Matt Drudge Is A Slimy Weasel

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Matt Drudge is a slimy weasel and the poster child for why America’s so damned angry. The screengrab above is from Drudgereport.com, Thursday evening, 8:08 PM PDT. His headline, “‘HOPE AND CHANGE’ TURNS TO RAGE”

As is normally the case, Drudge isn’t promoting his own story, but one published elsewhere. His link is to Britain’s Mail Online and describes what happened yesterday, not tonight.

Heavily armed SWAT police trained their guns on the public and fired tear gas in Ferguson, Missouri, last night as racial unrest over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen rocked the St. Louis suburb for the fourth night running. (emphasis mine)

An inflammatory photo of Michael Brown, the unarmed young man shot by a Ferguson, MO policeman sits above the headline, his middle finger unfurled. The headline itself is a dig at President Obama. It’s a Drudge twofer!

But, hold on. Brown was a high school graduate getting set to attend trade school for HVAC repair. He had no criminal record. In other words, he was training for a job. He was no thug.

cjmusickAttorney C.J. Musick came up with “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown,” a hashtag which quickly went viral on Twitter. Black men (and a few women) posted two shots of themselves–one which could be interpreted as threatening and another more mainstream and docile.

The attached photos on the left shows Musick with President Clinton and with a bottle of cognac. Which would be used #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, he asked?

Drudge can’t be bothered with tonight’s turnabout to peaceful protests under the supervision of the Missouri Highway Patrol and with a less militarized police presence. That doesn’t fit his narrative.

The press should be free. Drudge is entitled to slant the news as he wishes. It’s our right. It’s his right. But, someone’s got to call him out on it.

I can’t guarantee tonight will stay trouble free. But I won’t purposely blind myself to the truth as Drudge has.

I Go To Drudge When I Want To Get Upset

Now I only go to Drudge when I want to get upset… like tonight!

I used to read Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report all the time. By-and-by he’s become more conservative and more a “Hey you kids–off my lawn,” frustrated, angry man!. Now I only go to Drudge when I want to get upset… like tonight!

Here’s his current page (Is Drudge the last of all websites to only have one ‘real’ webpage with updated info?)

To most of the world the lead is that little story on the right: A government shutdown has been averted: “Finally, a deal…”

Too pedestrian for Drudge. He’s got bigger fish to fry: “PELSOI SKIPS TOWN ON SHUTDOWN EVE.”

He’s all about Nancy Pelosi’s speaking engagement and a story which he links to the thinly read Medford Patch. It is the only citation on the web (other than a Politico article which was published prior to her appearance).

Maybe Pelosi is a story, but is it the all caps lead on the night Congress decides the government can stay open-for-business?

Like I said I go to Drudge when I want to get upset. Mission accomplished!

Admiring One’s Own Work

That’s a lot of traffic for a site that is to news what a tick bird is to a rhinoceros!

I wrote an entry about Matt Drudge over on AppScout.com. My favorite line:

That’s a lot of traffic for a site that is to news what a tick bird is to a rhinoceros!

Writing is fun.

What Is Journalism II

There is no correction and no explanation. Is this journalism? Maybe, but I really don’t know.

In light of the last entry, is Matt Drudge and the Drudgereport journalism? At 4:21 PM EDT Drudge had the boldfaced headline: “COLIN POWELL ‘TO ENDORSE OBAMA’.” The story was attributed to Bill Kristol, said on Fox News and posted on foxnews.com. Within the body of the story was Powell’s denial that it was true.

By 6:32 PM it was a small link buried halfway down the lefthand column! There is no explanation of how this went from BIG to TINY.

This is not the first time Drudge has performed the disappearing story act.

Is this journalism? Maybe, but I really don’t know.

Blogger’s note: I rewrote and revised this story at 1:05 AM 8/14/08. Originally I didn’t see the moved link on the updated Drudge. That doesn’t change the fact the story fell greatly in prominence in a few hours and, as I said, Drudge’s headline text was denied by Powell.

Is Rush Worth It?

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In screaming headlines, Matt Drudge reports Rush Limbaugh has signed a deal for $400-million through 2016. On set during a commercial one of my colleagues asked if he could possibly be worth that much cash? Of course. I have no doubt there are calculations that have been double and triple checked which support this commitment.

Make no mistake, I am not endorsing Rush Limbaugh. Nearly five years ago I took issue with his life in general.

Like it or not he is very effective at attracting attention and an audience. Whether he totally understands what he’s doing or is just lucky he brings people into his bosses store. Value in radio (as in TV) is aggregating an audience.

