WASHINGTON WATCH: PART II:RUSH LIMBAUGH RESPONDS TO FAIR

In Friday's column I began to look at Rush Limbaugh's response to charges of lies and distortion by the media activist group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. The charges received wide play in the press when first released, and they have been referred to often by those who believe the Cape Girardeau native is a danger to American democracy.

After looking closely last week at the first four charges, however, it wasn't Limbaugh who seemed loose with the facts. It was FAIR.

For an organization that had the opportunity to hone its allegations by selecting from more than 4,200 hours of radio and television talk shows, two bestsellers and over a year's worth of Limbaugh newsletters, FAIR's failure to find indisputable misstatements severely undercuts its case. This doesn't mean Limbaugh should get off easy for his tendency to overstate the facts at times, but it does mean that in the field of fairness and informative debate, FAIR is more than a few rungs beneath Limbaugh. This is an important revelation not only because it suggests an explanation for Limbaugh's popularity; it underlines the basic limitation in today's media culture.

Did the general media question FAIR's assessments when they were first released, even though some journalists knew (and did not report) that FAIR had been founded with a grant authorized by Hillary Rodham Clinton? No, it ran with them -- and big. Now that Limbaugh has rebutted quite competently, the general media implicates itself again by ignoring his side of the story. Such treatment reinforces the unspoken rule:The liberal group gets the benefit of the doubt, the conservative doesn't get the time of day. This, in turn, empowers Limbaugh, champion of the denied conservative.

It would take too much space to cover all of the points of dispute between FAIR and Limbaugh. But since I started a scorecard last week, let me finish it. Of the 23 FAIR allegations confronted by Limbaugh, seven were either beyond judging or toss-ups, and eight were convincingly answered. Among these were FAIR's charges that Limbaugh had distorted the facts about gas lines during Jimmy Carter's presidency, the religious convictions of James Madison, the failure rate of condoms, the difficulty of gauging the greatest dangers to the ozone layer and the checkered history of former NBC News president Michael Gartner. Fact is, FAIR missed on these.

Another eight of the 23 allegations rated as genuine Limbaugh errors. Some of these were more egregious than others. For example, when FAIR highlights Limbaugh as having said "Anita Hill followed Clarence Thomas everywhere" in part because "she wanted to continue dating him," FAIR catches Limbaugh dead to rights. Although Limbaugh tries to explain away his comment in a lengthy rebuttal, he would have been better to admit his exaggeration. The fact that he doesn't lends credence to FAIR's charges.

But most of Limbaugh's mistakes as cited by FAIR aren't egregious. And in this sense, they only make FAIR look prudish and petty.

Not surprisingly, FAIR's main criticism of Limbaugh seems to be that he doesn't think right -- what others might describe as lacking "political correctness." This is certainly no new charge from a liberal media group.

But nobody holds the patent on "right thinking." Not Limbaugh. Not the national media. And certainly not FAIR. There will always be important differences of opinion. The question is:When in a dispute about what is right, can you back your beliefs up with facts? Limbaugh has proven over six years of non-stop talk that, for the most part, he can. This doesn't make him unassailable. But it does make him formidable. Such a formidable thinker deserves a better challenge than FAIR's.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.