthews doesn't explain why abortion should be treated any differently. Doesn't even ask his guests to explain -- he just assumes, and argues, that it is. That's the very definition of adopting right-wing framing.

Matthews finally acknowledged this problem this week:

MATTHEWS: People say, well, it's just like any other health care procedure. Well, it isn't just like any other health care procedure. [...] [W]e wouldn't be debating it. We don't have national debates over kidney removal or anything else like that. This is unique in our culture, in our value system.

In other words, we should treat abortion differently because it's different, and it's different because some people want it treated differently. Obviously, that is completely circular reasoning and can't be taken seriously. It doesn't even occur to Matthews that the fact that we don't have these debates over other medical procedures doesn't mean there is anything unique about abortion; it means that abortion-rights opponents are demanding -- and receiving -- special treatment for no reason other than that they want it.

Nor do other obvious problems occur to Matthews. For instance: The death penalty is inconsistent with my value system, and with that of millions of others. Yet we pay for it with our tax money. Millions of people find wars of choice morally abhorrent, but are forced to pay for them anyway. Why should abortion be treated differently? You can spend an awfully long time looking for a news report that addresses that question, and you'll come up empty.

Again: The fact that these inconsistencies don't even occur to Matthews is a clear demonstration of how thoroughly he has internalized conservative framing.

Next: Matthews has adopted the phony right-wing spin that it would constitute a departure for health care reform legislation to allow federal subsidies to go to health insurance plans that offer abortion coverage to unsubsidized consumers. Here's Matthews:

MATTHEWS: The problem with that is it looks like an accounting trick. It looks like you're saying, OK, some of the money that goes into an insurance plan will go to abortion, some won't. Everybody knows that money's fungible and that this is basically an accounting trick. And I don't think it'll work with people who have a moral problem with abortion funding by the federal government.

Now, here's why that's baloney: Government funding currently works that way, under the Hyde Amendment. Federal funds go to Medicaid, and in 17 states, Medicaid covers "all or most medically necessary abortions" -- not just abortions in cases of rape and incest, or where the life of the woman is at stake. Under Matthews' "money's fungible ... this is basically an accounting trick" reasoning, such federal funding for Medicaid should not be allowed and shouldn't "work with people who have a moral problem with abortion funding by the federal government." But that's how current law works.

Matthews, however, is apparently unaware of this:

In our health care system, poor women get Medicaid. Medicaid has never allowed women to get abortion paid for by the government. This is current law and has been law for 30-some years now, 32 years.

That simply isn't true. Not under Matthews' own definitions of what constitutes funding and of the fungibility of money. You'd have to play what Matthews derides as an "accounting trick" to defend his claims about Medicaid.

Even after a Hardball guest, Politico reporter Jonathan Allen, explained the "intellectually dishonest" nature of claims like those Matthews is making about the government subsidizing abortion, Matthews misses the point. Here's Allen:

ALLEN: You know, when you talk about subsidies, what's interesting -- and I haven't heard anybody bring this up -- is, we already subsidize insurance companies that have abortion plans -- have plans that cover abortions. [...] We do it through the Medicare prescription drug law, through tax breaks. Insurance companies are subsidized by the American taxpayer in all forms of way. And, so, it's a little intellectually dishonest for some of these Republicans and Democrats who are against abortion rights to say now, we don't want to subsidize.

Matthews steadfastly refused to understand, telling Allen he's "missing the point" that some people don't want the government to pay for abortion and continuing to suggest that health care reform would move away from current law by allowing federal subsidies for insurance companies that cover abortion, leading Allen to try again: "[W]hat I'm saying is that you already have insurance companies that have plans that cover abortions ... that are subsidized by the American taxpayer in a lot of ways." Matthews still didn't get it, though, apparently not understanding that if money is fungible under health care reform, money is fungible already, and so we already -- by his definition -- subsidize abortion with federal funds.

Matthews also gets the concept of government intervention in abortion decisions wrong. He says that if government funds can be used to pay for abortion, that constitutes the government meddling in individual decisions about reproductive health:

MATTHEWS: [I]sn't there some way to separate out, so that people who are taxpayers can support a health care plan without getting involved in the individual decision which is a guaranteed right under this Constitution to choose an abortion? You don't get involved in that decision.

It's totally that woman's choice, that you're not subsidizing it or taxing it or anything -- it's a neutral choice as far as you're concerned, which is what most Americans, I believe, are comfortable with, if they support abortion rights. Even those people say, let the person pay for it.

This is completely backward. If the government refuses to cover a medical procedure, that is precisely a case of the government "get[ting] involved in that decision." Banning federal funding is inserting the government into the "individual decision"; allowing it is keeping the government out of the decision. Unless, of course, you think the fact that Medicaid covers treatment for your broken leg to be an example of the government getting involved in your medical decisions.

But because Matthews has adopted the conservatives' illogical premise that the government refusing to fund a medical procedure constitutes the government staying out of private medical decisions, he never asks conservatives to explain the tension between their oft-stated warnings of a government bureaucrat getting between you and your doctor and their opposition to federal funds being used for abortion.

Matthews not only adopts factually inaccurate and conceptually flawed right-wing framing on the substance of the debate, he does so when it comes to the politics, too. He repeatedly claims that there are 40 House Democrats who will oppose health care reform if it does not contain the Stupak amendment's broad restrictions on abortion coverage:

• CECILE RICHARDS (president of Planned Parenthood): [T]here were a handful of folks who were holding the health care reform bill hostage Friday night who said they would keep the bill from actually passing out of the House unless they got this amendment in.
  
  [...]
  
  MATTHEWS: You called them a handful of, but it was 40 Democrats. [Hardball, 11/9/09]

• MATTHEWS: Anyway, how do you solve the problem of 40 people saying this bill's going down if it's not pro-choice, and 40 people saying it's going down if it's not pro-life, and you're Nancy Pelosi, you've got to solve the problem? How do you do it? [Hardball, 11/9/09]

• MATTHEWS: Forty people have said they will -- they will not vote for this bill if it's not pro-choice. Forty people have said they will not vote for the bill if it funds -- or uses taxpayer money to subsidize abortion coverage. It sounds like a real no -- no -- no deal to me. [Hardball, 11/10/09]

So, are there actually 40 House Democrats who won't vote for health care reform if it does not include the Stupak language, but will if the Stupak language remains? House Democratic whip James Clyburn suggests it's more like 10, not 40. But Matthews keeps using the higher number.

Finally, Matthews doesn't question the sincerity of abortion-rights opponents, though there are ample reasons to do so. A spokesman for House Republican whip Eric Cantor admitted this week that his party sees the inclusion of the Stupak amendment as the best way to derail health care reform:

"If defeating Stupak wouldn't [have changed] the outcome on Saturday," said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), "then it is clearly evident that having it in and sparking a civil war amongst the Democrats is the best way to stop the overall bill."

And, according to The Washington Independent's David Weigel, groups like the National Right to Life Committee reportedly will oppose health care reform even if it contains the Stupak amendment, which they lobbied for, and which would constitute a significant limitation on the ability of women to exercise their freedom of choice. Yet Matthews portrays anti-abortion rights activists as principled fighters for their moral values, even as they admit to cynically using the issue to torpedo reform, and even as they refuse to support health care reform even if it contains the anti-choice provisions they say are so important.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

Doug Hoffman was, first and foremost, a media candidate (a media creation), which means we are entering a very new and different realm in American politics. We're entering a sort of Fox News Era where media outlets -- where alleged news organizations -- essentially co-sponsor political campaigns. We've moved well beyond the time when Fox News, for instance, leaned right and gave conservative candidates more air-time and tossed them lots of softball questions. We're now watching unfold a political reality where Fox News literally selects candidates and then markets them through Election Day.

There's a reason Hoffman described Glenn Beck as his "mentor" and pledged his "sacred honor" to uphold the "9 Principles and 12 Values" of Beck's 9/12 Project. There's a reason Sean Hannity wanted to "declare" Hoffman the election winner, and why Fox News' on-screen graphic read "Conservative Revolution?" when Hoffman was being interviewed (i.e. prematurely crowned) by Hannity on the eve of Election Day.

Hoffman's outsider bid, originally opposed by the Republican Party, was a media production, plain and simple, which means his loss was a media loss, as well.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich had it right when he told The Washington Times that Hoffman's rise as a third party candidate was the "result of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News." Gingrich, who originally opposed Hoffman's candidacy, added: "This was not an isolated amateur; this is an entire movement."

Indeed, it's a media movement that's doing it's best to obliterate the line between journalism and politics.

As I've been noting for some time, Fox News has transformed itself into the Opposition Party of the Obama White House. So it makes sense that, as a purely partisan player, Fox New would immerse itself in backroom horse-trading. It makes sense that rather than covering the campaigns and the candidates, Fox News would insert itself as a political player within Republican contests and throw its support behind a specific candidate, the way it did in NY-23.

The looming problem for the GOP, though, is that the right-wing media can't pick winners and stands poised to rip the Republican Party apart. (Did you notice how Limbaugh last week claimed "Newt" had "screwed the whole [NY-23] thing up"?)

It's yet more evidence that during President Bush's pro-war tenure, far-right radio and TV talkers, along with fringe bloggers, convinced themselves they represented the mainstream -- the majority -- of the GOP. But they don't. They represent the radical CPAC wing of the GOP, and it shows on Election Day. We saw that in 2008, when bloggers and talkers opposed Sen. John McCain in the GOP primaries yet were completely unable to sway Republican voters in the process. In the immortal words of Republican strategist Mike Murphy, "These radio guys can't deliver a pizza, let alone a nomination."