With continued media fragmentation the Rush Limbaugh’s of our world take on additional value. Their mere presence transcends the value of what they’re saying.

The Money Doesn’t Upset Me

What exactly do you do with $109,000,000? Seriously, how could you spend it?

Matt Drudge, who seems to be particularly critical of anything Hillary Clinton does, has this bold faced headline on his site:

CLINTONS SHOW $109M IN INCOME SINCE LEAVING WHITE HOUSE

Wow, that’s a lot of money. What exactly do you do with $109,000,000? Seriously, how could you spend it? I’m not sure I could, or would want to.

World Exclusive: 4/4/08 15:43:06 ET

2000-2007 Returns

Feds Taxes Paid: $33.7 million

Charity: $10.2 million

Her Senate Salary: $1,051,606

His Presidential Pension: $1,217,250

Her Book Income: $10,457,083

His Book Income: $29,580,525

His Speech Income: $51,855,599

That’s from Drudge too. I love the way he’s pinpointed to the second when his “World Exclusive” broke, though his link goes to (and his facts come from) Yahoo! and wire service copy.

I know his point is to upset me. I’m not upset. Yes, that’s a lot of money… maybe too much money, but we’re allowed to aspire to, and achieve wealth.

I don’t want anyone telling me how much to earn.

This is an equal opportunity pursuit. Presidents see their post-presidency as a time to make money. George Bush “43” certainly does. “41” does too.

From the BBC:

“I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers,” Mr Bush told Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush.

What I really want to know is where the Clinton’s post-presidential money comes from. Who paid him and for what? That part of the story has not broken. The $109 million figure is sexier, but much less important.

Where There’s Smoke There Might Be Nothing

Yesterday, seemingly out of the blue, Matt Drudge headed his website with an image from an upcoming National Enquirer front page. Because Drudge is archived, I can show you the page.

JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL

With the Iowa caucuses two weeks away, and Edwards developing some steam, that’s a pretty provocative and potentially damaging story… even if untrue. Using Google news, I started scouting around for additional details. There were none easily found even at the National Enquirer’s site.

It’s easy to write this stuff off, except I believe it was Drudge who broke the Monica Lewinsky story. Beyond that, this is not Generoso Pope’s Enquirer, breathlessly tracking Elvis at K-Mart.

This afternoon, the story has slid from it’s top-of-the-page perch, but is still posted by Drudge. The John Edwards headline now links to the Enquirer’s reporting, which includes denials and a claim of paternity from Andrew Young (a former Edwards insider, not the former Atlanta mayor and congressman).

With Google, it’s possible to work backwards on a story. In this case, it was like a small brush fire which smoldered for months before bursting out. There were rumors in September, published on Huffington Post (in a fascinating story “Edwards Mystery: Innocuous Videos Suddenly Shrouded In Secrecy,” where cover-up, unexpected silence and obfuscation made the reporter more, not less, curious) and other bits and pieces, mostly on thinly read blogs.

That there is scant ‘legitimate’ news coverage of this story nearly a full day after it broke implies the story can’t be verified… in other words, in its original version it’s probably not true.

Will this damage Edwards? Is this a political hit job or maybe the result of a ‘rush to publish?’ Or, maybe it is true.

Enquiring minds want to know!

Hurricane Season Bust

Back in March, AccuWeather loudly proclaimed their predictions for the upcoming hurricane season. I was not amused and said so here. My worry was, if they were right they’d scream it from the rooftops. If they were wrong no one would remember.

Being held responsible for your predictions is a good thing and encourages you to be very careful in what you predict.

Today in the Drudgereport, Matt Drudge remembered. Must be a slow news day. I’m not complaining.

Drudge’s headline is actually a link to a story at TBO in Tampa. These are the people in the crowded theater who heard someone yell “Fire!”

This is not to say AccuWeather or Dr. Gray of Colorado State (whose forecast was also way off) aren’t fine forecasters. What it does say is, forecasts need to be presented in context. Forecasters have to admit that not every forecast has the same degree of certainty.

People also have to realize, the number of storms isn’t the most important factor in hurricane destruction. Hurricane Andrew came in a very slow season. It was the “A” storm – in late August. The season begins June 1.

Bottom line: When it comes to the health and safety of people, hyperbole is a bad thing.

Who Is Andrew Breitbart And Why Is Matt Drudge Throwing Him All Those Links?

I’m a habitue of Drudge. Though Matt Drudge has a political and sometimes social agenda, the site links to news I find interesting and does it on a fast and constant basis. Drudge is mostly a collector of news rather than a reporter. Just about all his headlines point to stories on other sites.

