T A B L E_.T A L K

Join the discussion of Brill's Content in the Media area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

L.A.'s battle of the books
By Dwight Garner
Is the Los Angeles Times Book Review the second coming of the New York Review -- or an elitist section that doesn't serve its readers?
(06/18/98)

Hamburger Hades
By Jon Carroll
Robin Cook's "Toxin" is a tale told by a hack, full of E. coli, signifying that the beef industry is the tool of Satan. Yum!
(06/16/98)

Content's star shortage
By Harry Jaffe
Media watchdog Steve Brill tried -- and failed -- to get big-name media talent on his masthead
(06/12/98)

Source for Kathleen Willey story sues Newsweek's Michael Isikoff
By Joe Conason
Julie Steele claims reporter violated explicit agreement that their conversations were off the record
(06/12/98)

The truism show
By James Poniewozik
The op-ed-ization of Jim Carrey's new flick turns its anti-TV take into a rerun
(06/10/98)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

_______Hearsay rules

WITH MATT DRUDGE DEBUTING ON FOX NEWS, NO-STANDARDS
JOURNALISM TAKES ANOTHER GIANT LEAP FORWARD.

BY DAVID CORN | This weekend, Fox Cable News -- which markets itself with the slogan, "We report. You decide." -- is handing over air time to a journalist who says he doesn't bother to check his stories. On Saturday, Matt Drudge, the cyber-gossip who runs his own Web site, starts a weekly show on the cable network. The timing is appropriate. This week, when there is much hand-wringing over how the mainstream media has covered the Monica Lewinsky affair, Fox's move raises a question: Should a news network that claims to be responsible reward, honor and promote the antithesis of a responsible journalist?

Drudge fans will protest that this description of him is harsh and unfair. But what would you call a reporter who does not verify his stories and rushes them into print? That is what Drudge does, and proudly so. He freely admitted it when he recently appeared on CNN's "Crossfire." I know because I was on the show with him. Yet this startling admission, which he has made more than once, has not hurt his career. No-standards journalism is on the march.

Recently, the Los Angeles-based Drudge dropped into Washington to give a speech at the National Press Club. There had been much frothing over his appearance, with critics questioning whether the club should provide a podium to a fellow who appears to be demolishing the line between gossip and reportage. But the club went ahead, and Drudge took the occasion to poke fun at established media outlets that have gotten stories wrong (of which there have been a lot lately) and to compare himself to John Peter Zenger, the press liberty champion in colonial America. And, Drudge declared, "All truths begin as hearsay."

In his appearance on "Crossfire," it became apparent that, for Drudge, truths just as easily end with hearsay. On the show, he stated that due to the nature of the Internet he cannot be expected to confirm the information he puts out: "What we're dealing with here is a whole new medium where things move fast and you're not really able to fully, fully check out everything you'd like to check out."

Credit Drudge for being one of the first to recognize the potential of the Internet as a new medium. And credit him for being candid. (Although by Drudge's logic, a Porsche owner could escape a speeding ticket by arguing that he had to drive 180 miles an hour -- even on a wet, winding road.) But since Drudge is now being sued for libel by presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal, credit him for making an awfully dumb, even if true, comment.

Last summer the Drudge Report carried an item that GOP operatives had uncovered court records showing that Blumenthal had beaten his wife. But Drudge did not do what any second-rate reporter would have done -- check to see if these court records existed. (No such records have emerged.) Instead, he ran the item, and even though he quickly took it down after furious questions were raised, he ran into a multimillion-dollar libel suit filed by the Blumenthals. Lawyers for the Blumenthals must have licked their lips at Drudge's admission on "Crossfire" that he does not vet what he pumps out.