 What's different now, though, is that the right-wing media have become even more powerful within conservative circles, while the Republican National Committee and traditional Republican leaders have receded even further into the background. (Does anyone really see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as the leader of anything?) That power vacuum means it's Fox News that sets the conservative agenda in America. It's at Fox News where partisan strategies are hatched, rallies are marketed, and smear campaigns are launched. And it's Republican politicians and traditional Beltway professionals who are forced to play catch-up to the conservative media.

In other words, in just the last 12 months, the balance of power within the conservative movement has completely swung in the direction of the right-wing press, which is stoking the flames of the GOP civil war. It's a partisan press corps that no longer documents internal Republican squabbling; it initiates the infighting.

National political parties go through all kinds of evolutions; all kinds of natural expansions and contractions over time. (Barry Goldwater, for instance, oversaw perhaps the GOP's most radical contraction in modern times.) It's quite rare, though, for the catalyst of that change to be external media forces. Sure, permanent Beltway insiders such as Bill Kristol have routinely hopped back and forth between "the role of Republican flack and alleged journalist without changing even a comma in his prose 'style'," as columnist Eric Alterman noted last week.

But what we're seeing unfold in 2009 is something entirely different. This isn't a few conservative pundits dipping their toes into Republican political waters during election cycles and trying to generate an electoral wave. And this isn't like 1994 when AM talk radio morphed into an RNC echo chamber and helped spread the Republicans' anti-Clinton message.

This is a case where huge swaths of the conservative media, including television, radio, and online, have shed any façade of being journalists and embraced their king-making role. Or, if savaging a GOP candidate is what's needed, as was the case in NY-23 and Dede Scozzafava, then they'll do that as well.

Looking forward, it's inevitable that during the 2012 GOP Republican primary season, there will be, for the lack of a better term, a Fox News candidate in the field. There will be a far-right darling of the Tea Party movement (cough, cough, Sarah Palin) who has both the official (Limbaugh, Beck, Malkin) and unofficial (Fox News) endorsement of the right-wing media.

But will that do any good in the real world? Ask Doug Hoffman.

Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Malkin, among others, all put their reputations on the line in NY-23, touting the contest as a referendum on the anti-Obama, Tea Party movement in America. And they lost, big time. Not unlike the way the same right-wing media leaders put their reputations on the line in early 2008 and went all-in against McCain in the South Carolina Republican primary. (FYI, McCain wasn't sufficiently conservative.) Result? McCain won the SC contest in a walk.

See a pattern here? Me, too. The Republican Party is now attached to a political movement -- a media-led movement -- that cannot win elections. It's a movement that cannot even win elections in traditionally red districts (NY-23) or in very red states (SC). By refusing to separate itself from media players who claim the president of the United States is a racist and a Nazi, the GOP may be assigning itself a permanent minority status.

And I'm sorry, but belated and feeble attempts by Republican leaders such as Rep. Eric Cantor to create the slightest glimmer of daylight between the GOP and the right-wing media aren't going to do the trick. (For the record, comparing health care reform to the Holocaust was the line Limbaugh and company recently crossed, according to Cantor. Good to know.) Republican politicians in 2009 have made it blindingly obvious that they lack both the courage to consistently stand up to the far-right media's hate merchants and the resources. Meaning, without the energy of the fringe activists who insist Obama is destroying America on purpose, the Republican Party would be virtually kaput today.

Disillusioned "Right Wing" blogger Rick Moran, recently bemoaning what he sees as the rise of an "anti-reason" movement on the far right, may have put it best when he asked, "What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?"

His definition of "anti-reason" conservatives, who now anchor the right-wing media, seemed dead-on, as well: "[T]hose who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined 'enemies.' "

Moran actually penned that lament before the votes were counted in the NY-23 congressional race. And incredibly, the "anti-reason" fanatics Moran described were encouraged by the results in Upstate New York, which, in a strange way, actually made sense. Of course anti-reason conservatives would celebrate as a victory the fact that a district that hadn't elected a Democrat to Congress in nearly 150 years did so last week. Of course they'd announce that it was good news that by backing a candidate who did not even live in the district and who, according to a local newspaper editorial board, was woefully ill-informed about local issues, the movement had helped toss a Republican seat to the Democrats.

Anti-reason conservatives watched Hoffman go down in defeat and immediately announced they were going to target more Republican candidates, which means the right-wing media stand poised to unleash even more wingnuttery on the GOP establishment.

Grab the popcorn. This is going to be fun to watch.

If you're a regular listener of The Rush Limbaugh Show -- or, better yet, a regular reader of Media Matters' Limbaugh Wire -- then you probably recognized that every morsel Limbaugh fed to ratings-hungry Wallace on the subject of Obama's destruction of the economy was just a regurgitation of what Rush passes off as compelling radio on a daily basis.

But aside from Limbaugh's deluge of misinformation -- how many times do we need to point out that issue expertise is as common on The Rush Limbaugh Show as insightful commentary is on a Fox World Series broadcast with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver? -- there was one revealing exchange between Limbaugh and Wallace. Wallace brought up that Limbaugh's current contract is reported to be worth $400 million over eight years. He and Rush then had the following exchange:

WALLACE: And don't get me wrong. I think you're a great broadcaster. How can you possibly be worth that kind of money?

LIMBAUGH: Very simply. Value is determined by what somebody will pay you to do what you do. I'm probably worth more.

Rush tried to pass off this comment the next day on his radio show as one of his many "media tweaks." But he surely tweaked Wallace with the comment, whose expression after Limbaugh gave that answer was as dumbfounded as ours:

 But what do you get for $400 million? For conservatives, $400 million bought them electoral failure.

There's a lot to be said about what Democratic losses in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races mean (and, of course, what they don't mean). But if we're talking about Rush Limbaugh, then the most important race to talk about is the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District and Limbaugh's failure to help deliver a win for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Like the rest of the conservative media, Limbaugh promoted the third-party candidacy of Doug Hoffman over GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava (who ended up dropping out days before the election) and Democratic candidate Bill Owens. It was clear that Limbaugh preferred Hoffman by the way he absolutely trashed Scozzafava for being a Republican in name only (or, "RINO"):

LIMBAUGH: Scozzafava has screwed every RINO in the coun -- we can say that she's guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just how phony and dangerous they are.

On Tuesday's program, a few hours before the polls closed in New York, Limbaugh predicted a Hoffman victory and explained the importance of the race as such (subscription required):

LIMBAUGH: This is where conservative Americans are drawing the line. New York-23. This is where we are fighting, this is where we will take a stand against both the liberal wing of the Republican Party and Obama and the Democrat [sic] Party.

Later that night, Hoffman was declared the loser. Regardless, Limbaugh went on the air the next day to spin a clear defeat into a moral victory. "What did not lose was conservatism," proclaimed Limbaugh as he went over the results. He also bragged that Hoffman had the highest percentage of votes ever won by a Conservative Party candidate running for the House or Senate. And referencing a blog post by Erick Erickson at RedState.com, Limbaugh added:

LIMBAUGH: [T]he message out of this is, we took out a horrible Republican. We kept a horrible Republican from possibly winning and totally redefining the party in a way that would make it a permanent minority party. So in Erick's view, yeah, it would've been great if Hoffman won, but the real victory was making sure that a Republican in Name Only did not win.

I don't have a problem with trying to be optimistic about losing or trying to pick out the positive morsels of a bitter defeat. But you know who used to? Rush Limbaugh.

Back in 2006, Rush was busy mocking Democrats for claiming a "moral victory" in special elections that they lost:

LIMBAUGH: So I would say to you Democrats who want to continue to redefine victory as when you narrowly lose, "Keep it up, because for all the moral victories in the world you think you're having, it's just a bunch of sophistry. You're just stroking yourselves trying to tell yourself something good happened when you lost," and of course for the country at large, it is a good thing when liberal Democrats lose.

That's what he said on the day of the 2006 special election in California's 50th Congressional District between Republican Brian Bilbray and Democrat Francine Busby. The next day, after Busby had been defeated, Limbaugh basked under the heat lamp of his self-described brilliance for predicting that Democrats would declare a moral victory after losing "by four-and-a-half to five points."

So back in NY-23, why did the conservative Hoffman lose? Election analysis guru Nate Silver took a stab at that question:

Why? Because those [conservative] activists -- however well-meaning they might have been -- misunderstood the district. The 23rd is a Republican district, but it is not a particularly conservative one, having split its vote between Barack Obama and the moderate Republican John McHugh last November.

If Nancy Pelosi is regarded suspiciously in the 23rd, so are Sarah Palin and Fred Thompson, who cut commercials and robocalls on behalf of Hoffman. What the voters there wanted was a candidate who understood them. Owens -- superior to Hoffman in his command of local issues -- provided the best approximation. [Emphasis added]

So instead of being the harbinger of conservative ascendancy that Limbaugh and his followers had hoped, NY-23 ended up being proof that Limbaugh's daily platitudes about the universality of conservative values had literally no application in the real world.

Which brings us back to the issue of Limbaugh's pay. There's no mystery as to what makes Rush Limbaugh the highest paid person in his field of work: He knows how to get attention.