Until recently, most of Drudge’s stories came from traditional sources. If a story was actually from the Associated Press, he’d find a website carrying it and link there. You’d be directed to a newspaper, TV station, magazine or Yahoo, which carries wire service reports.

Now, he’s started linking to lots of stories on breitbart.com. Breitbart.com looks like an automated aggregator of AP and Reuters wire stories.

Quite honestly, I’d never heard of it or of Andrew Breitbart, the person whose telephone number is listed as the contact for the web address.

I’m not in Los Angeles, but I used Google’s mapping facility to look at breitbart.com’s physical address. It looks like a residential area just off the San Diego Freeway and near UCLA.

Then I started checking his name. Here’s a quote from Andrew Breitbart on author Roger Simon’s site.

The New York Times got it right — I am amicably leaving the Drudge Report after a long and close working relationship with Matt Drudge, a man who will rightfully take his place in the history books as an Internet news pioneer. I am also excited to be a partner in an inspired new endeavor, the Huffington Post. The last time I worked with Arianna she got a guy who didn’t deserve to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery disinterred. That was cool. I admit: I like to go where the action is.

And, if you go to the Internet Archives and look at some older breitbart.com pages, they actually show Drudge’s site. Well, they all do except this one. Oops.

So, it looks like Breitbart is now somehow connected with Arianna Huffington – liberal and, once again, Matt Drudge – conservative.

Is Drudge is sending all this traffic Breitbart’s way out of the goodness of his heart?

There’s nothing nefarious here (well nothing I can see). If there’s a financial relationship between Breitbart and Drudge, traditional journalists might question the ethical connotations of linking for profit. There’s nothing I’ve looked at that says that’s what’s happening and far be it from me to judge ethics. I just don’t know.

I’m writing what I found because I saw unusual online behavior and put 2+2 together. It’s all out in the open.

For me, it was interesting to see this new website spring up and get much of Drudge’s business. That’s where my curiosity kicked in. If you can aggregate tens or hundreds of thousands of hits… or more, Google ads (or similar ads, sold by others and placed on your site) alone could make a small, automated website very profitable with little investment or ongoing effort.

Blogger’s note: While looking through more websites, trying to read up on Andrew Breitbart, I stumbled on the fact that his father-in-law is Orson Bean. If the name means nothing to you, don’t worry. If you’re my age, Orson Bean was a very witty New Englander who worked the TV game show circuit in the 60s and 70s. I was a big fan. I wondered where he went.

Two Interesting Controversies… Well, To Me They Are

I thought I’d write about some interesting things I’ve read over the past few days.

The first seems to be a simmering controversy. It has not yet reached critical mass, but it should as soon as someone in the mainstream press catches on.

Is someone else fudging when it comes to global warming? Last week there were questions about a pro-industry push. This is just the opposite.

It starts with some comments on global warming from a respected scientist representing a respected organization

Kevin Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims that warmer oceans and increased moisture could intensify showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes.

“Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions,” Trenberth said. “These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing.”

All well and good, except this is a conclusion and a report steeped in controversy.

Dr. Chris Landsea is from the National Hurricane Center. He’s the guy who wrote the Hurricane Center’s FAQ. He is not a happy camper.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

Landsea goes on to say global warming will have minimal impact (if any) on tropical systems down the road. In fact, Landsea has resigned from this board in protest of the books being cooked.

Earlier today Matt Drudge was linking to an article which quoted Dr. Trenberth with no opposing viewpoints or perspective I was upset, so I wrote the author of the story.

Hello,

I appreciate you pointing this out. Unfortunately, the article was

published before I was finished with it. It was pulled off our site (but

not before it was picked up in other places), and I have now added some

context.

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050616_hurricane_warm.html

I apologize for this mixup.

Michael Schirber

LiveScience

How much damage has been done? Who can tell. Even bad or retracted research sometimes takes on a life of its own. I’ll wait and see what’s quoted later.

On to the second bit of reading which concerns the space program. It’s not often I see something in the National Review I agree with (in fact it’s not often I see the National Review). Today was the day.

This time it’s an article by John Derbyshire about the space program and its dubious current value. This is something I’ve written about before here in the blog. It’s not a popular thing to say the space program is a total waste… but it is.

I wrote John (whom I’d never heard of before this evening) and he wrote back.

Thank you, Geoff. Excellent comments. I just did a radio spot with Jerry

Doyle — he’s a big shuttle fan & has swallowed all the NASA guff about

microgravity manufacturing & the rest.

