During the September 28 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, in response to Media Matters for America's documentation of Rush Limbaugh's recent description of service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as "phony soldiers," Fox News host John Gibson asserted, "Rush was specifically talking about a particular one, Jesse MacBeth, who had pled guilty in court to lying about even being in Iraq." Gibson falsely claimed that Media Matters "said Rush said something, posted an audio recording of it and a written transcript, and cut it off at the precise moment where the next thing he said proved them wrong." To support this claim, Gibson aired a clip from the September 28 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show in which Limbaugh purported to air the "entire" segment in question from the September 26 broadcast of his program. In fact, as Media Matters has documented, the clip Limbaugh aired on September 28, which Gibson reaired, had been spliced. Excised from the clip was a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of the 1 minute and 50 second discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's original "phony soldiers" comment and his reference to MacBeth, the full audio of which can be heard here.
Prior to airing the clip from the September 28 Rush Limbaugh Show, Gibson asserted: "Now, the actual liar in this situation is Media Matters itself. And we have the proof. I mean, I have the proof a dozen different ways about me, but it's all pretty complex. This thing about Rush is really crystal clear. You can see how they lie." Gibson stopped the clip at one point, saying, "All right, it ended right there on the Media Matters transcript." He continued, "This is the part that they cut out -- I mean, almost the very next words," and then played the remainder of the clip that Limbaugh used during his September 28 broadcast. Following the clip, Gibson asserted that "it's quite clear if you listen to the -- most of what came -- any of what came after the point where Media Matters cut off the tape -- that when Rush was referring to phony soldiers, he was referring to those like Jesse MacBeth." But at no point during the segment did Gibson indicate that the clip he aired was not of the original September 26 broadcast of Limbaugh's show and that it had, in fact, been edited to remove 1 minute and 35 seconds of discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's reference to "phony soldiers" and his first mention of MacBeth.
In addition, while Gibson claimed that "Rush was specifically talking about a particular one
, Jesse MacBeth," Limbaugh expanded the group of "phony soldiers" during his September 28 broadcast to include Vietnam veteran Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) and Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who is currently serving in Iraq. Moreover, as the transcript makes clear, Limbaugh did not refer in the September 26 discussion to a "phony soldier," as he claimed on September 28 before a caller pointed out the contradiction; he referred to "phony soldiers," plural. Responding to the caller's statement on September 26 that supporters of withdrawal "like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media," Limbaugh responded, "The phony soldiers" . The John Gibson Show is broadcast live beginning at 6 p.m. ET, three hours after the broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show ends.
Further, Gibson asserted that Media Matters is "funded by George Soros, even though I get letters from them every day saying, 'No, we're not! No, we're not!' " He continued: "Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Or were, certainly at the start." In fact, philanthropist George Soros has never given money to Media Matters, either directly or through another organization, as has been repeatedly and exhaustively demonstrated.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200710010005?src=item200710010005