"Rush the Racist?" is the headline over a commentary written by retired NFL receiver Keenan McCardell on the Washington Post's sports blog, the League--and the question many football fans might ask upon hearing the news that Rush Limbaugh is bidding to become co-owner of the St. Louis Rams.

That's because Limbaugh has a long record of making racist remarks. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed written by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and myself, we documented many instances of Limbaugh's racism, including his admission that he once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose," his assertion that "all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson," and his advice to a group with a 90-year commitment to nonviolence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

Last year Limbaugh referred to Barack Obama as "the little black man-child." This past January, while discussing Barack Obama with Sean Hannity on Fox, Limbaugh said, "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president."

So the prospect of Limbaugh owning a team in a league where nearly two-thirds of the players are African-American should be natural media buzz generator. As CBSSports.com's Mike Freeman wrote under the headline "NFL's Greatest Nightmare," "sometimes these column thingies write themselves." (Unfortunately, Freeman's column, also posted on the Washington Post's League blog, repeated an alleged Limbaugh quote about the merits of slavery that is unverified.)

Perhaps Limbaugh’s most notable remark in the St. Louis context was his 1994 response to learning from a caller to his show that St. Louis would be extending a light rail system into East St. Louis--a community of some 40,000 residents, almost all of whom are black. Said Rush (The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, New Press, 1995): "They got a light rail system to East St. Louis where nobody goes?"

Reporters might ask East St. Louis residents what they think about the prospect of Rush Limbaugh owning their local football team.

Former TV Newser Brian Stelter's article (New York Times, 8/7/09) about MSNBC and Fox News having "resumed their long-running feud this week after the New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other's televised personal attacks" states that "the deal extends beyond the prime-time hour that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O'Reilly occupy," reporting that "employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures, according to two staff members."

While GE's official line is that, "while both companies agreed that the tone should be more civil, no one at GE told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news," Stelter quotes unnamed Fox employees who "said they were told in June and July not to flagrantly criticize General Electric." Stelter gives more room to Fox management denials--"We've never suppressed any stories about NBC or GE"--before getting to "some watchdog groups" pointing out how

the months-long cease-fire challenged the claims that the two media companies did not interfere in their on-air content.

The advocacy group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting asked its supporters on Friday to contact GE, urging it to renounce the agreement with Fox.

Jeff Cohen, the founder of the group, said the deal between the two networks’ parent companies was a reason to be wary of corporate-owned TV news.

"It should remind news consumers of who calls the tune and pays the bills--and that TV reporters and even loud-mouthed commentators have corporate bosses whose interests are often not about unbridled journalism," Mr. Cohen said.

Salon editor Joan Walsh weighs in too, about how "it appeared that 'the owners of two large news organizations colluded to make sure their audience got less, not more, information, and to promote their business interests, not the public interest.'"

Read FAIR's new Action Alert: "Did GE Stifle Keith Olbermann?: Fox and MSNBC's Gentlemen's Agreement" (8/7/09).

FAIR founder Jeff Cohen's Park Center for Independent Media has decided to give its new Izzy Award (3/4/09) "for special achievement in independent media" to Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman, specifically lauding the "two pillars of independent journalism" for "pathbreaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception and controversial issues":

Week after week, in meticulously documented and detailed blog posts, [Salon's Glenn Greenwald] skewers hypocrisy, deception and revisionism on the part of the powers that be in government and the media.... With devastatingly crisp arguments, Greenwald has inveighed against torture and defended constitutional rights for all, whether they be "enemy combatants" or American protesters. He has toughly criticized both Republicans and Democrats, and his blogging frequently sparks debate in major media and on Capitol Hill.

Over the past 12 years, Amy Goodman has built Democracy Now! into the largest public media collaboration--it can be found on television, radio and the Internet--in the country.... Democracy Now! offers a daily cutting-edge broadcast featuring issues, experts and debates rarely heard in corporate media, including the voices of both policymakers and those affected by policy. Through timely interviews with heads of state, opposition leaders, artists and organizers, Goodman in 2008 maintained an ongoing, tenacious focus on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. violations of the Geneva Conventions, racial justice issues such as the still-displaced poor of New Orleans, and political repression overseas.

The Izzy Award itself "is named after the legendary dissident journalist Isidor Feinstein 'Izzy' Stone, who launched his muckraking newsletter I.F. Stone's Weekly in 1953 during the height of the McCarthy witch hunts." An influential figure in the formation of FAIR's journalistic ideology, "Stone, who died in 1989, exposed government deceit and corruption while championing civil liberties, racial justice and international diplomacy." See our 20th Anniversary issue of Extra!: "On the Shoulders of Giants: The unbroken tradition of press criticism" (1-2/06) by Robin Andersen.

While "TV news executives would like us to forget this whole bizarre episode," FAIR founder and former Fox News talking head Jeff Cohen looks back (Huffington Post, 2/22/09) at the shameful media circus that was Chandra Levy's disappearance. "As I witnessed the farce from inside cable news," Cohen writes, "I could see it was all about ratings and had nothing to do with journalism":

From May to September 11, cable news channels covered no story more than Condit/Levy. Not the economic slowdown, not California's energy crisis, not Ashcroft's or Rumsfeld's misguided priorities, and certainly not something or someone named Al-Qaeda. Al who?

For months until the morning the Twin Towers were hit, it was Condit--not bin Laden--who was the most despised man in America. Especially on cable news, where Condit was linked week after week to murder, with no end to speculation about how he'd caused the tragedy. Perhaps Levy died during rough sex with the congressman. Or her death was connected to Condit's ex-con brother. Or Condit's buddies in a motorcycle gang. Or because Levy was pregnant with Condit's baby. "TV's barking heads are drooling," wrote media critic Todd Gitlin.

Cohen sees "this week--with these same outlets reporting a 'break' in the 8-year-old murder case"--as "a good time for TV news executives to look back and give the public a big, fat apology," for "the story seemed propelled far more by salacious interest in Condit's sex life than concern for a missing woman."

See this column from another longtime FAIR associate Media Beat: "Media Mania: The Condit Scandal Goes Over the Top" (7/12/01) by Norman Solomon

FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime FAIR associate Norman Solomon have compiled their 17th annual list of "P.U.-litzer Prizes" (OpEd News, 12/18/08). Among this year's "stinkiest media performances":

HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews

This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Obama swept the Potomac Primary in February--when Chris Matthews spoke of "the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

BEYOND PARODY PRIZE--Fox News

In August, a FoxNews.com teaser for the O'Reilly Factor program said: "Obama bombarded by personal attacks. Are they legit? Ann Coulter comments."...

GUTTER BALL PUNDITRY AWARD -- Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball

In program after program during the spring, Matthews repeatedly questioned whether Obama could connect with "regular" voters--"regular" meaning voters who are white or "who actually do know how to bowl." He once said of Obama: "This gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody. But the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder."

And there's plenty more malodorous journalism to be found in FAIR's extensive archive on corporate news coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.