I think of the Shuttle program as a sort of Brasilia of the skies — pure

1950s thinking. Who else, today, is riding a vehicle designed by slide

rule?

Best,

John Derbyshire

A Brasilia analogy – wow!

The Oscars

All week long I watched as Matt Drudge tried his best to stir up controversy with this year’s Oscar host, Chris Rock. Even after Rock opened the show, getting a standing ovation (sort of shooting Drudge’s concerns in the foot) and then asking the audience to put their asses in their seats, Drudge felt compelled to rail again. The show was still in progress and he was going off on Rock!

The must be some sort of Drudge grudge at work here.

I’m a big Chris Rock fan and I thought his opening monologue was great. OK, maybe he hit Jude Law a little hard, but the rest was really funny and I laughed aloud though I was watching in a room by myself. Of course the very stuff I liked was creamed in USA Today and lambasted last night by one of my co-workers, who was not favorably impressed.

The rest of the show was watched by me in ‘collapsed’ form off the DVR.

It was a fairly lackluster telecast. I was disappointed there wasn’t more of Rock in his other appearances during the evening. He needed to do more than hit and run. There needed to be one or two more extended pieces with him. That being said, I hear the ratings were very, very good. So, obviously, I’m not as good a judge as I’d like to be.

I was touched by the acceptance speeches of Morgan Freeman, Hillary Swank (“I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream”) and Jamie Foxx. Then, this morning on CNN Headline News, I heard someone say Foxx had given the virtually same acceptance speech at two other awards shows. That’s not right.

Winner of the “David Niven Funniest Ad Lib Award” went to Jeremy Irons. Chris Rock introduced him, as “comedy superstar,” to which Irons replied, “It’s so good to be recognized at last.”

Then, as he was delivering his nominations, a sound… something like a gunshot, rang out. Without missing a beat, Irons said, “I hope they missed.” His timing was perfect.

Last night’s taped pieces, including the Johnny Carson tribute and annual “death medley,’ weren’t as good as I wanted, or had come to expect from the Oscars. Whoopie Goldberg was used in the Carson package, but why not Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, two recent hosts who had a lot of contact with Johnny.

I was also stunned that “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” won an Oscar. As I had written last April, it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. What were they thinking when they made it and voted on it?

What strikes me as most interesting as bout the show was the rise in the ratings this year even on a night where few movies produced any kind of passionate following.

I wonder if Billy Crystal will be back next year?

More ChoicePoint

MSNBC has more on the ChoicePoint story. I’m using their link because they’ve really been in the lead with this one.

This gives me an opportunity to add what I think is the irony in this whole sordid mess. ChoicePoint didn’t get hacked&#185, they sold this information within the normal course of their business. They were scammed into believing they were dealing with legitimate businesses by people who used techniques that ChoicePoint’s data is often sold to prevent! Oops.

Though this information, the most personal of data on all of us, was sold to criminals, I’m just as upset that it can be aggregated and sold at all.

Expect a lot of smoke but little fire as congressional hearings get underway. As a matter of political realism, strict reform in the data mining and sales business would seem to be an unlikely outcome right now.

&#185 – Speaking of not getting hacked, there’s a rumor at Motley Fool that Paris Hilton’s Blackberry wasn’t hacked… someone just guessed the password.

It is unclear exactly how Paris’ bejeweled electronic organizer was compromised — whether T-Mobile’s servers, where information is stored, were breached or whether someone accessed her actual device using her password (“Tinkerbell,” her Chihuahua’s name, perhaps?). The latter is what those in the technology field call an “end user error.” Or in non-techie parlance: shooting yourself in the foot.

Matt Drudge, reporting on a new theft of Fred Durst’s home video, writes:

A site hosting the hack reads: ‘I’M SORRY, U SELLOUT :)’

“The previous information was obtained using social engineering tactics.”

Law enforcement officials believe the video comes from the same source who presented Paris’s Sidekick diary.

“Social engineering” means someone got in through guile, not technology.

Why Drudge Isn’t Like Real News

I check back with Drudgreport.com a number of times ever day. There are good links – interesting stuff. But there is a difference between Matt Drudge and a mainstream news site. Here’s an example.

It started with this headline in bold type: KERRY CAMPAIGN FINDS COMFORT IN FIRST BATCH OF EXIT POLLS, accompanied by this text:

Election 2004 has been rocked with first wave of exit polls which show Kerry competitive in key states, campaign and media sources tell DRUDGE…. National Election Pool — representing six major news organization — shows Kerry in striking distance — with small lead — in Florida and Ohio.. MORE…

Later, a little meat was added to the first statements.

