abc: journalism is drudgery

“One dude, sitting in his apartment, marshalls the vangard of the militant right, and pretty much controls all media in the world,” said ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin. “And if he puts up that little blue and red siren? Forgeddaboudit. In today’s media, Drudge is like Walter Cronkite, except with x-ray vision. No, wait, he’s like Dan Rather. He’s like a young, literate Dan Rather that nobody knows what he looks like. The Rather comparison is apt because he can force anybody anywhere believe anything he says. The Cronkite comparison is apt because they would have believed him anyway.

“Basically,” Halperin continues, shaking his head, “by choosing often obscure stories about Democrats (honestly, who had ever heard of Monica Lewinsky?), he can set the talking points for everyone across the political spectrum. And once that happens, the rest of the mainstream media has to follow suit and cover the “story,” usually within three to four weeks or less.”

Drudge admits he’s wrong about 20% of the time, but who cares? His headlines are pure journalistic gold. “I haven’t done any investigative journalism since I started at the Times, back in 1968,” admits New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. “In fact, nobody at the Times has. Drudge makes it too danged easy: you can either write something that says the exact opposite of what Drudge said (e.g. “Clinton is not alleged to have had sex with that woman”) or if you’re in a hurry you can just copy what he wrote word for word.”

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane remembers, “There was this one time when Drudge thought it would be funny to say that Congressman Barney Frank was gay. Now practically everyone things Frank is gay. Nobody fact-checks this. Nobody asks Mr. Frank what he thinks. That’s the power of Drudge. Not there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying.”

SOURCE: abcnews.go.com