But that's all his paycheck is for: getting people's attention. He doesn't have to advance the cause of conservatism. He's not responsible for making sure conservatives win at the ballot. His job is to get his legion of Dittoheads to pay for a subscription to the Heritage Foundation and use Zicam. In other words, his job is to sell ads.

Is Rush Limbaugh worth $400 million over eight years to his syndication company? Like Limbaugh said during his interview with Wallace, that's what the free market determined he was worth. Fine.

But is Rush Limbaugh worth $400 million over eight years to the conservative movement?

Following the outcome of NY-23, there may be some conservative activists out there who would want to reconsider that investment.

It's just not true.

No matter how many times reporters and pundits made the claim, a detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch's channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News' ratings did not soar or go "through the roof." In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar, they experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined.

Think about it. The unfolding controversy, which gobbled up untold hours and pages of news coverage as the Beltway press treated the dispute like a major news event (even though news consumers couldn't care less), and the hubbub barely moved the ratings needle one inch in Fox News' favor.

Another example of the Beltway press not letting the facts get in the way of a good story? It sure looks that way. In this case, we saw nearly universal agreement among media elites that the White House decision to publicly call out Fox News was monumentally dumb, thin-skinned, short-sighted, and uncivil. (Paging the etiquette police!)

Everyone said so. Therefore pundits were certain that Fox News' ratings were way up and that Obama and his aides had made a huge tactical blunder. The ratings angle simply provided statistical ammunition for what the Beltway press corps already knew to be the truth: Fact-checking Fox News, in the immortal words of The Washington Post's CW-loving Sally Quinn, was "absolutely crazy."

Except it turns out none of that was true. There was no viewer stampede toward Fox News.

How did the story line about Fox News' (phantom) ratings surge morph into cemented fact? First, pundits simply announced the ratings bonanza was on the way. They knew it had to be the case, so they simply said so, over and over and over. (See below.) Then some misleading ratings reports began to surface that seemed to confirm the spike. For instance, on October 26, the Los Angeles Times, going with ratings data provided by Fox News, reported: "In the two weeks since aides to President Obama took after the [cable channel's] coverage, the audience has been 8% larger than the previous two weeks."

Not only did that report make a specific ratings claim, but it also set the parameters for measuring the supposed Fox News success -- its ratings for the two weeks prior to the eruption of the White House controversy, (i.e. September 28-October 11) compared to the two weeks that followed (i.e. October 12-25). Again and again we saw that model used to support the ratings "spike" claims.

On October 27, BusinessInsider.com used the same framework and posted this blaring headline: "Fox News Ratings Soar After Snub From Obama." Like the Los Angeles Times, Business Insider adopted the two-weeks-before-vs.-the-two-weeks-after model to conclude that in the two weeks prior, the cabler averaged 1.2 million viewers vs. 1.3 million in the two weeks after the political controversy erupted.

The Business Insider report was quickly trumpeted by right-wing blogger Allahpundit, who belittled the administration: "Good work, Barry."

From there, it's no exaggeration to suggest that virtually every high-traffic conservative blog on the Internet linked to the report and mocked the White House for helping spike Fox News' numbers. And like the bogus right-wing claim from last month that 2 million anti-Obama protesters gathered in Washington, D.C., on September 12 (the number was only off by 1.9 million), the dubious claim that Fox News' ratings had soared became the beloved gospel.

Late that same day on October 26, industry ratings site TVbytheNumbers.com also posted an item, which seemed to confirm the ratings spike: "Fox News Ratings Up During White House 'War.' " Like Business Insider, TVbytheNumbers, citing Nielsen data*, reported: "Fox News' total day adults 25-54 demo ratings and average viewership are up 14% and 9% respectively during the two weeks of 'war' vs. the previous two weeks of 'peace.' " And like Business Insider, TVbytheNumbers reported that prior to the controversy, Fox News averaged 1.2 million viewers; after the controversy, 1.3 million were tuning in.

The next day, the Chicago Tribune's political blog, The Swamp, parroted the same stat: "FOX viewership is up 9 percent and 14 percent among adults since the feud with the White House started."

Done deal, right? Wrong, because those numbers didn't add up. Or more specifically, those numbers did not reflect Fox News' ratings two weeks prior to the controversy and two weeks after. Instead, the numbers represented a cherry-picked attempt to create the illusion of a ratings spike for Fox News.

And here's how. As I mentioned, the two weeks prior to the White House dispute cover the dates from September 28-October 11. The two weeks after that cover the dates from October 12-October 25. But the tabulation used to come up with the 9 percent ratings gain (i.e. 1.2 million vs. 1.3 million) only measured Fox News' post-controversy ratings from October 12-October 23, which meant it was a 14-day comparison vs. a 12-day comparison. And which two days were left off the tabulation? Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25. Traditionally, Saturday and Sunday, of course, are the two lowest-rated days of the cable news week.

What happened when you included October 24 and October 25 in the tabulation to make a true two-week-vs.-two-week comparison? Suddenly, that 9 percent gain in overall viewers evaporated into a barely-there 2 percent blip, while that 14 percent increase among viewers 25-54 shrunk to a much more modest 7 percent bump.

Behold the massive Fox News ratings "spike":

And by the way, in the world of cable news, a tiny 2 percent bump in viewership over a relatively short span of two weeks is utterly irrelevant and signifies nothing more than the normal up-and-down viewing patterns that are part of the business. For instance, on October 15, Fox News averaged 1.5 million viewers for the day. The next day, the total audience slipped to 1.3 million, a drop of more than 10 percent. Did that mean Fox News' ratings "plunged"? Hardly, which is why the channel's 2 percent gain in the two weeks following its battle with the White House didn't signify much of anything.

The same was true of the relatively modest 7 percent gain among the more targeted 25-54 demo. Because that audience group is much smaller (roughly 330,000 viewers each day as compared to the larger pool of 1.2 million), a 7 percent increase or decrease is unexceptional. Again, between October 1 and October 2, Fox News' total day 25-54 demo decreased from 415,000 to 320,000 viewers -- a drop of almost 25 percent. The smaller 25-54 demo often fluctuates like that.

And besides, if you listened to media elite pundits, Fox News ratings weren't inching up incrementally thanks to the White House. Pundits didn't cautiously claim that because of the White House critique, Fox News' ratings among the niche 25-54 demo were going to increase modestly.

Nope. The media chorus was unequivocal: Fox News' ratings were soaring [emphasis added]:

• "I sent Barack Obama, President Obama a fruit basket for all that comments because our ratings are up 20% since he made it." [Fox News' Bill O'Reilly]

• "[R]atings at Fox are through the roof." [Politico's Mike Allen]

• "Every time the president or one of his spokespeople mentions [Glenn] Beck or [Rush] Limbaugh, the latter two enjoy increased ratings and bucks." [Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker]

• "Beck and O'Reilly were nearly orgiastic. Every presidential harrumph sends their ratings through the roof." [*Newser's Michael Wolff]

• "It's working. Their rating, their ratings are going through the roof." [PBS host Tavis Smiley, on NBC's Meet the Press; 10/25/09.]

• "[A]ttacking Fox just drives the 'fair and balanced' news network's ratings through the roof." [The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott]

• "It serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings." [Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus]

• "By raising the network's profile, Obama has all but guaranteed higher ratings for his nemesis." [Arizona Republic editorial]

• "And the [Fox News] ratings will increase, and the White House will look petty in the short term." [CBN's David Brody]

• "The more Obama goes after Fox, the better the ratings." [Denver Post columnist Mike Littwin]

• "Fox will use this White House move to boost their ratings." [New York magazine's Daily Intel blog]

• "It's going to spike Fox's ratings." [Pundit David Gergen]

• "And the White House's public attack will no doubt give Fox 'stature' and boost its ratings." [Providence Journal's Edward Achorn]

This is what happens when claustrophobic uniformity takes over among the Beltway chattering class. This is what happened when the media elites agreed that it was nuts for the White House to fact-check Fox News, and they were sure that the administration's carping sent the cable channel's ratings "through the roof." With so little original thought involved in the robotic repetition of the anointed Beltway truth, nobody bothered to checks the facts.

The chattering class wanted to claim Fox News' ratings were going up, up, up. They wanted to suggest that the White House critique had massively backfired. But now we know that's fiction. So when are the pundits going to start posting their retractions?

We'll wait.

*For the record, the Nielsen ratings company never issued any findings regarding Fox News ratings in the wake of the White House dispute, according to company spokeswoman Alana Johnson, who responded to my email inquiry. Lots of third parties subscribe to the Nielsen data and can put together their own interpretations of the ratings and attribute that analysis to Nielsen numbers, which is what happened in this case. But in terms of Fox News, Nielsen itself never made any kind of official finding about the cable channel's recent ratings in regards to the public controversy.

*Michael Wolff writes from Newser, not TV Newser, as originally stated. I regret the error.

Alexander concluded his passage about Kurtz's conflicts by rhetorically asking: "[W]ould The Post allow a reporter who covers energy to be paid on the side by a big oil company?" Presumably, the answer is clear -- but that just raises another question: Why doesn't Kurtz have to follow the rules his Post colleagues are bound by?

