All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Sometimes the biggest forces at work are the unseen, invisible ones.

Take gravity, for example. Big deal. You know, apples and Isaac Newton and all that. Something that scientists and high-wire performers struggle with every day.

Then there’s the Drudge Report. Also a big deal. Not entirely unseen – it gets loads of hits – but its effect extends far beyond mere eyeballs. Media professionals and political operatives deal with it every day.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten a call from a TV or radio producer wanting to have me discuss a certain topic, catching me unaware, and have them say “It’s up on Drudge. Check it out.”

Then yesterday, there was an extremely fascinating take on the Drudge Effect in the New York Times indicating that the Hillary Clinton campaign was providing carefully-timed leaks to the Drudge Report team, to both gain widespread notice and divert attention from Barack Obama events.

That people in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign orbit would tip off the Drudge Report to its fund-raising numbers is in part a reflection of her pragmatic approach to dealing with potential enemies, like Newt Gingrich or Rupert Murdoch. But it also speaks to the enduring power of the Drudge Report, which mixes original reporting with links to newspaper, Internet or television reports far and wide.

The site is a potent combination of real scoops, gossip and innuendo aimed at Mr. Drudge’s targets of choice — some of it delivered with no apparent effort to determine its truth, as politicians of all stripes have discovered at times.

Aides in both parties acknowledge working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates — or unfavorable coverage of competitors — onto the Drudge Report’s home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip.

I think that, to most observers, the Drudge Report is a website that runs political and cultural scuttlebutt. But it very clearly doesn't end there. (Here's another great anecdote from earlier this year, from the liberally-inclined TalkingPointsMemo.) So what is the Drudge Effect? How much does it ripple throughout MediaLand, and reverberate? I am but one modest media soul, so I decided to tug the ears of some media insiders.

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CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller missed a Bush press conference earlier this month. In this dispatch he shares/vents other frustrations about the logistics of covering President Bush this past summer.

It costs CBS News a fortune to cover the President – especially when he travels. And it sure looks like it didn’t get its money’s worth this month.

Three times in recent weeks, those of us who were covering the President’s trips to Kennebunkport, Maine; Crawford, Texas; and today to Bellevue, Washington were totally out of position for the big stories of the day.

On the morning of Thursday, August 9, members of the traveling press were on the press plane en route to Maine – just as Pres. Bush was holding a formal news conference back at the White House.

We had returned to Washington three days later, but were airborne again Monday morning flying to Waco, Texas in advance of the President beginning a two-week stay at his ranch in Crawford.

So what happens, while we’re half-way to Central Texas? The president walks out to Marine One to announce the resignation of his senior advisor Karl Rove.

And again this morning, the President ends his two-week ranch stay and arrives at TSTC Airfield in Waco – to makes his first public statement on the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

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Each week we invite someone from the outside to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we invited Craig Crawford, columnist for Congressional Quarterly, on-air analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and CBS’ “Early Show” and author of a new book titled, “Attack The Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against The Media.” As always, the opinions expressed in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours and we seek a wide variety of voices. Here’s Craig’s take:



Pardon my skepticism at the breathless warnings on Thursday of yet another “specific threat” to our safety – in this case, the danger to New York City subway riders. This one could be quite real, and I don’t necessarily quarrel with that.



But I worry at how the news media seems to feel forced to take these dire warnings at face value despite the pattern of politicians provoking these episodes at suspiciously opportune moments. Most memorable was the time last summer when we heard warnings of terror attacks on the East Coast – announced just as the Democrats wrapped up their national convention in Boston and sent presidential nominee John Kerry on the road for what they hoped would be a high-profile launch of his general election campaign.



It later turned out that the terror alert that overshadowed Kerry’s launch was based on outdated intelligence, raising suspicion that it was done for political reasons and had little to do with public safety.



Yesterday we heard about possible attacks in New York just hours after the President delivered a tough-talking speech about the dangers we face from terrorists. And the subway story stepped on breaking news that White House political boss Karl Rove would again testify to a Grand Jury. How convenient!

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