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How do you cover the back-and-forth over a story that hasn't come out?

That was the question political journalists were trying to answer yesterday, thanks to a story on the Drudge Report suggesting that the New York Times was investigating Sen. John McCain for alleged legislative favoritism.

The Drudge story did not get into the details of what might be in the Times' as-yet-unpublished report, leaving political reporters scratching their heads over its potential significance. It did suggest that McCain was lobbying the Times not to publish the story, which allegedly "involves a woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation."

The CBSNews.com political unit, of which I am a part, would have simply monitored the story if it had begun and ended with Drudge. But McCain decided to publicly comment on the report, denying that the allegations and saying he had "never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group." His campaign communications director suggested the story was part of a "smear campaign." Washington lawyer Bob Bennett, who said McCain had hired him to address the allegations, called the situation an "outrage."

And suddenly a story that might have passed more-or-less unnoticed in mainstream media – at least until the Times report came out – became a legitimate subject.

Numerous news outlets, including the Washington Post and USA Today, covered McCain's comments, and I wrote a post about it for one of our political blogs, Horserace.

It's difficult to know why McCain decided to address the Drudge piece, when he easily could have declined to comment and taken little heat for doing so. (The Times wasn't talking.) His advisors initially would not discuss it, according to the Post, "fearing that would open the door for news organizations to write about what his advisers regard as a non-story."

If McCain has become convinced that the Times story is going to come out eventually, he may have been trying to get out in front of it. Or he may simply have become frustrated over a story that he feels is bogus. The report comes at a difficult time for McCain – just two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, with his campaign showing the kind of momentum that has pundits speculating that he could be the last Republican standing. Like Mike Huckabee before him (addressing the Wayne DuMond case), he complained about the timing of the negative report, surfacing as it did just as his campaign appeared to be on the upswing.

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How do you cover the back-and-forth over a story that hasn't come out?

That was the question political journalists were trying to answer yesterday, thanks to a story on the Drudge Report suggesting that the New York Times was investigating Sen. John McCain for alleged legislative favoritism.

The Drudge story did not get into the details of what might be in the Times' as-yet-unpublished report, leaving political reporters scratching their heads over its potential significance. It did suggest that McCain was lobbying the Times not to publish the story, which allegedly "involves a woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation."

The CBSNews.com political unit, of which I am a part, would have simply monitored the story if it had begun and ended with Drudge. But McCain decided to publicly comment on the report, denying that the allegations and saying he had "never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group." His campaign communications director suggested the story was part of a "smear campaign." Washington lawyer Bob Bennett, who said McCain had hired him to address the allegations, called the situation an "outrage."

And suddenly a story that might have passed more-or-less unnoticed in mainstream media – at least until the Times report came out – became a legitimate subject.

Numerous news outlets, including the Washington Post and USA Today, covered McCain's comments, and I wrote a post about it for one of our political blogs, Horserace.

It's difficult to know why McCain decided to address the Drudge piece, when he easily could have declined to comment and taken little heat for doing so. (The Times wasn't talking.) His advisors initially would not discuss it, according to the Post, "fearing that would open the door for news organizations to write about what his advisers regard as a non-story."

If McCain has become convinced that the Times story is going to come out eventually, he may have been trying to get out in front of it. Or he may simply have become frustrated over a story that he feels is bogus. The report comes at a difficult time for McCain – just two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, with his campaign showing the kind of momentum that has pundits speculating that he could be the last Republican standing. Like Mike Huckabee before him (addressing the Wayne DuMond case), he complained about the timing of the negative report, surfacing as it did just as his campaign appeared to be on the upswing.

Read full post…

How do you cover the back-and-forth over a story that hasn't come out?

That was the question political journalists were trying to answer yesterday, thanks to a story on the Drudge Report suggesting that the New York Times was investigating Sen. John McCain for alleged legislative favoritism.

The Drudge story did not get into the details of what might be in the Times' as-yet-unpublished report, leaving political reporters scratching their heads over its potential significance. It did suggest that McCain was lobbying the Times not to publish the story, which allegedly "involves a woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation."

The CBSNews.com political unit, of which I am a part, would have simply monitored the story if it had begun and ended with Drudge. But McCain decided to publicly comment on the report, denying that the allegations and saying he had "never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group." His campaign communications director suggested the story was part of a "smear campaign." Washington lawyer Bob Bennett, who said McCain had hired him to address the allegations, called the situation an "outrage."