The biggest problem with Kurtz's conflict of interest is not simply that it exists as a theoretical matter; it is that it clearly affects his actual reporting, despite his assertions to the contrary. Alexander quoted Kurtz defending himself: "My track record makes clear that I've been as aggressive toward CNN -- and The Washington Post, for that matter -- as I would be if I didn't host a weekly program there." Alexander added that Kurtz "discloses his CNN affiliation at the end of his columns and relevant news stories for The Post. And he's identified with The Post on 'Reliable Sources.' "

It's a shame Alexander didn't have more space to address Kurtz's conflict, because that defense is laugh-out-loud funny.

Kurtz spent a good chunk of the summer writing about media coverage of the right-wing birther conspiracy theories, of which he was critical. The most prominent media figure who regularly hyped those conspiracy theories was CNN's Lou Dobbs. To his credit, Kurtz occasionally criticized Dobbs. And when CNN president Jonathan Klein appeared to rebuke Dobbs, sending out a memo to CNN staff saying the story was dead, Kurtz mentioned that on his CNN program. But when Klein changed his mind and defended Dobbs' coverage as "legitimate" and slammed Dobbs' critics as "partisans," Kurtz kept quiet.

Kurtz, remember, was one of those Dobbs critics; but he never said a word about Klein's flip. He didn't even report Klein's comments. For several weeks over the summer, the birther conspiracy theories were the biggest media story out there. And the president of the nation's oldest cable news channel was defending a star anchor's relentless hyping of those conspiracy theories. And Howard Kurtz thought that anchor's coverage was "ludicrous."

But Kurtz kept his mouth shut about Klein. Didn't say anything, didn't write anything. Klein, of course, signs Kurtz's CNN paychecks.

Even more incredibly, Kurtz slammed CNN competitors like MSNBC for supposedly keeping the story alive. The MSNBC reporters to whom Kurtz was referring were debunking the birther nonsense. Kurtz's boss at CNN was defending Lou Dobbs' promotion of those theories as "legitimate." And yet Kurtz criticized CNN rival MSNBC, while giving Klein a pass. (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Is it even possible not to think that the fact Klein is Kurtz's boss had a little something to do with that?

Howard Kurtz, by the way, refuses to answer questions about this. I've submitted questions about Kurtz's kid-glove treatment of Klein to more than a half-dozen of Kurtz's weekly online Q&A sessions. He's never taken a single one.

Note, by the way, that Kurtz went out of his way to tell Alexander that he's as tough on the Post as he would be if he didn't work there.

Oh, really?

Just a couple of weeks ago, news broke that Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli apparently misled The New York Times over the summer about his knowledge of the Post's marketing of controversial (and since abandoned) dinner parties at which corporations would pay for access to Post reporters. In his defense, Brauchli claimed he hadn't misled the Times; the Times reporter had misunderstood him.

But then, the Politico's Michael Calderone revealed that Brauchli had told him the same thing he told the Times, and that Calderone had interpreted it the same way the Times had. That's quite a blow to Brauchli's defense -- it seems improbable that two different reporters at two different news organizations misinterpreted two different Brauchli statements in precisely the same way.

Calderone tried to reach Brauchli for comment, but Brauchli wouldn't talk to him. Brauchli did, however, give Kurtz an interview. In the article Kurtz wrote for the Post, he noted Brauchli's assertion that the Times had misunderstood him. But Kurtz didn't mention Calderone's revelation that Brauchli had told him the same thing the Times said Brauchli told them.

That's a key fact, and one that does a great deal to undermine Brauchli's defense. But Kurtz left it out of his article. Brauchli, of course, decides whether Kurtz continues to stay on the Post's payroll. And now Kurtz insists that he doesn't pull his punches when it comes to the Post. Yeah, right.

Incidentally, Kurtz won't answer questions about his treatment of Brauchli, either. And Brauchli won't answer questions about Calderone, or about why he would only talk to Kurtz.

Finally, Alexander noted that Kurtz "discloses his CNN affiliation at the end of his columns and relevant news stories for The Post."

But Kurtz's disclosure is intermittent at best. In June, Alexander wrote on his washingtonpost.com blog that Kurtz had failed to disclose his relationship with CNN during an online chat in which he defended the cable channel, and that he should have done so. Kurtz "readily agreed," according to Alexander, who quoted Kurtz saying: "That was an oversight and won't be repeated."

But Kurtz repeated the oversight almost immediately, as I noted in an August blog post:

When Kurtz has written about Dobbs and CNN in recent weeks, he has failed to disclose his ties to CNN.

In a July 22 Media Notes column, Kurtz mentioned Dobbs in a section on Birthers -- but Kurtz didn't disclose his financial relationship with CNN.

In an August 3 Media Notes column, Kurtz mentioned Dobbs in a section on Birthers -- but Kurtz didn't disclose his financial relationship with CNN.

In an August 3 "Media Backtalk" online discussion, Kurtz answered two questions that referenced CNN and three that referenced Dobbs. But Kurtz never disclosed his financial relationship with CNN.

Remember: On June 17, Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote that Kurtz should have disclosed his CNN connection when writing about the cable channel. He quoted Kurtz agreeing, and assuring him the "oversight" would not be repeated.

And then Kurtz went right out and did it again. And again. And again. It's almost as though he's thumbing his nose at Alexander.

[...]

Kurtz devotes nearly all of today's "Media Notes" column to a profile of AOL's Politics Daily site. AOL is owned by Time Warner, which also owns CNN, which employs Howard Kurtz. Did Kurtz disclose his financial relationship with AOL's parent company? No, he did not.

That's Howard Kurtz in a nutshell: Glaring financial conflicts of interest that clearly affect his reporting, which he regularly fails to disclose.

(By the way: Even if Kurtz was consistent in doing so, disclosure is inadequate. The way Kurtz's conflict with regard to Klein's defense of Dobbs manifested itself was in Kurtz's failure to cover Klein. When, exactly, is Kurtz going to disclose the conflict when the issue is that he isn't writing about Klein? And even if he did somehow disclose his employment by CNN in such a situation, how would Post readers know from that fig-leaf disclosure that Kurtz was ignoring a story that made his CNN bosses look bad?)

Apparently, when Kurtz says he's as tough on CNN and The Washington Post as he would be if he didn't work there, he means he's as tough on rank-and-file reporters at CNN and the Post as he would be otherwise. But the executives at CNN and the Post who play key roles in deciding whether and how much Howard Kurtz gets paid -- they're another story entirely. Kurtz treats them like fine china: very carefully.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

On Thursday, House Democratic leaders unveiled the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The bill followed on the heels of the Senate Finance Committee's passage of its own version of health care reform legislation.

Let's let Sean Hannity explain: "This is so important. Because for all the town halls and everything that happened this summer, these are the critical weeks if you don't want health care."

And who wants health care? Much less health care reform ...

Hannity and the rest of the right-wing wrecking crew are gearing up for a war.

The very day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced the House health care bill, Rush Limbaugh purported to read it and explain it. As one might expect, his analysis of what one provision of the bill says was almost entirely the opposite of what it actually says. On Thursday's show, Limbaugh said:

Now, as I go through this, it -- this section I'm gonna read part of, it looks like small businesses are gonna lose their tax breaks for health coverage. Right now, small business gets a tax break for providing health coverage. It's gonna be -- it looks like it's gonna be phased out in two years. But it's hard to tell from the damn convoluted language.

Ah, yes, that "damn convoluted language." Funny how such language confounds the Limbaughs of the world, yet gives them enough cover to provide their own bogus analyses.

Limbaugh's statement that "small businesses are gonna lose their tax breaks for health coverage" is false -- the section he read would actually create an additional small business tax credit for health coverage.

The Drudge Report and Fox News ran with Politico's Jonathan Allen's misleading calculation that the House's recently announced health care reform legislation costs "about $2.24 million per word." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office stated that  the House bill "would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $104 billion". Thus, using Allen's formula, the bill would actually save $260,000 per word. (Don't expect to see that on as a "Fox Fact" anytime soon.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) announcement that the Senate's version will include a public option that each state could opt out of prompted immediate misinformation from the conservative media. Several Fox News commentators baselessly suggested that states choosing not to participate in the public option would, in Karl Rove's words, have to pay taxes "for this sucker for decades," but "we're not going to get any of our money back." However, while Reid has yet to release details of the compromise Senate legislation, every other proposed "sucker" with a public option so far has required the costs of the public plan to be covered by the premiums of those who enroll in it, and the taxes proposed in each of the "suckers" are used to cover the expansion of coverage through Medicaid and subsidies to help certain families purchase insurance, both of which are provided to residents of every state regardless of any public option.

Of course, over at Fox they call it a "government-run option" because, obviously, people are for a "public" option, but not a "government" option. And Fox certainly doesn't want to give the people what they want. (Nor do they want to quit turning to Frank Luntz for help in framing the health care debate.)

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart and the Washington Examiner seized on a story about the shortage in H1N1 vaccines to criticize health care reform. "Government-Run Health Care: From the People Who Brought Us Swine Flu Vaccine Shortage" read one oh-so-witty BigGovernment.com headline. Washington Examiner editor Mark Tapscott was the original source: "The same government that only weeks ago promised abundant supplies of swine flu vaccine by mid-October will be running your health care system under Obamacare." In fact, the real problem was that the vaccine manufacturers provided the government with "overly rosy" estimates of how many vaccines they could produce.

And Ph.D. in history Dr. Betsy McCaughey's crusade to do anything she can to dismantle health care reform continued in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, where she rehashed several debunked falsehoods and continued to smear White House health care adviser real Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.

