[Dooby]

Drudge Pitches, Media Swings: ‘It’s Too Easy,’ Says Web Gossip
by Joe Hagan


Wednesday, Feb. 18

On Thursday, Feb. 12, when right-wing supercybergossip Matt Drudge unleashed the gravity-defying headline declaring that Senator John Kerry’s campaign for President was headed for a 27-year-old speed bump named Alexandra Polier, the TV news hordes reacted like Mr. Drudge’s story was the frog-creature that had come crawling out of a fetid swamp.

"It belongs where it is, on the Drudge Report, because it’s crap," one NBC reporter spat.

Ribbit.

For MSNBC senior political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell, that sort of indignation sounded familiar—in fact, it echoed a line from a script he wrote for an upcoming episode of NBC’s The West Wing, set to air on Feb. 25, in which the Drudge Report rattles the Beltway with rumors of—what else?—a sex scandal. While it was written in November of 2003, Mr. O’Donnell said the press reaction to the recent Drudge bombshell fit neatly into his plot line.

"The standard reaction to the Drudge Report publicly is, ‘Oh gee, you can’t believe every crazy Web site,’" he said. "Which I think is word for word one of the reactions I wrote into my script—by a character who then privately says, ‘I assume the Drudge Report is right.’ And that’s the perfect description of the way the Drudge Report is received."

In Mr. O’Donnell’s West Wing episode, the Drudge Report "reveals" that The New York Times Magazine is working on a story that exposes the sordid truth behind Vice President Hoynes’ resignation. Another Times reporter publicly discredits it, but privately believes Mr. Drudge.

Reached for comment, Mr. Drudge told NYTV that he had not seen a single episode of the NBC show and was immediately concerned with copyright infringement. "They can’t use my image if they use my Web site," he snapped. "It’s going to be a scandal!"

But when he calmed down, Mr. Drudge agreed with Mr. O’Donnell’s premise, that the media publicly shunned the messenger while coveting the message.

"That’s a very close mirror to the last five days," he said, "because people in Washington were fully aware of the story and when I did it—‘Oh shit!’"

"I don’t mind being pooh-poohed and being called the slimiest person on earth by James Carville," he added.

Mr. Drudge said he was deeply amused watching the press react to him and was especially delighted by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace, who told WABC Radio on Thursday, Feb. 12, that he declined to discuss the Drudge Report rumor because it was only gossip—but later dedicated an entire panel discussion to it on his show. Mr. Drudge laughed while playing a recording of Mr. Wallace saying, "I’m in the news business, not in the gossip business," over the phone to NYTV.

"It’s too easy," chuckled Mr. Drudge.

In Mr. O’Donnell’s view, Mr. Drudge’s gossip acted like a media feedback loop: Mr. Drudge was tipped off by the media itself—specifically, Mr. Drudge claimed, Time magazine, ABC News and The Hill were investigating an as-yet-unsubstantiated tip that Senator Kerry engaged in an extramarital affair, which prompted the rest of the media to follow suit and ultimately flush the rumor out into the open before the facts were nailed down, driving it to a conclusion—in this case, a phalanx of reporters to a suburb in Nairobi and a denial by the woman in question, Ms. Polier, on Monday, Feb. 16. But don’t tell Mr. Drudge that that’s the end of the story.

"Oh, really?" said Mr. Drudge. "Monica Lewinsky signed an affidavit. We haven’t seen Alex’s affidavit yet."

In January 1998, he noted, Ms. Lewinsky signed a legal confession about her affair with Bill Clinton, unlike Ms. Polier, who has only made statements to reporters.

Mr. Drudge "tells you what the media is about to do," said Mr. O’Donnell. "Who else knows that? He says what the media is going to do and then they do it …. If his credibility wasn’t so high, there wouldn’t have been any confusion about how to handle this non-story."

"His batting average on that is so good that the press believes what Drudge is reporting about the press," he added. "Drudge’s report was not about Kerry, it was about the press."

While the TV news anchors and talking heads may use Mr. Drudge as the ethical whipping boy, loudly washing their hands of him on the air and in print, the media privately tends to trust his reports exactly because of their origins: the backstage of the media itself. "It says something about Drudge’s credibility," said Mr. O’Donnell. "It’s huge! It’s very, very powerful. That’s why other media outlets that did pick it up, they were going with Matt Drudge’s credibility. In general, over time, that’s not a bad bet."

The rumor’s four-day life span, and its gingerly tip-toeing path through TV in that time, offered a look down the throat of the American media, as the rumor poked its way through the tabloid strata, starting with carefully worded innuendoes and arched eyebrows on evening programs on Thursday, Feb. 12, to Senator Kerry’s denial on Don Imus’ radio show on Friday, Feb. 13, to the King Kong headlines in the New York Post and Daily News (and a 20th-paragraph mention in a New York Times article) on Saturday, Feb. 14, to its turn on NBC’s The McLaughlin Group as "the unmentionable" on Sunday morning, Feb. 15.

In keeping with the West Wing script, the attacks on Mr. Drudge’s credibility came from the very news organizations that were either working on it already or who were getting reporters on the case and pronto—even if they were denying it outright, as ABC News’ The Note did on Friday, Feb. 13 when it posted the headline: "The (Democratic) Elephant in the Room: DEVELOPING(?) … The Answer Is ‘No.’"

On the eve of Mr. Kerry’s denial on Imus in the Morning, TV anchors and correspondents wrinkled their noses at the foul, unnamed thing in the room. That night, CNN’s Aaron Brown read an item on NewsNight saying, "The big political news of the day" was the impending endorsement of Senator John Kerry by General Wesley Clark, adding, "We emphasize news."

Message: We’re not reporting these vile rumors that you may have heard about, for we are a legitimate news organization, above such scandal-mongering. (Next on Larry King Live: Laci Peterson!)

NBC News’ David Shuster cited an unnamed strategist who said that Governor Howard Dean was staying in the race in case Mr. Kerry’s campaign "implodes." Come again?

Over on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly dismissed "slime" politics from his lofty podium of dignity. "Already rumors about the candidates are flying around the Internet," he said. "And that kind of stuff will continue because the media loves it. Any whiff of scandal means higher ratings and more circulation. So the press vultures can’t get enough of character assassination."

Of course, Mr. O’Reilly’s method of getting the news out was the oldest trick in the book: the double-fake reverse mention.

"Nobody was talking about it at that time," observed Howard Fineman, the Newsweek chief political correspondent and MSNBC’s Hardball Presidential-election panelist. "He was putting it into circulation at a time when it wasn’t in major circulation. He was putting it in circulation on the most highly rated news show on cable television."

Mr. Fineman said it was a tactic from the Richard Nixon playbook: "That’s like Richard Nixon used to say, ‘Some people say I should attack so and so for being a communist, but I would never do such a thing.’"

Mr. O’Reilly, a freshly minted critic of the Iraq war, has promised an entire series of The O’Reilly Factor on "slime" in politics on future shows. Mr. O’Donnell, can you concoct a TV talk-show character for West Wing who was a drum-beater for the war but then later decided it was a bad war and then campaigned against gossip in politics and then sprouted wings and flew to heaven? Thanks. [FNC, 46, 8 p.m.]