Radio host Rush Limbaugh ripped journalist Ted Koppel Monday for a “surreal” weekend story that framed bastions of conservative media as bad for America.
CBS News’ latest broadcast of “Sunday Morning” featured a piece on modern media’s ability to polarize the electorate. Mr. Limbaugh said he was originally contacted by Mr. Koppel for a 45-minute interview, but “instinctively” declined. The conservative icon said that Mr. Koppel’s attacks on talk radio and Fox News star Sean Hannity were proof that mainstream figures are the real “architects of fake news.”
“You’ve probably seen the stories now where Koppel and Hannity are going at it, and Koppel tells Hannity he thinks he’s the problem with the media and with the country and so forth,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “In Koppel’s world liberalism is nothing but what is, and whatever they say is factual and true and there’s no such thing as bias and there’s no lack of objectivity because it’s just what is, it’s as natural as air and water. And it’s conservatism that is a deviation from the norm. Conservatism is sick, conservatism is abnormal, conservatism is what needs to be stamped out.”
Mr. Limbaugh was reacting to a barbed exchange between Mr. Hannity and Mr. Koppel in which the latter said “all” cable news shows were bad for America because they attract viewers who think “ideology is more important than facts.”
“These people are the architects of fake news,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “The number of fake news stories on Donald Trump alone could fill an encyclopedia.”
The conservative then said that Mr. Koppel once apologized in private for not correcting a misquote about him on “Nightline” — while simultaneously requesting he not mention the mea culpa on air.
“I said silently to myself, ’What good does that do me?’ As far as the ’Nightline’ audience is concerned, I said it, they’re not gonna apologize or retract it or say somebody else said it,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “So I kind of fumed about it, and some days and weeks went by, and something else happened elsewhere in the media that had me fulminating about how they do things. So I told this story and I got a call from Mr. Koppel. ’I asked you not to mention this, and you did, and I am very disappointed.’ And that was the last I heard from him. So it has been 25 years, until this February, when they called and wanted me to be on this show that aired yesterday.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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