Editor & Publisher quotes an Annenberg poll that found that 40 percent of respondents consider Bill O’Reilly a journalist while only 30 percent consider Bob Woodward a journalist. Blowhard wingnut Rush Limbaugh was considered by 27 percent to be a journalist, and one in five consider right-wing baseball fan George Will one.

The results gave Limbaugh an opportunity to spout more nonsense:

Limbaugh said Monday he was “not really surprised” by the results showing a quarter of Americans would describe him as a journalist. The conservative talk show host said, “I am America’s anchorman, doing news play-by-play 15 hours a week for nearly 17 years now, and this is just more evidence that the old media’s monopoly-like dominance is finished.”

Annenberg also polled journalists, whose responses were quite different:

Only 3% of journalists said Limbaugh was “somewhat close” to being a journalist and 11% said that about O’Reilly, while 93% said Woodward was “somewhat close or very close” to being a journalist.

With masterful understatement, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said the poll results suggest the public defines the word “journalist” far differently than those in the press define it.

Duh!