Conservative media's "radical" attacks are so lame

The Republican Noise Machine's strategy of trying to pick off "radical" Obama administration figures jumped the shark this week. Following weeks' worth of attacks on Department of Education official Kevin Jennings and White House communication director Anita Dunn, the conservative media this week targeted Edward Chen, President Obama's nominee to be a California federal district court judge.

"The revolving door of radicals coming into the Obama administration continues to spin," announced Sean Hannity on Tuesday night's show. Hannity picked up the story from The Washington Times, which wrote in an editorial on Sunday that Chen was "another Obama nominee who doesn't appear to love America."

Judge Chen's words speak for themselves. When the congregation sang "America the Beautiful" at a funeral, Judge Chen told the audience of his "feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted with appeals to patriotism -- sometimes I cannot help but feel that there are too much [sic] injustice and too many inequalities that prevent far too many Americans from enjoying the beauty extolled in that anthem."

In a speech on Sept. 22, 2001, he said that among his first responses to the September 11 terrorist attacks on America was a "sickening feeling in my stomach about what might happen to race relations and religious tolerance on our own soil. ... One has to wonder whether the seemingly irresistible forces of racism, nativism and scapegoating which has [sic] recurred so often in our history can be effectively restrained."

And talking about the role of judges, he in effect embraced the "empathy standard" that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was forced to denounce in her own confirmation hearings: "Simply put, a judge's life experiences affect the willingness to credit testimony or understand the human impact of legal rules upon which the judge must decide. These determinations require a judge to draw upon something that is not found in the case reports that line the walls of our chambers. Rather judges draw upon the breadth and depth of their own life experience. ... Inevitably, one's ethnic and racial background contributes to those life experiences."

You get the picture. To quote and paraphrase Sen. Charles E. Schumer from another occasion, this man's attitude "doesn't even whisper 'judge.' " Instead, it yells out that he is a biased radical willing to impose his own politics from the bench. Judge Chen should not be confirmed.

Again proving his penchant for the hyperbolic, Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday read The Washington Times' talking points on Chen and claimed that "you can't get more radical than Chen."

Of course, as is often the case, when you actually stop and consider Chen's words -- rather than just repeating the GOP Talking Point^TM version of them -- you see they represent anything but "radical" thinking.

Chen was concerned about a visceral reaction on the part of some Americans toward Muslims and other groups. And sure enough, a 2002 FBI hate crimes analysis reported that the distribution of hate crimes based on national origin changed in 2001, "presumably as a result of the heinous incidents that occurred on September 11." The FBI further noted, "Anti-Islamic religion incidents were previously the second least reported, but in 2001, they became the second highest reported among religious-bias incidents (anti-Jewish religion incidents were the highest), growing by more than 1,600 percent over the 2000 volume." Further, the Justice Department Inspector General found numerous problems with DOJ's treatment of "aliens" after 9-11.

On Tuesday, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) corrected O'Reilly, telling him: "What [Chen] said, in the context of the time, he was worried about -- in the long term -- a turn towards racism. I saw it in my own district. Many Sikhs were coming in and they were -- they were being accosted."

As for the "empathy standard" that Chen supposedly embraces, making him a "biased radical," as was the case with Sotomayor, Chen's comments were similar to ones made by other conservatives. Conservatives including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, President George H.W. Bush, Sen. Strom Thurmond, Sen. Kit Bond, and John Yoo have cited personal experience or empathy as an important quality in a judge. And in a comment that the media somehow overlooked when doing background research on Sotomayor and empathy, in 2003, while debating about President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to be a judge, then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said that "Hispanics have reinvigorated the American dream, and I expect they will bring new understandings of our nationhood, that some of us ... might not fully see with tired eyes." Furthermore, unmentioned by The Washington Times, Hannity, and O'Reilly, Chen gave specific examples of how "a judge's life experiences affect" credibility determinations.

And -- predictably -- there was a base level of hypocrisy in the attacks on Chen's comments. Both Hannity and the Washington Times editorial page have previously stated Senate Democrats were wrong for opposing judicial nominees based on their political views and personal opinions, claiming that, as Hannity put it, "nominees' personal opinions are irrelevant."

Pretty lame, Milhouse.

Fox News' "perpetual revulsion machine"

Over the weekend, Howard Kurtz weighed in on the White House's calling Fox News for what it is -- a political organization -- stating, "I don't think an entire organization should be judged by a few commentaries." NPR's Ken Rudin claimed there are "two different Fox Newses." Both men drew a distinction between Chris Wallace and Glenn Beck. Certainly the two men are different in that one doesn't scream and shout and cry and pretend to set anybody on fire, but other than that ...

The real problem Kurtz, Rudin and all the other journalists who have drawn this distinction ignore is that the crazy things Glenn Beck does (or Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly) affect the rest of Fox News' news coverage and in turn, Chris Wallace's own reporting.

And in defending Fox News, some journalists have claimed that MSNBC is just as liberal as Fox News is conservative, again failing to see that even if you concede that MSNBC's evening opinion shows are equivalent to Fox News' evening opinion shows -- and you ignore MSNBC's three hours of Joe Scarborough -- the problem is the actual "news" Fox News is purporting to report. (Oh, and the organizing and promoting of political campaigns. And the on-air fundraising for conservative political organizations. And the network's positioning as the "opposition" to the administration.) But other than that ...

But in a lengthy segment on Thursday night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart destroyed the argument that there is a difference between Fox's "news" and "opinion."

Here's Stewart's breakdown:

The three hours that you spend in the morning with Fox & Friends? Not news! Your four o'clock to five o'clock post tea and crumpets Neil Cavuto break? Not news! The five o'clock to six o'clock emotional whirlwind and national group therapy session that is Glenn Beck? Not even close to news. O'Reilly, Hannity, Van Susterninanin, not news. This is according to Fox News. Those people, the ones featured in promos about how fair and balanced Fox News is, are not news. These people otherwise known as the only people you ever think of when you think about Fox News, are not news. They're Fox opinutainment.

The few Fox anchors who remain unnamed by Stewart, those are the people that represent Fox "News." As for them, well, Stewart masterfully showed how complaints about a video of school children singing to Obama was turned into complaints by Fox "opinutainment" personalities about "indoctrination." Which then led to actual "news reports" about the video:

SPECIAL REPORT HOST BRET BAIER (video clip): Public school officials in Burlington, New Jersey, are being accused of indoctrinating their students

STEWART: Yes, they are being accused. By the guy whose show is on right before you! I'm amazed he didn't bring it up to you when you had lunch. Didn't they mention it to you in the cafeteria? See, the Fox opinion guy's outrage becomes the "some say" source for the news side. It's a perpetual revulsion machine.

This week's media columns

In this week's media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows, Jamison Foser calls out journalists for using the Fox/MSNBC comparison, and Eric Boehlert offers 30 reasons why Fox News is not legitimate.

In The Friday Rush, a review of Limbaugh's shows during the past week, Greg Lewis discusses Limbaugh's war on reality.

This weekly wrap-up was compiled by Brian Frederick, deputy editorial director at Media Matters for America. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Colorado.

The obvious part of the answer is that there are personal relationships involved. The simple fact is that many reporters at, say, ABC or CNN or the New York Times are friends with people who work at Fox. And nobody likes to see their friends get criticized.

But I think when many journalists defend Fox, they're really defending themselves -- they're acting out of fear that they, too, will one day be branded illegitimate. (Given the right-wing's much more aggressive criticism of the media over the past several decades, this is, of course, a perfectly reasonable fear -- and it isn't surprising that reporters feel safer lashing out at media criticism from progressives than from conservatives.)

Ironically, in defending Fox in order to defend themselves, many journalists are actually undermining their own credibility. Not (only) because they side with partisans who have clearly stated their intent to destroy a presidency, but because of the way they do so: They don't rely on evidence and fact and reason; they base their arguments on assumptions and spin and name-calling. They don't behave like journalists.

Last week, I Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

In recent weeks, Limbaugh seems to have declared an all out war on statistics as well, since he has shown no regard for what many people would consider facts. For example, when confronted with yesterday's third quarter GDP growth, Rush the economist took it upon himself to both redefine the calculation of GDP and embrace the falsehood that consumption and business investment had not gone up.

Declaring the GDP numbers "phony," "fake," and "fraudulent" on his show on Thursday, Rush explained how he, personally, calculates gross domestic product, breaking it down to three categories: "consumption by consumers, investment by business, and spending by government, CIG."

While that definition isn't completely off from the truth, Rush was later confronted by a caller who pointed out that there was "another element in that equation, and that is net exports." But Rush made clear that trade didn't play a role in his method for calculating GDP:

LIMBAUGH: You know, exports, there's no question exports are a function, but I'd rather focus on exports when talking about the trade deficit. My formula for explaining this fraudulent, fake growth number, 3.5 percent today, I'm not going to tamper with it 'cause it was brilliant. It's the most sensible, easy to understand explanation of what GDP is. GDP equals C-I-G: consumption, investment, government. Government spending is also part of GDP.

Excuse us as we "tamper" with Rush's "brilliance" for just a moment. The fact is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis does include net exports in their calculation of the gross domestic product.

Anyway, Rush used this three-pronged formula to baselessly assert the following:

LIMBAUGH: So they say the total GDP went up 3.5 percent. But was there any new consumption by consumers? No. Was there any new investment by business? No. Was there spending by government? Yes. That's the G. The increase is in G, spending by government.

