Palm Beach Post Editor Edward Sears defended his paper on the NBC Today Show Friday morning, the day after the paper printed a $19,773 ad from conservative radio mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh that accused the paper of trying to descredit him.
The ad also attacked Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer for his “politically motivated” investigation into whether Limbaugh obtained duplicate drug prescriptions from doctors, a rarely prosecuted crime in Florida, and reprinted a favorable editorial from the Sunday edition of the Washington Times
The ad also was run in The South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“I, El Rusho, have to buy my way into this paper in order to get some modicum of fairness,” the Post’s story quotes Limbaugh as saying on his radio show.
“The Post has accurately and responsibly reported on both Mr. Limbaugh’s admitted prescription drug abuse and the conflict between his lawyers and the state attorney’s office,” Sears said on The Today Show.
Limbaugh has refused to talk to Post reporters, Sears said. “If he wants to get his story out, he’s welcome to return our calls and talk to us.”
Humor columnist Frank Cerabino, who recently compared Limbaugh’s quotes on torture photos from Iraq with comments about his drug prescription investigation and decided that Limbaugh is “a slow learner,” said Limbaugh is “just fishing for sympathy.”
“I’ll have another column on Sunday,” Cerabino said.