Matt Drudge: Liberal Tool?

NY Sun columnist Alicia Colon is fed up with the liberal press and their running down of the country. She is particularly upset with Matt Drudge:

Matt Drudge, who may or may not be a willing accomplice to the distortion of news reporting, must be held responsible for the dissemination of the bias in the liberal press. Studies have shown that the readership of the Times is down — as it is in other liberal publications — and so are the television ratings of the alphabet networks and CNN and MSNBC, while Fox News is up.

Nevertheless, the propaganda of the enemedia — an excellent descriptive term coined by one poster to Lucianne.com — continues to sully news coverage, thanks to Mr. Drudge. A study of press bias by a professor of political science at the University of California-Los Angeles, Tim Groseclose, listed the Drudge Report as one of the most liberal sites on the Web because it consistently posts articles from left-of-center sources.

My patience with the Drudge Report ended when I saw a photo of Frank Rich of the Times posted on the site along with his words: “We are losing in Iraq.” It isn’t too encouraging to the morale of the nation, but posts like this are common on Drudge.

The site gives top billing to every possible negative statement about the Iraq war and the Bush administration, and it gets about 13 million hits a day. Is it any wonder that President Bush has record low approval ratings?

The week before, Mr. Drudge posted a quote from the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates: “We are not winning in Iraq.” Did he really say those words? No. At Mr. Gates’s confirmation hearing, Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, asked him if we were winning in Iraq, and he answered, “No.”

While I admire Drudge as an entrepreneur, I’ve got little respect for him as a journalist. Even by tabloid standards, his headlines are distortions of truth designed to garner attention. Still, he’s certainly no Democrat or liberal.

The reason Drudge touts so many negative stories about Iraq and the Bush administration is because both are going very badly. While there are doubtless more cases of good news than bad in Iraq, there are more bad big stories worthy of a flashing siren and H94 font.

FILED UNDER: Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Indeed.

    In fact, I used to visit Drudge daily, if not multiple times a day. However, given the number of sites that also aggregate the news, I maybe surf over there a couple times a month, max (and then probably because he was mentioned on a blog).

    In regards to the columnist: anyone who thinks “enemedia” is a clever term makes me wonder how they managed to get a writing gig in the first place.

  2. Cernig says:

    If you wrapped your fish in the NY Sun, you would never get the smell off the fish.

    Regards, C

  3. Tano says:

    I am quite upset that I wasted a few of the precious minutes of my life reading that column. It has to be one of the most retarded things I’ve seen in a long time. At least it gave me some sense of what to expect from the NY Sun.

  4. Tano says:

    “anyone who thinks “enemedia” is a clever term”

    Interesting that the term is used by someone named “colon”.

  5. Cernig says:

    Not too long ago, Glenn Greenwald caught the NY Sun in some blatant fauxtography over a picture that they said was of the mastermind of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, but that turned out to be of imprisoned terrorism-suspect Jose Padilla. I noted then that the Sun has long been of highly questionable integrity having also been one of the rags that pushed Amir Taheri’s infamous “Iranian yellow stars for Jews” fable as well as Sada’s fairy tale about Iraqi WMD’s.

    But surely this time even the most reality-challenged of the uber-right must realise that the Sun has lost the plot. Could one of them, perhaps, explain that they are meant to drink the kool-aid, not stuff the raw powder up their noses?

    Regards, C

  6. floyd says:

    “”the propaganda of the “ENEMEDIA” — an excellent descriptive term coined by one poster to Lucianne.com”” ….. Is that short for enemy-media….or enema-media??? With friends like them, who needs enemas?