Drudge Report

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A typical day at the Drudge Report.

The Drudge Report is a U.S.-based news website run by Matt Drudge. The site consists primarily of links to stories from the US and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events as well as links to many popular columnists. Occasionally Drudge authors a story of his own. The Report originated around 1994 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. It is most famous for being the first news source to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public.

According to Mark Halperin, "Drudge's coverage affects the media's political coverage", effectively steering the media's political coverage towards what Halperin calls "the most salacious aspects of American politics."^[1] In The Way To Win, a book written by Halperin and John Harris, Drudge is called "the Walter Cronkite of his era."^[2]^[1] Democratic Party strategist Chris Lehane says "phones start ringing" whenever Drudge breaks a story and Mark McKinnon, a former media advisor to George W. Bush says he checks the site 30–40 times per day.^[1] Matt Drudge has been criticized by other media news personalities: Bill O'Reilly who twice called Drudge a "threat to democracy",^[3] and Keith Olbermann who referred to Drudge as "an idiot with a modem".^[4]

1 Origins
2 Content
3 Criticism
- 3.1 Charges of bias
- 3.2 Errors
4 Traffic
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Origins

Drudge began publishing his email-based Report from an apartment in Hollywood, California, using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories sometimes before they hit the mainstream media. He maintains the news website from a condominium in Miami Beach, Florida. Drudge's reports were electronically syndicated by Wired News from November 1996 to May 1997; AOL carried his reports until 1998. He began his website in 1997 as a supplement to the email reports but eventually stopped the email reports in favor of exclusively updating his website.^{[citation needed]}

Drudge first received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election. In 1998, Drudge again made national waves when he broke the news that Newsweek magazine had information on an inappropriate relationship between "a White House intern" and President Bill Clinton (the Monica Lewinsky scandal), but was withholding publication.^[5]^[6] After Drudge's report, Newsweek published the story.^[7]

[edit] Content

The website has a simple design, consisting of a banner headline and a number of other selected headlines in three columns. These linked stories are almost always hosted on the external websites of mainstream media outlets. The rest of the site contains links to media outlets and a number of columnists. Although the site initially featured very few images, it is now usually illustrated with five or six photographs. Generally the images are similarly hotlinked from other news agencies' servers.

The Drudge Report site sometimes includes stories authored by Drudge himself—usually two to three paragraphs in length. These stories generally break a rumor concerning a story that is about to break in a major magazine or newspaper. Drudge also occasionally publishes Nielsen, Arbitron, or BookScan ratings, internal email messages, or early election exit polls that are otherwise not made available to the public.

[edit] Criticism

[edit] Charges of bias

UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, Associate Professor, Department of Economics and the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia, published a paper on media bias in December 2004^[8] which concluded—based on a comparison of articles linked to by Drudge with Congressional voting records—that the Drudge Report leans "left" of center, compared to the average American voter."^[9] Mark Liberman, Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania,^[10] contends that the results were based on a flawed methodology;^[11]^[12] according to Media Matters for America, “Groseclose and Milyo are former fellows of conservative organizations…” and “…the study employed a measure of ‘bias’ so problematic that its findings are next to useless.”^[13]

[edit] Errors

The Drudge Report ran a story saying that incoming White House assistant Sidney Blumenthal beat his wife and was covering it up. Drudge retracted the story the next day, saying he was given bad information. Drudge told Salon magazine that "I seemed to have about 80 percent of the facts" about the Blumenthal report.^[14] In 2001, Blumenthal dropped his lawsuit after agreeing to a settlement which required Blumenthal to pay cash to Drudge's attorneys if Drudge did not file a counter-suit.^[15] Similarly, during the 2004 Presidential campaign, Drudge ran a story quoting General Wesley Clark, where Clark claimed that the John Kerry campaign would implode over an intern affair; and he reported that other news outlets were investigating the alleged affair; Drudge removed it from the site shortly thereafter when the other news outlets dropped the investigations (This is a far cry from repeated claims that Drudge reported on the scandal; he reported on the investigation, not the scandal; as such, his report cannot be considered an "error".) ^[16]

In 1999, the Drudge Report announced that it had obtained a videotaped confession by a former prostitute claiming that her son was fathered by President Bill Clinton. The Report stated, "To accuse the most powerful man in the world of being the father of her son is either the hoax of a lifetime, or a personal turmoil that needs resolution. Only two people may know that answer tonight." The claim turned out to be a hoax.^[17]