But the breakdown of the GDP released by the BEA said otherwise:

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, private inventory investment, federal government spending, and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

It's one thing to say that the third quarter GDP growth isn't enough to overcome the unemployment hole that we're in -- a position liberal and conservative economists alike have taken. But to say that the numbers are "phony" and to essentially spit on the field of economics -- which Rush has no formal training in -- by contriving your own definition of GDP is, as we find ourselves saying a lot here at The Friday Rush, pretty ridiculous.

Another thing we've documented pretty thoroughly here at The Friday Rush is Limbaugh's tendency to make up everything he says when it comes to health care. This week was no different.

On Thursday's show, Rush took a stab at getting through the just-released House health care reform bill's "convoluted language" to complain about a tax break that small businesses would supposedly lose. "Right now, small business gets a tax break for providing health coverage. It's gonna be -- it looks like it's gonna be phased out in two years," explained Rush.

There was just one problem with his interpretation: the bill actually said the opposite of that. What Rush had read on the air, Section 521 of Division A of the bill, actually added a tax break that small businesses could take for a maximum of two years.

Another pesky fact for Rush came when he was confronted with the reality of the public option. Describing an exchange he saw on MSNBC about a "backlash" when Americans find out that 90 percent of them wouldn't be able to get the public option, Rush was in denial:

LIMBAUGH: Well, I know they've -- I know they've watered down some of the language here, but it's all for show. I mean the whole thing is a public -- what is MSNBC talking about, 90 percent of the people will not be able to access the public option? BS. Nobody's gonna have any choice but the public option before these people are finished. There's no reason to do health care if it's not a public option.

But the reality of the public option -- overhyped on the right and the left for different reasons -- is that as it has been proposed in the House and the Senate, about 90 percent of the population wouldn't have access to it. The public option would only be available on the health insurance exchange that is set up by the reform package, but the exchange, at least at first, would only be open to individuals, small businesses, and the self-employed. Rush has often fearmongered that if a public option passed, then big corporations would switch their entire workforce over to it. But as the House bill summary explains, this won't be the case, at least at first:

People are eligible to enter the Exchange and purchase health insurance on their own as long as they are not enrolled in employer sponsored insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. The Exchange is also open to businesses, starting with small firms and growing over time. Firms with twenty-five or fewer employees are permitted to buy in the Exchange in 2013, firms with fifty or fewer employees in 2014, and firms with at least one hundred employees in 2015 with discretion to the Commissioner to open the Exchange to larger businesses in that year and the future.

The falsehoods continued on Friday's show. Rush had claimed that in 2013, under the bill, the sale of private individual insurance policies "will be prohibited." He referred to Page 94 of the "Pelosi plan," but what Limbaugh referred to was actually a provision that said that private individual policies could still be sold, but only on the insurance exchange created by the bill.

Friday's show also saw the "return" of Limbaugh's death panel obsession, which has been well documented in past months. Rush joined the conservative media choir resurrecting the death panel myth. Touting an AP article about end-of-life provisions in the latest health care bill, Rush proclaimed that death panels were "back."

It's almost depressing to have to make this point over and over again, but death panels are not and never have been in any of the Democratic health care bills out there. Rush likes to pretend that they are, but reality begs to differ. But that's how things go when it comes to Rush Limbaugh's never-ending war on reality.

Why the Beltway press has invested so much time and energy in recent weeks defending Fox News, with one scribe even claiming that the White House's public critique of the network was "dangerous to press freedom," and why the press refuses to acknowledge what's so obvious about the cable channel's political pursuits, remains baffling.

The facts regarding Fox News' lack of professionalism seem rather obvious (as I detail below 30 different times). And that ought to be plain for Beltway journalists as well. But whether for reasons having to do with external professional, social, or political pressures, many journalists have opted to pretend that Fox News is a serious outlet, that it's just like its cable and network TV news competitors.

They insist that any suggestion that Rupert Murdoch's cable channel isn't legitimate is completely off-base and that the White House is not even allowed to have an opinion on the issue. Indeed, ABC News' Jake Tapper suggested it was not "appropriate" for the administration to tag the channel as illegitimate. (Tapper himself can't tell the difference between the programming that Fox News and ABC News produce.)

The rush to defend Fox News is an odd one, because I don't remember the same type of the circle-the-wagons defense when the previous Republican administration openly waged war on The New York Times and NBC, two news outlets whose standards far outshine the kind of pseudo-reporting Fox News produces on a daily basis. That Beltway media elites have decided to rally around Fox News of all entities remains as puzzling as it is short-sighted.

The truth is, journalism is not difficult to practice, nor is it tough to identify. Journalists aren't licensed, and anyone can try their hand at it, as the Internet has made clear. So there is no higher authority declaring what is and isn't journalism. But the craft, like obscenity, is instantly recognizable in its true form.

For generations in this country, there has been a sort of a gentleman's agreement in terms of what constituted professional behavior among journalists. And there has been a sense of shame when members crossed those lines into unprofessional behavior. Bosses chastened those employees, people were fired, and ethics panels were summarily convened to make certain the transgressions didn't happen again. Fox News, though, has walked away from all of that. And guess what? The rest of the press hasn't said boo.

That's been the sad case for years. (Playing dumb about Fox News' partisan pursuits now qualifies as a Beltway intramural sport.) Indeed, the loophole, or the caveat, to journalism's gentleman's agreement has always been that the guidelines were voluntary and self-policing. There was no governing body, either within journalism or without, that regulated the product. The only collective deterrent from producing bad journalism, aside from rather lax U.S. libel laws, is a collective sense of shame, a shared feeling that making a factual error -- or worse, purposefully pushing false information under the guise of journalism -- was both unprofessional and unacceptable.

But clearly, Fox News does not share that sense of shame, because it's not part of the larger journalism brotherhood. Fox News doesn't feel like rules such as fairness, accuracy, neutrality, and independence apply, which is obvious since Fox News breaks those rules with stunning regularity. In fact, its programming day seems designed to break the traditional rules ad nauseam. That's what it's built to do. And if nothing else, Fox News is ruthlessly efficient.

So, Fox News has altered the game by unchaining itself from the moral groundings of U.S. journalism. And guess what? There is no industry shame being rained down on the outlet. The rest of the press not only doesn't complain, it defends Fox News and even apologizes on its behalf, which is what we've seen unfold for the last two weeks.

If we're actually going to have this is-the-world-really-round "debate" about Fox News, then let's put it in perspective in terms of what constitutes a legitimate news organization.

Here's how the Society of Professional Journalists describes the craft:

Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility.

The organization's Code of Ethics declares "the Society's principles and standards of practice." In terms of a broad-based definition of what journalism ought to be, the Code of Ethics remains the industry standard. And as you'll see below, Fox News routinely, and blatantly, breaks the code to which ethical journalists are supposed to aspire. Fox News staffers (and not just the opinion show hosts) don't simply fail to live up to the industry's own ethical standards. They produce broadcasts that run directly counter to established values and rules. In other words, they obliterate the Code of Ethics on a regular basis, which to me signals that Fox News is not a legitimate source of journalism.

Below are some cornerstones to journalism's Code of Ethics, followed by clear-cut examples of how Fox News tramples that code:

--Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.

Timeline of a [madrassa] smear

--Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.

After teasing story by saying "Obama makes a little girl cry," Fox News' Kelly acknowledged it was not true

--Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.

Fox News airs altered photos of NY Times reporters

--Never plagiarize.

Fox passes off GOP press release as its own research -- typo and all

--Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status.

Media adopt gender, racial stereotypes in characterizing Sotomayor's temperament, intellect

--Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.

REPORT: "Fair and balanced" Fox News aggressively promotes "tea party" protests

--Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.

Fox News, CBS air clips of peephole video of ESPN's Erin Andrews

--Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy.

O'Reilly Producer Stalks Amanda Terkel: THE VIDEO

--Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.

Foxy News breaks out the boudoir B-roll to cover "the great breast augmentation scandal"

--Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

Would a real news organization help GOP PACs raise money?

--Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

FLASHBACK: When Fox News boasted about its "unprecedented" access to the Bush White House

--Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.

After exclusive access, softball interviews during Bush admin, Fox News blasts ABC for White House exclusive

--Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.

EXCLUSIVE: Fox News seeks to confirm wildly inaccurate reporting that it's already aired on Jennings controversy; former student seeks Fox News correction

I normally wouldn't spend so much time with the chapter-and-verse examples to highlight the clear fact that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization. But since Beltway media elites continue to cling to the claim that it is, as well as peddle the bizarre, anti-free speech concept that the White House somehow ought to be forbidden to criticize the press, I'll continue with even more inescapable examples to back up the observation that Fox News is not a legitimate news outlet.

For instance, a legitimate news organization does not:

• Source its research to "conservative blogs."
• Purposefully present stories out of context.
• Regularly declare "Victory!" when a White House initiative fails.
• Ignore a breaking news story that embarrasses the Republican Party.
• Invite fringe conspiracy theorists to appear on news shows.
• Suggest during a news program that Democrats voted to "protect pedophiles, but not veterans."
• Routinely accuse the president of the United States of being like Adolf Hitler.
• Describe itself as the "voice of the opposition."
• Air more than 100 commercials promoting partisan political rallies.
• Show 22 clips of health care reform opponents who attended town hall forums, and none of health reform supporters.
• Purchase full-page newspaper ads to spread falsehoods about the news competition.
• Invade the privacy of second-grade students.
• Promote violent political rhetoric.
• Fail to fact-check a murder story before airing allegations about it.
• Allow a news anchor to suggest a Supreme Court nominee is guilty of "reverse racism."