And suddenly a story that might have passed more-or-less unnoticed in mainstream media – at least until the Times report came out – became a legitimate subject.

Numerous news outlets, including the Washington Post and USA Today, covered McCain's comments, and I wrote a post about it for one of our political blogs, Horserace.

It's difficult to know why McCain decided to address the Drudge piece, when he easily could have declined to comment and taken little heat for doing so. (The Times wasn't talking.) His advisors initially would not discuss it, according to the Post, "fearing that would open the door for news organizations to write about what his advisers regard as a non-story."

If McCain has become convinced that the Times story is going to come out eventually, he may have been trying to get out in front of it. Or he may simply have become frustrated over a story that he feels is bogus. The report comes at a difficult time for McCain – just two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, with his campaign showing the kind of momentum that has pundits speculating that he could be the last Republican standing. Like Mike Huckabee before him (addressing the Wayne DuMond case), he complained about the timing of the negative report, surfacing as it did just as his campaign appeared to be on the upswing.

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In space, no one can hear you scream. But in cyberspace everyone can hear you whisper.

Yep, there’s possibly another sex scandal on the horizon. The Atlantic’s Matthew Yglesias came across some journalist/author scuttlebutting on his blog about how the Los Angeles Times has some information about a presidential candidate and isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

The fellow who posted the information, Ron Rosenbaum—an “acclaimed journalist,” according to a blurb on Amazon—got wind of something from a proverbial “well-connected media person” about the story:

So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that “everyone knows” The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. “Everyone knows” meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. “Sitting on it” because the paper couldn’t decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they’d had it for a while but don’t know what to do. The person who told me (not an LAT person) knows I write and didn’t say “don’t write about this”.

If it’s true, I don’t envy the LAT. I respect their hesitation, their dilemma, deciding to run or not to run it raises a lot of difficult journalism ethics questions and they’re likely to be attacked, when it comes out—the story or their suppression of the story—whatever they do.

First, allow me to stress the caveat he tossed in: “If it’s true.” I don’t know Ron Rosenbaum – I mean, aside from all that positive press his publisher writes for him – and I don’t know if I know his well-connected media person friend, so … who knows.

But this isn’t a column asking “Who could it be?” Rather, this is asking “How long can a rumor like this stay underground in the current leaky/bloggy/competitive environment of MediaLand?”

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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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At this point it’s news to nobody that sites like YouTube are political players. (Though to what extent, and to whose benefit, remains up for argument.)

But Salon today dissects the anatomy of John McCain’s recent gaffe where – in response to an audience member’s suggestion that America “send an airmail message to Tehran” – he half-sang “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boy’s song “Barbara Ann” in front of a South Carolina crowd.

Was it news? None of the big boys in the mainstream media outlets considered it worth mentioning. Only the Georgetown Times – and even then 450 words into a 750-word story – decided the musical attempt at humor was newsworthy.

Despite this almost-unanimous omission, McCain’s song ended up becoming a national story. How?

An anonymous/guerilla opposition researcher uploaded the video to YouTube and then made sure to pass it along to the Drudge Report, where it became the lead item and entered the political mainstream.

Opposition researchers – people retained by different politicians or political groups to dig up inconvenient information about politicians on the other side – are doing a lot of the legwork for mainstream journalists nowadays, finding inconsistencies in candidates’ records and dirty little secrets in their past. And the public’s dissatisfaction with the mainstream media seems to ratchet up by the month, giving alternative media outlets increasing momentum and influence.

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"A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!” That's what the Drudge Report exclaimed on Jan. 18, way back in 1998.

And we all know what happened after that.

What's interesting for our purposes, of course, is the media frenzy (of pretty much epic proportions) that followed. If you're not familiar with all the dirty details, take a look at a piece yesterday by David Rapp of American Heritage magazine. Rapp takes a look back on the genesis of the scoop that would take "news reporting out of the confines of the newsroom and blast it into cyberspace."

After all, this marked the first time that a major news story was breaking on the still-young Internet.

In that vein, we dug up another little piece of news history. Former CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg (who has appeared here on Public Eye before) did a story for the "Evening News" a few days after the Drudge story broke back in January 1998. He examined how the media was handling a huge story that was emerging in an entirely different fashion than they'd dealt with before.

