Biased News Drudge Style

To my favor, I don’t check Drudge as often as I once did. At one point his website was just right leaning. Now it’s somewhere off in Crazytown!

Today there’s a perfect example. By changing one word he has totally changed the meaning of a linked story concerning power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy!

If someone took Drudge’s headline at face value they were led astray by what can only be a purposeful attempt to mislead.

The story had to do with Con Ed’s (New York City’s power supplier) estimate of power restoration in the city.

Here is a screengrab from the Drudgereport‘s home page:

Here’s the page reached from Drudge’s link.

This is absolutely, positively despicable!

6 thoughts on “Biased News Drudge Style”

  1. So I guess we should be appreciative that CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, NPR, NYT etc. aren’t biased at all and do not not distort or “re-interpet” facts. While I love and respect your meteorological expertise (and glad to have it back again, locally, and love the tech reports) I can’t say I agree with your singling out Drudge when the left wing press has done so much more but to little criticism.

    But…having said that, you’re a great guy and I still follow your weather analysis every day.

    John

    1. I have worked in newsrooms at the local and network level. I have never seen institutionalized bias. I have seen naive people accept BS from flacks. Nothing worse.

      What Drudge did was out-and-out lie. There’s a huge gap between his headline and WCBS’s.

      Our difference is you think there’s an excuse for this kind of crap and I don’t.

  2. This is one of the problems with everyone having their own site and posting their version of ‘news’. People like Drudge are trolls with a massive following. He does it to get a rise out of people not to actually relate facts. The BIGGEST problem is that people read what he says and takes it for gospel truth, which is where we get all kinds of rubbish reposted and sent as chain emails. Drudge has no one to ‘fact check’ what he writes and he wants none (that would lessen the emotional impact of what he says). In old days he’d never make it in journalism unless he toed the line. Nowadays no one needs to. It’s wrong, it’s irresponsible and it is a massive disservice to the public.
    As for the so-called ‘liberal media bias’ reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw. It said ‘the media is only as liberal as the conservative corporations that own them.’.

  3. Check out the title today, Geoff! Wow, Drudge is pulling out all of the stops right before the election. How did he ‘leave them behind?’

    John,
    I agree that no news station is completely ‘unbiased’… it’s human nature to interpret, and dissect information into what you want to hear and believe. I think the difference between Drudge and MSNBC, CNN, & ABC is that there isn’t a discernible push into publishing straight up lies. Drudge has been wrong numerous, numerous times and never redacts what he says leaving his readers dangerously misinformed.

    Are you sure that maybe you’re just doing that with your news sources— i.e. hearing what you want to hear? You named 5 reputable news sources that have been around for many many years.

  4. A lot of people will only hear what they want to hear and only go to news sources that support their own version of ‘the truth’. Really educated people (and uneducated people who are seriously interested in being fair) will try and look at things from the other side and get as many points of view as they can before making a decision.
    Unfortunately in todays internet, instant news and increasingly polarized world, the notion of
    ‘I’m right and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong.’ is becoming more the norm than the exception. It’s sad to see.

  5. 793T,
    It just seems that everything is polarized now— Everything is so black and white. I’m right, you’re wrong. You’re with me, or against me.

Leave a Reply to Mike Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *