Mediaite Botches Facts, Makes Carbonbite Look Less Lame

By | March 4, 2012
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The web site Mediaite ran a story Sunday morning about online backup company Carbonite and their pulling ads from Rush Limbaugh‘s show after Limbaugh’s remarks about Sandra Fluke.  This post isn’t about the Limbaugh/Fluke issue, it’s about the massive inaccuracies in the Mediaite story.

Here is what was posted on Mediaite Sunday morning:

Even After Apology, Web Company Still Withdrawing Ads From Limbaugh Show

by Josh Feldman | 11:19 am, March 4th, 2012

» 40 comments

Rush Limbaugh finally issued an apology for his remarks calling Georgetown student Sandra Flukea “slut” in the midst of a national conversation on birth control. Before his apology, several companies announced they would be pulling their ads from the Limbaugh program because they do not want to be associated with the radio host.
However, even after Limbaugh’s apology, at least one company is not simply accepting it and moving on. Carbonite, an online backup service, decided to pull advertising several days ago, and CEO David Friend is not backing down from that position even after Limbaugh’s apology last night.
No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

Below is the comment I posted in their comments section with some more relevant information.

Your story has factual errors in regards to Carbonite and their pulling their spots from Limbaugh’s show. Shame on you.

Might be prudent to check your timeline on this story, and the Twitter timeline on Carbonite.  They took their sweet time in pulling their ads, may have been the last major advertiser to bail, and tweeted that they were still evaluating their position as recently as Saturday afternoon.  They’e sanitized their Twitter stream, but THIS was posted on their blog the afternoon of March 2nd:

Over the past two days we have received a tremendous amount of feedback on Rush Limbaugh’s recent comments.  I too am offended and very concerned about his comments.  Limbaugh’s remarks have us rethinking our future use of talk radio.  We use more than 40 talk show hosts to help get the Carbonite message out to the public.  The nature of talk radio is that from time to time listeners are offended by a host and ask that we pull our advertising. This goes for conservatives like Limbaugh and progressives like Stephanie Miller and Ed Shultz. We even get customers who demand that we pull the plug on NPR.   As an advertiser, we do not have control over a show’s editorial content or what they say on air. Carbonite does not endorse the opinions of the shows or their hosts. However, the outcry over Limbaugh is the worst we’ve ever seen. I have scheduled a face-to-face meeting next week with Limbaugh during which I will impress upon him that his comments were offensive to many of our customers and employees alike.  Please know your voice has been heard and that we are taking this matter very seriously.  

Only on the evening of Saturday, March 3rd did they announce that they had come to their senses and pulled their ads, the LAST major advertiser to do so.

UPDATEA Statement from David Friend, CEO of Carbonite as of 6:45pm ET, March 3:“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”

An intern could have found this information and helped write an accurate story. This is far below Mediaite’s standards of accuracy.

It’s not my place to be a media critic, I leave that to people like Howard Kurtz and Robert Feder among others.  However, as someone who was one of the first radio programmers to carry Rush Limbaugh’s show and who still does work with both broadcast and online clients, I have to call Dan Abrams and Mediaite out for letting such blatant inaccuracy hit the web.  They made Carbonite look far better than they deserved to as a company and brought the reliability of their own reporting into question. 


UPDATE:  I’ve seen similar stories on sites like Huffington Post, so I’m guessing Carbonite hired a good crisis management person to put their spin out to these websites knowing nobody there would actually confirm the information.  Again reinforcing my mantra that you can’t always believe what you read online.

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