As Engberg explains in the piece, the unfolding of this story was a case in which "technology may have overrun old-fashioned editorial caution. Newsweek magazine, which had the Lewinsky story first, decided to withhold it to do more checking. But the magazine's hand was forced when scandal monger Matt Drudge outed the story on his computer Web site."

You can click on the video player above to watch the piece, which aired on the "Evening News" Jan. 24, 1998.

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I was in the CBSNews.com newsroom for most of election night, and only once did I hear an excited cry of "Yes!" echo through the newsroom. It came not as a result of the Democrats' good night – sorry, bias-obsessed critics – but because the CBS News election page got a prominent link, midway through the evening, from the Drudge Report.

Why the excitement? Well, traffic, of course. According to stats listed on his page Friday, Drudge had more than 23 million visitors in 24 hours.* If just 1/23rd of them click on a CBS News link, it significantly increases traffic to the site. The Drudge phenomenon is not just limited to the digital side of things, however. Back in April, Drudge got his hands on video of a private internal meeting in the "Evening News" newsroom. What does one staffer have up on his screen as CBS News president Sean McManus walks past with a microphone? You guessed it.

Mike Sims, director of news and operations at CBSNews.com, says a link on Drudge or Digg is valuable because it exposes CBSNews.com's content to people who wouldn't otherwise see it. He acknowledges that such a link can more than double traffic to a story, but he says that CBSNews.com would never tailor a story to what someone thinks might make Drudge bite. Is he troubled by Drudge's somewhat lax journalistic standards? Not at all. "He's not touching our content," notes Sims. "He's linking to it."

There are a couple of different ways to characterize Drudge's appeal. If one is feeling charitable, one might point out that he is very good at identifying the stories that the public finds most compelling. While a site like Digg relies on an entire community to identify the stories that people want to click on, Drudge pulls it off more or less by himself.

"Compelling" isn't the word that Drudge's critics would use, however.

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It seems some new visitors have made their way onto PE today. That might be courtesy of the Drudge Report which linked to one of our earlier posts. While we certainly don’t mind the attention, I thought it might be a good idea to clear up an apparent misperception.

The headline to our link on Drudge read: “CBS bashes anonymous sources on Katie Couric story.” Not that Drudge is best known for his impeccable accuracy but this characterization is wrong in two ways. First, I wasn’t trying to “bash” anything in my earlier post, but to simply point out the irony in reporters having to use anonymous sources even in covering their own profession, which itself has issues with the whole practice. It seems in some instances, media organizations are not much different than the institutions they cover. Simply something I thought was an interesting point that nobody else was addressing.

More importantly, CBS was not saying anything, Public Eye was.

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The Drudge Report today is featuring some comments made by CBS’ Andy Rooney on the “Imus” program this morning and it's getting some traction in the blogosphere. Here’s the one sentence that Drudge puts on his site:

“I have a problem with the term African American ... The word negro is a perfectly good word. There is nothing wrong with that.”

That happens to be an incorrect quote, one that serves Drudge’s need for hype.



I guess the implication is that Rooney made some controversial or politically-incorrect comments about race. While it’s probably not beyond Rooney’s candor and style to do that, I think this exchange is far more benign than what Drudge would have you think. The discussion began as host Don Imus was referencing a frequent guest, Congressman Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) and noted that Ford is African-American. Here’s the transcript:

Rooney: “I object every time I hear the words ‘African-American,’ you know? I don’t know why we have gotten caught with that.”



Imus: “Yeah, I don’t either.”



Rooney: “I mean, am I an ‘Irish-American?’”



Imus: “What should I say, just ‘black’ right?”



Rooney: “Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ‘black.’ Growing up, it’s funny how words get to be opprobrious. The word ‘negro,’ perfectly good word. It’s a strong word and a good word. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Mostly it’s not necessary to identify anyone by skin color. But I don’t care for ‘African-American.’”



Imus: “I won’t use it anymore.”

Drudge makes no comments, simply leaves snippets of the exchange hanging out there at the top of the page to give his many visitors an inaccurate impression of Rooney’s meaning. You may disagree with Rooney’s thinking on the issue but it’s a legitimate point of discussion. It’s not like the issue of hyphenated Americans has never come up before. And if you listened to the exchange, it’s clear that Rooney was speaking respectfully.



His use of the word “negro” is what is striking many the wrong way, but he’s arguing for the strength of the word and remarking on the negative connotation it carries. He’s not advocating its return to the American lexicon.

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