Election 2004 has been rocked with first wave of morning exit polls which show Kerry competitive in key states, campaign and media sources tell DRUDGE…. National Election Pool — representing six major news organization — shows Kerry in striking distance — with small lead — in Florida and Ohio.. MORE…

—– AZ CO LA MI WI PA OH FL MI NM MN WI IA NH

Kerry 45 48 42 51 52 60 52 51 51 50 58 52 49 57

-Bush 55 51 57 48 48 40 48 48 47 48 40 43 49 41

Those numbers were pretty unbelievable for the Kerry camp and very different from the closing polls. Still, as I had speculated earlier, there were variables that might have made the polls untrustworthy. So, maybe this turnaround was true.

Instead, it seems Drudge was untrustworthy

Exit poll mania spread through media and campaign circles Tuesday afternoon after first wave of morning data showed Kerry competitive in key states…. National Election Pool — representing six major news organization — shows Kerry in striking distance — with small 1% lead — in Florida and Ohio, sources tell DRUDGE… [But early 2000 exit polls showed Gore +3 in Florida]… Senate races: Thune +4 Castor +3 Burr +6 Bunning +6 Coburn +6 Demint +4 Salazar +4…

So, what’s right, what’s wrong? I still don’t know. But I do know that Drudge’s rush to ‘print’ muddied the waters for a while.

And, while I’ve been typing, he’s changed it again!

Exit poll mania spread through media and campaign circles Tuesday afternoon after first wave of morning data showed Kerry competitive in key states…. National Election Pool — representing six major news organization — shows Kerry in striking distance — with small 1% lead — in Florida and Ohio, sources tell DRUDGE… [But early 2000 exit polls showed Gore +3 in Florida; showed Gore-Bush even in CO [Bush won by 9], exits showed Gore +4 in AZ [Bush won by 6]… Exits Senate races: Thune +4 Castor +3 Burr +6 Bunning +6 Coburn +6 Demint +4 Salazar +4…

Maybe instant news isn’t a good idea?

Ashlee – Saturday Night Live – Oops

Steffie and I were just sitting, watching Saturday Night Live. Though Stef was tired, she wanted to stay up and see Ashlee Simpson. Steffie is a fan.

Jude Law, the host, introduced her. The camera cut to a shot of Ashlee in front of the band. The track began and Ashlee started singing… except her lips weren’t moving.

I asked Steffie, “Isn’t that the song she sang earlier?” It was.

Ashlee stopped singing and the band began filling in what had been the shell of the song’s intro. Ashlee started nervously dancing. The scene faded to black and they went to commercial.

At the end of the show Ashlee came back and said something about the band playing the wrong song. I’m not buying it.

It seemed to me as if the wrong track was played – big difference. It looked like Ashlee was caught in a lip sync malfunction!

We usually tape SNL in case we can’t watch it live. When the show ended we looked back. It was painful to see this time.

This is a story with legs. It will be in the newspapers and on TV – maybe not Sunday, but certainly Monday. The tabloid shows will go nuts with this.

Blogger’s note – Instead of adding a new entry, let me update an interesting twist to the story.

Matt Drudge picked this story up before I saw it anywhere else (except here). He first wrote, just before 2:00 AM EDT: “SATURDAY NIGHT TAPED: Ashlee Simpson in SNL Milli Vanilli lip synch nightmare… Performer runs off stage, blames band for gaffe… Developing…”.

At 2:06 AM EDT the headline changed to: “SATURDAY NIGHT TAPED: Ashlee Simpson in SNL lip synch nightmare… Performer runs off stage, blames band for gaffe… Developing…” I have no idea why Drudge removed the Milli Vanilli reference, which definitely fit.

This gets more interesting.

About 3:48 AM Drudge removes the story entirely. Then at 3:51 AM it’s back: “Poptart Ashlee Simpson Walks Off Stage After Lip-sync Flub During NBC’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE… Developing…”

Saturday Night Live indeed

Drudge’s Graphics

I read Matt Drudge all the time. Actually, that’s an exaggeration because the vast majority of what’s on Drudge’s site is just links to other places.

It looks to be written entirely in html – the simplest of web languages. Its most sophisticated feature is the javascript code in ads, written to try to evade pop-up blockers (and it certainly beats Google’s toolbar).

Drudge doesn’t run much in the way of images. Tonight there are three showing on his page. Amazingly, they are all being hosted on websites other than Drudge’s. Two are in yimg.com, which I think is a Yahoo image server, The other is msn.com.

If he’s not paying for this privilege, since it certainly can be done without permission, it’s the equivalent of powering your house through your neighbor’s electric meter.