Another error occured on April 1, 2007 when Drudge cited an unnamed source saying that CNN reporter Michael Ware "heckled" two Republican Senators.^[18] In a response on CNN April 2, 2007, Ware disputed the claim, saying no one was willing to put their name on the report, as it was an anonymous claim; he told curious parties to view the tape.^[19] Video hosted by Rawstory shows that Ware did not make a sound nor ask any question during the press conference.^[20]^[19] ^[21]

Archives of older reports are generally not easy to find. A number of reports from 1995 to early 1997 are available in the Usenet archive provided by Google Groups. A more extensive archive of the website is provided by Drudge Report Archives, which has archives since mid-November 2001 and says it takes and stores snapshots of the Drudge Report homepage every two minutes.^[22]

[edit] Traffic

As of March 15, 2007, Drudge Report posted the following statistics on its homepage:

VISITS TO DRUDGE 3/15/07

015,364,134 IN PAST 24 HOURS

443,914,964 IN PAST 31 DAYS

4,297,192,932 IN PAST YEAR

It is not stated whether the statistics represent unique visits, or page loads, the latter of which is inflated by the meta refresh tag on the page, which is set to refresh the page every three minutes.^[23]

In October, 2006, Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., speaking at the Online News Association's annual convention in Washington, D.C., stated "Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."^[24]

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c "Drudge Report Sets Tone for National Political Coverage", ABC News, 2006-10-01. Retrieved on October 1, 2006.
^ Halpernin, Mark; John F. Harris (2006). The Way To Win. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6447-3.
^ Drudge, Matt (2003-12-18). Host Unhinged After Sales Figures Revealed; Calls DRUDGE 'Threat To Democracy'. Drudge Report. Retrieved on March 26, 2007.
^ Kurtz, Howard. "MSNBC Pundit Rises With Clinton Crises", Washington Post, 1998-09-15, pp. E1. Retrieved on October 1, 2006.
^ Drudge, Matt (1998-01-17). Newsweek Kills Story On White House Intern. The Drudge Report. Retrieved on October 5, 2006.
^ Johnson, Glen. "Newsweek got, held scoop on Clinton story", AP/Denver Rocky Mountain News, 1998-01-23. Retrieved on April 5, 2007.
^ Fineman, Howard, Karen Breslau. "Sex, Lies and the President", Newsweek, 1998-02-02. Retrieved on April 5, 2007.
^ Tim Groseclose, Jeff Milyo (December 2004). "A Measure of Media Bias". UCLA. Retrieved on 2006-10-05.
^ Sullivan, Meg (2005-12-14). Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist. UCLA News. Retrieved on October 4, 2006.
^ LDC staff. Linguistics Data Consortium. Retrieved on 2007-04-02
^ Liberman, Mark (2005-12-23). Multiplying ideologies considered harmful. Language Log. Retrieved on November 6, 2006.
^ Liberman, Mark (2005-12-22). Linguistics, politics, mathematics. Language Log. Retrieved on November 6, 2006.
^ "Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media's liberal bias", Media Matters for America, December 21, 2005. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
^ Broder, Jonathan (1997-08-15). A Smear Too Far. Salon.com. Retrieved on October 5, 2006.
^ "Blumenthal Pays $2,500 To Settle Drudge Suit", Wall Street Journal, 2001-05-04, p. B.8. Retrieved on July 12, 2006.
^ Polier, Alexandra (2004-06-07). John Kerry intern scandal - Alexandra Polier's account. New York Magazine. Retrieved on June 7, 2004.
^ Special Reports Personal Collection. Drudge Report Archives. Retrieved on 2007-04-02
^ Drudge, Matt. "McCain heckled by CNN reporter", Drudge Report, April 2, 2007. Retrieved on April 2, 2007.
^ ^a ^b "CNN's Ware flatly denies report that he "heckled" McCain, but right-wing media flog it anyway", Media Matters for America, April 2, 2007. Retrieved on April 2, 2007.
^ "CNN reporter slams Drudge's charge that he 'heckled' McCain; Exclusive video confirms his claim", Rawstory, April 2, 2007. Retrieved on April 2, 2007.
^ CNN's Ware fires back at Drudge report about 'heckling', USA Today April 2, 2007
^ Drudge Report Archives. Drudgereportarchives.com. Retrieved on October 5, 2006.
^ Traffic Tricks: Matt Drudge's Spin (html/php). ValleyWag.com (2007). Retrieved on April 5, 2007.
^ Hirschman, David S. (2006-10-06). 'Wash Post' Editor Downie: Everyone in Our Newsroom Wants to Be a Blogger. Editor & Publisher. Retrieved on October 8, 2006.

[edit] External links

Find more information on Drudge Report by searching Wikipedia's sister projects
	Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary
	Textbooks from Wikibooks
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Images and media from Commons
	News stories from Wikinews
	Learning resources from Wikiversity