It certainly would be helpful if reporters and pundits who work for respected corporate news outlets and who today defend Fox News as a legitimate operation (or at least chastise the White House for raising doubts) examined the 30 examples I listed above and ask themselves this: If they committed just one of those newsroom transgressions, would they still have a job? Would bosses at ABC or The New York Times or The Washington Post or wherever be willing to have those journalists on staff if they bent, and then busted, journalism's Code of Ethics the way Fox News regularly does?

I suspect the obvious answer is no. And I suspect journalists understand that. So why the Beltway charade? Why refuse to acknowledge the self-evident truth that Fox is not a legitimate news organization?

(Additional research by Simon Maloy.)

Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter.

Much has already been said about potential consequences of a Limbaugh co-owned franchise, the fallout that resulted as the nation witnessed a man's aspirations crash and burn, and the pity party that ensued on the radio for days afterward.

But in the days since, the letters N,F, and L have mostly faded from the airwaves (minus a pity party rehash on today's show), and Rush's status as the most prominent and reliably conspiratorial conservative voice in the media has begun to wane, replaced by none other than the even-more conspiracy-obsessed Glenn Beck.

On last Friday's program, Limbaugh -- who usually pulls content for his shows from the likes of Drudge and lesser-read conservative blogs -- trumpeted the latest Glenn Beck "czar" witch hunt target by echoing Beck's ridiculous smear of White House communications director Anita Dunn. After Beck falsely claimed that Dunn "worships" "her hero" Mao Zedong, Limbaugh ran with it, charging that Mao was Dunn's "favorite murderer."

Rush never let up with the Dunn-Mao smears as the week progressed. On Tuesday, Rush said that the Obama administration "idolizes" Stalin, Lenin, Castro, and Mao. He was still at it on Wednesday and Thursday, and even found time to repeat the smear again on Friday.

The problem with the Dunn smears as forwarded by Beck and Limbaugh was that they were neither true nor persuasive. Dunn didn't actually "endorse" or "worship" Mao. As Media Matters noted:

Dunn offered no endorsement of Mao's ideology or atrocities -- rather, she commented that Mao and Mother Teresa were two of her "favorite political philosophers," and based on short quotes from them, she offered the advice that "you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths" or "let external definition define how good you are internally."

Moreover, it wasn't very damning of Dunn when you take into account that many conservatives have previously cited, praised, or reflected on the philosophies espoused by Mao in some manner.

Maybe it's not the case that Rush Limbaugh is just parroting Glenn Beck. Some might argue that "great" minds have a tendency to think alike. That's certainly the case with both Limbaugh and Beck's tinfoil hattery regarding the H1N1 virus, which is a study in "it's the same, but different."

On one hand, Beck's conspiracy theories on the virus range from sowing doubts on the vaccine to the political ramifications if one were to refuse the vaccine. On the other hand, Limbaugh has shown outright defiance over the vaccine and has since mocked media reports on children who have died from the virus. Rush has also claimed that the concerns over the virus are a tool to encourage public support for health care reform. Rush even found it "hard to disagree" (jokingly? It's hard to even tell anymore) with Louis Farrakhan, who said the purpose of the H1N1 vaccine was to kill people.

Speaking of the government's efforts to kill people, Rush was still hung up on the notion of "death panels" this week. On Monday, he read an article reporting that Florida hospitals might be told to bar some patients in the case of a "severe" flu pandemic. Brace yourself for the crazy:

LIMBAUGH: By the way, South Florida hospitals have decided to beat President Obama to the punch where the swine flu, the H1N1 virus, is concerned. South Florida hospitals have said if you're in the advanced stages of cancer, multiple sclerosis, you won't be given a hospital bed, they must save room for victims of the H1N1 virus. Yeah, yeah, I got it here. Death panels in South Florida have been empaneled, regardless.

That's right -- Barack Obama is getting "beat ... to the punch" on death panels by the Republican-controlled state of Florida. (Ignore Rush's emphasis on "South Florida" -- the article describes that the proposed guidelines would be statewide.)

But it wasn't long before Limbaugh went from his usual fearmongering on death panels to actually becoming his own death panel. On Tuesday, Rush advanced a false claim that New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin "proposed" instituting carbon credits for having fewer children. Fed up with "militant environmentalists," Rush advised Revkin to "just go kill" himself:

LIMBAUGH: This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth -- Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

In a blog post responding to Limbaugh's suggestion, Revkin explained the context of his "thought experiment" on "the population part of the climate and energy challenge."

For someone who has been so worked up about death panels in recent months, Rush sure was eager to participate in a death panel of his own making.

There's one more escapade deserving of mockery from this week in Limbaugh. On Friday, Rush eagerly ran with a blog post by Michael Ledeen claiming to have an excerpt from Obama's undergrad thesis, which went like this:

The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.

Ledeen sourced the excerpt to an obscure conservative blogger, who claimed it had come out in Time's Joe Klein research for "an upcoming special edition about the President." To make a long story short, the excerpt was revealed to be completely fabricated.

So after running with the fake quote, Rush was soon alerted to his mistake and owned up to it -- sort of:

LIMBAUGH: So we have to hold out the possibility that this is not accurate. However, I have had this happen to me recently. I've had quotes attributed to me that were made up. And when it was pointed out to the media that the quotes were made up, they said, "It doesn't matter. We know Limbaugh thinks it anyway."

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I'm also told that the blog containing the passage on Obama's thesis is a satire blog. ... But we know he thinks it. Good comedy, to be comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels about distribution of wealth; he's mad at the courts for not going far enough on it. So we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway. That's how it works in the media today.

It might not seem like much, but that's as close to a correction as one gets on The Rush Limbaugh Show.

The Obama administration's purportedly "Nixonian" sin is its public criticism of Fox News, a cable channel that has repeatedly tied Obama to terrorists and compared him to Adolf Hitler. Having had enough, White House communications director Anita Dunn, press secretary Robert Gibbs, and others have said that Fox is less a news organization than a partisan political operation.*

Even if we stipulate for the sake of discussion that Fox is a news organization, that's tame stuff by the standards of previous White Houses. You'd be hard-pressed to find an administration that hasn't at times taken a more aggressive approach toward journalists. If you're thinking "Lincoln," think again. Faced with complaints about his administration's censorship of the press in 1863, Lincoln responded, "I think when an office in any department finds that a newspaper is pursuing a course calculated to embarrass his operations and stir up sedition and tumult, he has the right to lay hands upon it and suppress it, but in no other case."

And yet the Obama administration's criticism of Fox News -- criticism, not censorship or suppression of Fox's "reporting" -- was greeted with immediate howls of protest and allegations of Nixonian behavior.

Fox foot soldiers like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and right-wing bloggers like Instapundit led the way, of course, but that's to be expected. People who don't hesitate to compare Obama to Hitler and Mao Zedong cannot be expected to hesitate before comparing him to Nixon -- unless it is to consider whether such a comparison will be seen as a compliment, considering the source.

But Beck and O'Reilly were quickly joined by people who should know better. The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus wrote that the criticism of Fox "has a distinct Nixonian -- Agnewesque? -- aroma." NPR's Ken Rudin said the criticism is "almost Nixonesque" -- and this was no throwaway comment; Rudin drew out the comparison for a full paragraph. (To his credit, Rudin apologized for the comments the next day, calling them "boneheaded.") CNN's Anderson Cooper asked, "[D]oes the Obama White House have an enemies list?" and, "[D]o you see shades of Nixon here?" (Even Cooper's Republican guest, Kevin Madden, was unwilling to sign on to that premise.) Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik wrote, "I have compared the current administration to the White House of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, and believe me, I did not do that lightly."

The comparison is preposterous, as Salon's Joe Conason, Media Matters' Eric Boehlert, Washington Monthly's Steve Benen, and others have explained.

In short: The Nixon administration wiretapped journalists' phones and audited their taxes. G. Gordon Liddy and another Nixon henchman even plotted to murder Jack Anderson.** That's "murder" as in "kill." And "kill" as in "dead."

Meanwhile, Obama aides have publicly criticized Fox News for lying about their boss.

It is rather obvious that these are not the same things.

You know who would really be outraged by the comparison? Richard Nixon. If a Nixon aide had proposed dealing with a hostile entity like Fox News with a sternly worded public statement rather than a (literal) firebombing, he'd likely have been axed (with luck, figuratively) on the spot.

What makes the comparison of Obama and Nixon really astounding, however, is that the comparison wasn't made with President George W. Bush, whose administration engaged in warrantless domestic spying and other tactics that actually were reminiscent of Nixonian tactics.

In addition to spying on domestic environmental and poverty-relief organizations, Bush's FBI dug into reporters' phone records. Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice revealed that the NSA monitored the communications of "U.S. news organizations and reporters and journalists." James Risen, the New York Times reporter who broke the warrantless wiretapping story, has said, "What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records." The statements from Tice and Risen went all but ignored by the media, as Eric Alterman explained earlier this year.

As far as I can tell, The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus has never compared the Bush administration's surveillance of journalists to the Nixon administration's surveillance of journalists -- she has never described anything Bush did as "Nixonian." Neither has the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, who has repeatedly compared Obama to Nixon. Or NPR's Ken Rudin.

