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Thanks a Lot, Rush Limbaugh
The Johnny Appleseed of ad-click journalism did not leave the media landscape better than he found it.
Rush Limbaugh was no John Muir. He wasn’t a naturalist, he wasn’t a conservationist; he wasn’t even a steward in the manner of Teddy Roosevelt, who at least was prepared to steward what he intended to hunt or harvest.
Rush Limbaugh did the opposite of, “leave no trace.”
Instead, Limbaugh was the Johnny Appleseed of ad-click journalism. He made milking an already-biased audience for every ounce of outrage any scandal- minor, major or manufactured- could produce the new normal in journalism.
Why bother to spend months researching a story, chasing down leads, interviewing key players, getting other perspectives, presenting a thoughtful, measured, empirically verifiable analysis of the facts when saying something outrageous gets news media personalities much further, much faster?
It doesn’t even matter if what news media personalities like Rush Limbaugh say is later proven to be untrue, misleading, false- even a blatant manipulation by agents of the government and/or political operatives pretending to be concerned citizens.
By the time the news-cycle catches up with the correction, if there ever is one, our opinion arbiters in the media have already moved on to the latest…