The Bush administration spied on journalists and who knows who else, and Marcus, Zurawik, and Rudin never once thought to note the similarities to Richard Nixon's surveillance of journalists and who knows who else. But Anita Dunn criticizes Fox News for lying, and all of a sudden, they think they're seeing the second coming of Chuck Colson and Gordon Liddy. The double standard and the lack of perspective are simply staggering.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

*A brief response to the question some have raised about whether it is appropriate for the White House to decide what is or is not a news organization: Of course it is. The only question is whether it has drawn the line in the right place. Nobody would expect the White House to grant the Weekly World News or the Halliburton corporate newsletter or the author of the Republican National Committee's mass emails the same access they grant ABC and The New York Times. The question isn't whether the White House should make a determination about which news outlets to treat as a legitimate, it's whether it makes the right determinations.

**During last year's presidential campaign, the news media, which were so obsessed with Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, were unconcerned by John McCain's palling-around with Liddy. Then again, Liddy had merely plotted to murder a journalist; he didn't appear on CNN to criticize Fox News.

That's how Rush Limbaugh taunted his critics early last week during an interview on NBC's Today. By the end of the week, after his attempt to purchase the NFL's St. Louis Rams had crashed and burned in spectacular fashion -- after Limbaugh had been thrown under the bus by his fellow investors -- the talker was railing that his critics, no longer so impotent, had morphed into all-powerful players who tricked the gullible NFL into opposing the talk show host's ownership bid.

Of course it wasn't liberals or Democrats or preachers who derailed Limbaugh. It was Limbaugh himself, and his well-documented history of divisive, hateful, and often race-baiting commentary. (e.g. "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.")

Limbaugh last week learned the overdue lesson that there are real-world consequences for trafficking in hate speech. That there are free-market penalties, including the fact that the NFL decided for itself that it can't, and won't, be connected with Limbaugh.

It's the same lesson Glenn Beck learned this year when he discovered that his niche, on-air rants (Obama is a communist-racist-fascist-Nazi) don't speak to the masses. Instead, they freaked out nearly 100 former Glenn Beck advertisers who have gone on record as refusing to be associated with his show. These are blue-chip, small-"c" conservative advertisers who've dropped Beck quicker than a wobbly JaMarcus Russell pass.

For both Limbaugh and Beck, the awkward realization in recent weeks and months is that viewed outside of the dark, paranoid confines of right-wing talk, both men are seen as toxic by the business elite they likely admire the most. It's like at a teen party in the basement when the lights suddenly get turned back on. Nobody in corporate America, and certainly nobody within the mighty NFL, wants to be seen holding hands with Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

Of course, a hysterical right-wing media treated the Limbaugh rejection as some kind of clarion call to action, trumpeting his failed NFL vanity deal as a turning point in American history and being "dangerous to the property and free speech rights of all Americans." Limbaugh, of course, was in heated agreement, exclaiming, "This is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we're going to have."

In truth, Limbaugh's humiliating face plant was entirely predictable, because every few years Rush Limbaugh tries to leave the protected bubble of right-wing radio and venture out into everyday American culture ("tiptoeing into the mainstream," Limbaugh calls it), and every few years the reaction is swift and unambiguous -- get lost!

A Wall Street Journal editorial last week whined that "the left" had tried "to drive Rush Limbaugh and others out of American political life." Not true. This was the NFL's doing, not "the left." The billion-dollar league couldn't care less about Limbaugh's role in America's "political life" and did nothing to try to impede it. All the NFL owners did (i.e. those super-exclusive Republican, country club multi-millionaires) was reject Limbaugh's attempted entry into their mainstream entertainment and pop culture pursuit. The NFL owners know branding better than perhaps any other group of sports professionals, and they knew instinctively that Limbaugh's presence would be poisonous for the sport and for their business.

Of course, this isn't the first time the NFL sent Limbaugh that message. The talker tried to sidle up to pro football as a pre-game analyst with ESPN in 2003. It took the talker just a few weeks before he said something insulting about black athletes (as well as the press) and was summarily fired.

The ESPN fiasco represented a classic case of Limbaugh trying to export his race-baiting commentary from the ugly confines of AM talk radio and dump it into the American mainstream; in this case into the sports world. To this day, I doubt Limbaugh thinks there was anything wrong with his claim that the press was giving Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb too much credit for the team's success simply because they wanted to see a black quarterback do well. Limbaugh thought it was a perfectly reasonable comment, and Dittoheads nationwide likely nodded their heads in agreement. (The liberal media love to root for blacks!) But the sports world's collective jaws hit the ground, and once again the gaping divide between the world of the radical right and the rest of us opened up for everyone to see.

Same with last week's humiliation, which represented a full-throated rejection of Limbaugh, his career, and the hate movement he leads. The NFL's unambiguous bottom line? Limbaugh's bad for business.

The fact that it was the NFL, the quintessential all-American, hard-hitting macho game, that summarily rejected Rush is what probably caused such an unhinged, foot-stomping response from the talker and his legion of Dittoheads. Being rejected by the urban-centered NBA could have easily been explained away by the right wing. But the heartland-loving NFL? Only losing out to NASCAR would have stung Limbaugh more.

His apostles just didn't want to believe that their radical hate politics was being rejected out of hand. They didn't want to believe that outside their cloistered world of partisan politics virtually nobody came to Limbaugh's side in the NFL debate.

Instead, the far right -- and certainly the GOP media -- remains under some grand illusion that they speak for the masses; that corporate America is quietly down with their all-consuming Obama Derangement Syndrome antics. The right-wing pretends the 1 percent of Americans who watch Fox News somehow reflect Main Street America. But the NFL fiasco and the sweeping Glenn Beck ad boycott tell us a very different story.

Why the disconnect? Because the far-right media and their partisan followers have a completely twisted sense of reality and their own self-importance. They think they have juice because they spend their days and nights locked inside a right-wing echo chamber listening to Limbaugh, watching Beck, and reading Michelle Malkin online. (They're the same people who saw 2 million people marching in the streets against Obama in Washington, D.C., on September 12, and were off by 1.9 million people.)

They're hermetically sealed. But when they're forced out into the daylight that is American society, the rest of us send them a pretty clear message: Go away!

For the NFL, the rejection of Limbaugh was a no-brainer. As former ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith noted while appearing on CNN last week:

And at the end of the day, the NFL is a multibillion dollar business. And [Limbaugh's] clearly a polarizing figure. And there's nothing broke about the NFL. They have replaced baseball as America's pasttime and you don't want to upset the apple cart and he was definitely going to do that.

The NFL leadership was keenly aware that the next time Limbaugh suggested that Americans were being encouraged to bend over and grab their ankles and root for Obama to succeed because his father was black (or something equally demented), that a few hundred, if not thousand, protesters would be marching outside the home of the Rams in St. Louis the next day. That was just a given. And there was simply no way that the controversy-adverse NFL suits, who pride themselves on longstanding commitments to the community, would want that kind of constant political firefight surrounding the team or the league. (Ironically, by turning his failed ownership bid into a partisan pie fight, Limbaugh precisely proved the point of owners who didn't want Limbaugh's incessant, and divisive, self-promotion around.)

From a pop culture marketing and public relations perspective, Limbaugh is positively toxic. Of course, Limbaugh's free to push his AM brand of loathing, and within that world he sells lots of ads. But why on earth would sane businessmen who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a mainstream entertainment franchise want to be associated with Limbaugh's paranoia and divisiveness? Guess what? They don't want anything to do with the guy.

The same is true with Beck, who unleashes his own type of hateful insanity on Fox News. Beck's show has become as unappealing as a virus, and more than 80 advertisers have fled since Beck called Obama a "racist."

The stunningly successful ad boycott, led by ColorofChange.org, is reportedly costing the Glenn Beck show $600,000 in lost revenue each week, as Madison Avenue's who's who of clients bolt the show: Applebee's, AT&T, Bank of America, Best Buy, Campbell's Soup, Capital One, ConAgra, Clorox, ConAgra, CVS, Ditech, Farmers Insurance Group, GEICO, General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe's, Men's Wearhouse, Mercedes-Benz, NutriSystem, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, RadioShack, Sprint, State Farm Insurance, Traveler's Insurance, Subaru, Toyota-Lexus ,Travelocity, The UPS Store, Travelers Insurance, Verizon Wireless, Verizon, Vonage, and Wal-Mart, among others.

And by the way, what does getting rejected from corporate America sound like? It sounds like this:

• "We will not be airing on that show [Glenn Beck] any longer." [Subaru of America]

• "Lexus ads are not appearing on the Glenn Beck show."

• "You will not see our ads on the Glenn Beck TV program." [UPS Store]

• "You will not see Flexitol commercials on the Glenn Beck show. Period."

• "We hear your concerns and are no longer advertising on the Glenn Beck show." [Ditech]

• "Ashley Furniture HomeStore pulled its advertising from Glenn Beck."

• "We have taken steps to make sure that [Sprint] will not be advertising on the Glenn Beck show."

As part of his elaborate on-air pity party last week, Limbaugh whined that criticism of his NFL bid was "all about smearing mainstream, traditional conservatism." In truth, Limbaugh and Beck have done more to smear "mainstream, traditional conservatism" this year than any liberal ever could have dreamed of.

Both the NFL, which violently stiff-armed Limbaugh, and the nearly 100 big-time advertisers that have run away form Glenn Beck, helped illustrate that point.